What's In a Name? Part Two

I have been told that I left some faithful readers hanging on my “What’s In a Name?” post … My apologies! I didn’t write about the resolution of that question simply because it has yet to be resolved. Our meeting at the Department of Immigration on Friday resulted in:

• Meeting an American college exchange student in the same boat as Pedro (who says his suggestion to any future college exchange students will be, “if your name has a suffix, don’t even bother coming to Chile!”)
• Listening to the gentleman in the Immigration department exchange a war of words with the woman who works under the head of cédulas for foreigners (who obviously holds the same opinion, and just as vehemently, as her boss!)
• Re-scheduling an appointment for Monday, at which time the aforementioned head of cédulas for foreigners will be in her office to speak personally with the gentleman from Immigration over the phone

The gentleman at Immigration basically said the easiest thing would be to allow him to change Pedro’s name on his visa to not reflect the suffix. Then we can get his carnet, later his permanent residency, and all the paperwork in Chile will have the same (non-suffixed) name. We are just afraid this could cause problems down the road because the name on his visa will not match the name on his passport …

Otherwise, the gentleman said we could hire a lawyer to fight for the right to use Pedro’s given name, which seems rather extreme and I don’t think we really want to go there. So, please pray for wisdom and for a positive resolution on Monday. Time is a factor in all this because Pedro needs to have his carnet in order to sign for our shipping container (with all our earthly belongings!) at the end of the month.

Obviously, life overseas is never dull!