bad news on the F-4 front

Murphy's Law turns up, not when you least expect it, but when you least want to see its ugly face. I suspected that something like this was going to happen, but foreknowledge (or foreguessing, in this case) doesn't make things easier when the Murphic reality inevitably intrudes. My brother David finally got the long-awaited CD-ROM, with Mom's naturalization papers, from USCIS. He dutifully sent over the two PDF files that were on the disk, and he noted in his email—as I had asked him to do—that Mom's married name is what appears on the document. Her maiden name is nowhere to be found.

Shit.

Why is this a problem? you ask. Good question. I had been warned by the Goyang Immigration Office that, in the event of mismatched surnames, there might be some sort of extra step in the F-4 process because, if different documents related to Mom showed different surnames, there'd be some doubt as to whether all the documents referred to the same person. I'm guessing that Immigration might ask to see Mom's marriage documents—something to show her transition from one surname to another. I don't have access to such documents, so I'm just going to head over to the dreaded Mokdong Immigration Office this Monday morning and try to use what documents I have to apply for the F-4. Along with the required paperwork, I'll also bring along Mom's Sookmyung student ID, on which is recorded her date of birth; and her death certificate, on which are listed her parents. This will tie her, logically, to other documents like the Korean family register. Of course, invoking logic in conjunction with bureaucracy is a dicey proposition at best, but right now, that's the best plan I have. All these documents, put together, build an airtight case: yes, this woman is my mother; and yes, she was originally Suk Ja Kim before she changed surnames after getting married.

Here goes nothing.


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