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. 

USCIS Update #3: Request for Evidence

On Monday I felt uplifted.  Our social worker had followed up with the USCIS on our behalf and e-mailed us that our I-800A application had been forwarded to an immigration officer.  It had been 68 days of waiting.  I was feeling confident that our I-800A approval was imminent.  I couldn't fathom what they could find wrong with our application. 

I read the e-mail at my desk on Tuesday and let out an audible "No!"  The USCIS put a "Request for Evidence" on our application because they consider our nanny a household member and therefore requires her to undergo an interview with our social worker and biometrics with the USCIS.  The e-mail our social worker forwarded us from the immigration officer might as well have said, "Your adoption has been put on hold for the unforeseeable future."  I felt defeated as I thought about the few week's wait we had for the USCIS to issue the date for our biometrics appointment, the cold and snow that makes traversing the metro area for an in-person interview a nightmare and my nanny's new job where she had inflexible work hours and no leave yet accrued. 

I immediately called our social worker, but didn't reach her.  Then I noticed the immigration officer listed a phone number at the bottom of her e-mail, so I called her.  I explained that our nanny never lived with us and that she coincidentally no longer worked for us.  The officer said that by law, if a person provides childcare in your home, that person is considered a household member.  But if she no longer worked for us, we could send a letter explaining such and she'd accept a scanned copy of the letter.  However, since our home study mentioned the nanny, we need to have that amended.  Our social worker completed the amendment that afternoon, but the person who needs to sign off on it isn't back in the office until tomorrow.  Then it needs to be mailed to Chris and me, so we can sign it, mailed back to our agency and then back to the USCIS.  Which means it won't make it onto the immigration officer's desk until after Christmas.  Ugh. 

Other than shuffling a bunch of papers back and forth, and the waiting, the upside is upside is that this resolution requires little work on our part and doesn't inconvenience our former nanny.  Despite the low I felt yesterday, I'm now confident we'll have our I-800A approval around the start of the new year and we'll finally see the completion of our dossier. 

USCIS Update #2

We are sitting at 60+ days waiting for our I-800A approval from the USCIS. Friends and family ask with genuine curiosity how the adoption process, and honestly, I have no new news to report.  We simply sit and wait. 

The Christmas season has kept me very busy, but secretly, I am impatient and frustrated.  I've become obsessed with the I-800A approval time frames of other families whose blogs I follow.  I wondered why families even as early as this fall were getting their approvals in 4-6 weeks.  The only way I can satiate my curiosity is to call the USCIS. 

After my persistence during my call two weeks ago when I navigated a complicated automated phone tree, spent multiple minutes on hold and was transferred numerous times, I at least now have a direct phone number to the right department within the agency.  The man I spoke to was very friendly and seemed sincere in his understanding of everyone's desire to bring their children home as quickly as possible, but he couldn't provide any more information than what I learned when I last checked in and that was that our file hasn't yet been transferred to an immigration officer.  But I did get a possible explanation for our wait. Apparently they get slammed with requests at Christmas since many sending countries shut down at some point in the months of December and January.  (China's Lunar New Year, the biggest celebration of the year, occurs between January 30 and February 5, and workplaces close.)  Adoptive parents farther along in the process are under a time crunch to get their final immigration approvals for their children.  

Despite my impatience, I trust that within time, we'll have our approval and this wait will seem like a distant memory. 

USCIS Update

We are still waiting on our I-800A approval.  It's been silence from the USCIS since we attended our November 4 biometrics appointment.  To calm my anxious nerves, I tried contacting the USCIS and learned that the next step is for our application to be assigned an immigration officer, which has been averaging 60-75 days since they first received our application back on October 8.  We can receive I-800A approval in as little as one to two days after it's been reviewed by the immigration officer - or the dreaded "pink slip" requesting more information. 

We need 1-800A approval to complete our dossier, so as I was on the phone with USCIS, my mind was updating our timeline and I realized it's unlikely we'll be ready to ship our dossier to China before Christmas.  I had hoped to get our dossier off U.S. soil before the holidays when work slows down as people take time off. 

At least my conversation with USCIS confirmed that they had our application and the process, albeit moving at its own place, is inching forward.  One of the hardest parts for me about the paperwork and applications is dealing with the anxiety of going about the process incorrectly or missing a vital document.  I feel like I'm mailing irreplaceable documents into a black hole with nothing more than crossed fingers to guarantee arrival on the right person's desk.  There's no person I can contact to make sure my envelope arrived and turnaround times, if they're offered, are often quoted in weeks.  Some days are harder than others to remind myself that I have to let go and be comfortable that the process is out of my hands. 

Biometrics Appointment

Chris and I had our appointments this morning with USCIS to have our biometrics taken, which is part of the approval process for our I-800A application.  "Biometrics" we learned, is Immigration's fancy term for fingerprinting done with a scanner.  I wasn't sure what to expect from the appointment, but they scanned our fingerprints and off we went.  It was easier than going to the DMV! 

The immigration office was located in a non-descript storefront in a strip mall next door to a Wal-Mart.  Our appointment was at 9:00 a.m., but we showed up a few minutes early.  We presented our driver's licenses and filled out a short form. After a clerk reviewed our forms, he handed us numbers and pointed us towards a room where we waited to be fingerprinted.   It was 9:06 a.m. when I got back in my car to go to work. 

With the biometrics appointment behind us, all we can do is wait.  I still don't know how long we can expect to wait for approval.  Two weeks?  Or possibly weeks longer.  With less than a month between the date we mailed our I-800A application and our biometrics appointment, I'm hopeful final approval won't be too far off.  It's exciting to think we can see the finish line on completing our dossier, but I also know pulling together the loose ends can take longer than the initial work.  We still have plenty of documents to complete and notarize, passport photos need to be taken and then we have to visit the Secretary of State's office to have everything state-sealed.  Meanwhile, my Pennsylvania birth certificate still hasn't arrived yet!