The Winner and still Champion....

We are actively "paperchasing" for our Russia adoption right now. If you are unfamiliar with that term, think "scavenger hunt"... except that the objects of desire in this hunt are documents. In some cases, they are documents that allow you to get other documents which allow you to get still other documents... you get the idea. When you finally "win" the paperchase, you have something called a dossier that gets sent to the foreign country. The dossier usually consists of a homestudy (your state reporting that you are a worthy adoptive family) plus a number of other documents such as marriage certificates, child request forms, passport affidavits, photos of your home and family, powers of attorney, etc...

Fortunately for us, we aren't completely starting from scratch and we know A LOT more about what we need and where to get it. We have a complete and current dossier... but it's in El Salvador. We can't really get it back to use it again and a lot of the papers specifically list El Salvador anyway. On top of that, Russia's dossier requirements are different from El Salvador's... most countries have their own rules. What we CAN do however is update our paperwork to create our Russia dossier. This starts with updating our home study. Because a lot of our documents needed for our homestudy are less than a year old, we can still use them. For the homestudy, we've had to order new BCI&I reports (criminal background checks), marriage certificates, driving record affidavits, and we're trying to schedule to have our physical exams updated. Once they are in, we will submit gobs of paper to our homestudy agency / social worker who will come out to our home for a verification visit and interviews. When all of that is done, we'll have an updated homestudy.

With an updated homestudy in hand, we'll be nearly ready to submit our dossier to Russia (through our adoption agency). We'll still need to get the documents notarized and apostilled (apostilled = verified by the Secretary of State of our state according the requirements of the Hague Convention). We have this silly notion that we might have the homestudy documents done in 2 - 3 weeks unless our physician makes us do another physical (they are 6 weeks out in scheduling these... but the receptionist suggested that he might be willing to sign the new forms since our last physical is less than a year old). When that is done, we'll be at the mercy of our homestudy agency for when they can schedule the visit and finish the report. We'll be ready to submit our dossier within two or three days of getting our new homestudy. We really hope to have the dossier all done and ready to submit May 1st, but we're probably delusional.

That brings us to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). You see, USCIS has this funny idea that we can't bring foreign citizens into this country without the US Government's approval. Something about Homeland Security and Illegal Aliens seems to be a big deal these days. As a result, you have to get Visas for your internationally adopted children before bringing them into the country or the nice folks in the passport line at the airport will have a fit. The way that you arrange for Visas is by first asking permission of USCIS. To ask permission, it costs $670 + $80 per person who needs to be fingerprinted (adults in your house). You have to submit a form (I-600a) with a copy of your homestudy. Once they receive it, they schedule you to be fingerprinted. After that, you will (eventually) receive a form (I-171H) that informs you that your pre-approval for obtaining international orphan visas has been sent to the United States Consulate or Embassy in your adoptive country and will be waiting for you when you get there. It is good for a year and then you have to update it.

We've heard a lot of horror stories about the USCIS taking 12 weeks to process your application before you get your fingerprint appointment and then taking several more weeks before you get your I-171H. This form is often the final barrier to being able to submit your dossier.

Being a Republican leaning person who thinks less government is better and that government bureaucracies are a plague on mankind, I fully expected these horror stories to come true. Much to my surprise, my government actually did a more than adequate job. In fact, when we sent our application for El Salvador, we received our appointment almost immediately... and to top that, they actually contacted us to see if we could come in on an EARLIER date for our fingerprinting. We barely had to stand in line and finished the process in less than a half hour! Because we are changing countries, we need them to send our pre-approval to the embassy in Moscow. Thinking that our rapid processing the first time must have been a fluke, we were careful to send in our request to change countries (form I-824) in plenty of time to get it processed before we were ready to send the dossier off to our agency. We sent in our I-824 on 3/17/2008. I nearly fell of my chair when we received our updated I-171H with a postmark of 3/21/2008. They didn't even charge us to update it. As of this moment, I solemnly vow to never think poorly of government bureacracies again (or at least until I have to pay taxes or renew a driver's license that is). USCIS has once again proved that they are still the adoption paperwork processing champions. Now if all the other folks who have paperwork that we need would just follow suite...

If you need forms for USCIS, you can find them online at http://www.uscis.gov/