Getting Visa # Surname (Second Name) Ado

Applying For H4 Visa

I am here to share my story of entering in United States on H4 Visa and the complications I faced throughout the stay in absence of a surname.

Few months after I got married to a guy who is settled in USA, we started my H4 visa process in order to get me to USA as well. During the initial stage, I started with tons of paper work and form fillings which included getting a copy of all my IDs and certifications, filling up of DS-160 and getting signed letters ready from my husband's employer, as off course they were sponsoring my H4/dependent visa.

Some of the documents as I remember are:

Passport Original  (no copy)

DS-160 confirmation page

Appointment Letter (for visa interview)

My employer's docs (yes, I was working in India): Appointment letter

Resignation\NOC letter

Marriage certificate

Marriage photos

Wedding card

Educational documents

PAN Card

DL

ITR

Form 16

Salary Slips

And copy of some of my husband’s documents:

Passport - Front

Passport - Back

Visa

I-94

Salary Slips (for past few months)

Tax Documents (for past 2 months)

I-797 Petition papers

LCA

Educational Docs (to be on safer side, as you don’t want to get rejected simply because you couldn’t present certain documents asked by the visa interviewer)

While I was in the process of filling up DS-160, the form made it mandatory to print a second name without which I was not able to proceed. In order to get going, I had to enter a second name but I couldn’t just enter any second name as that would invite further problems as all of my other documents i.e. passport, DL, adhar card don’t have a surname. This delayed the whole process and after a lot of googling and checking with other consultants and my husband’s employer, we ended up with a work around.

I made my name as surname and in the place of first name I had put FNU (First Name Unknown).

E.g. On passport

First name: ABC

Last name: Blank

       On DS-160

First name: FNU

Last name: ABC

I did heard from some people about LNU which is Last Name Unknown, which works the same way, it’s just that instead of using your first name as surname, LNU is made surname and first name remains the same.

That way I was able to take the process further.

Once I was done with all the documentation, I got 2 appointments made by my husband’s employer for visa interview:

 1. Ofc Appointment

   It was scheduled at:

   

   S - 1 American Plaza, (Hotel Eros Managed by Hilton),

   International Trade Tower,

   Nehru Place, New Delhi, 110019

And this was a real quick one, they simply clicked a photograph for visa and took finger prints and checked my passport, appointment letter and DS-160 and called that a day.

2. Consular appointment

It was the real visa interview appointment and was scheduled at:

   U.S. Embassy Shantipath

   Chanakya Puri

   Delhi, 110021

All went well and the visa lady said, “You don’t seem to be a threat to our country & we are more than happy to welcome you to United Sates”.

In a week’s time, I received my stamped visa through post. It had my first name as FNU and last name as my actual “first name”. Feww, a lot of messing around with a name that has been given to me since birth. It’s quite confusing and off course irritating to be called as first name unknown. People actually pronounced it Fnu as if it’s a name and some of them asked it’s meaning, which surely tells even in USA people aren’t familiar with this FNU thing.

I wish I would have gone with LNU instead of FNU, at least I would have been called by my name instead of Fnu.