USCIS Update #4: I-800A Approval

After the let-down last week of learning that we had an additional hoop to jump through before the USCIS would grant us I-800A approval, I was surprised to learn when I called this afternoon that not only had they received our amended home study, (and that it met their approval and they didn't find anything else wrong) but that they had approved our I-800A on Monday.  I was told our I-797 “Approval Notice", the USCIS's formal approval of our I-800A, is in the mail and that we should have it by early next week.

Many of the dossier documents require a state seal, so once I have the I-797, I'll bring a copy of it (we'll need to bring the original with us to China) and everything else to the Secretary of State's office.  Thankfully I live and work in the state capitol, so this will end up being one of the less burdensome tasks in the process.  Since I was born in Pennsylvania, my birth certificate needed a Pennsylvania state seal, which I've already secured. 

After my call to the USCIS, I immediately called our adoption agency to let them know that we are almost finished our dossier.  The dossier team at the national office ran through next steps with me.  Once we overnight the dossier to the national office in Michigan, our work is mainly finished.  (Yay!)  The dossier team reviews our dossier and prepares it for the authentication process, which means that the state seal is authenticated as true and correct by the Chinese government.  Chinese consulate officials in Chicago, I believe, will validate the Secretary of State's seal and add an authentication sticker to each document.  My birth certificate might have to take a side trip to the consulate in New York, which authenticates all documents sealed in Pennsylvania (among other states in the region).  This process takes as long as four weeks, but our Agency hopes to complete this process in as few as two to three weeks. 

Once our dossier is off to China we'll be finished with the "paper chase" and will have arrived at "dossier to China" status, or DTC in the China adoption lingo.