Yet Another Delay...

I’m so frustrated I might cry. I thought we had recieved our i600 immigration approval but clearly, we haven't.

I received notification from USCIS that there was an error on our homestudy , so they needed a corrected version. I notified our social worker, got the problem fixed, and mailed a corrected version to our local USCIS. It arrived there Monday, Jan. 4th. The USCIS officer who processes i600s was out all week so it sat on her desk until Friday, Jan. 8th. When she returned she realized that we had to be re-fingerprinted and mailed us new fingerprinting forms which I still have not received. We can only be fingerprinted on Wednesdays which means now I have to wait another week just get that done, and then wait again to have them run and sent to her, so we can hopefully get our approval. This will delay us at least 2 weeks…maybe more..who knows.

I’m so upset. I feel like every time I turn around we get hit with a delay: Ten weeks for legals, error on homestudy, fingerprinting problems…I can’t stand this anymore. I’m about to burst into tears right here.

What’s Next??

I've had many people asking me what happens next in our adoption. Right now we are waiting on immigration to approve our i600 which is a petition for the US government to legally classify Addison as a relative so we can get her a visa to bring her home. Right now our paperwork is in Texas. They have received it , processed it, given it a case number and it is now awaiting review. I have no idea how long that will take. It could be one week, or it could be 6 weeks. You just never know! After Texas processes it, they will mail it to the Kansas City office where they will actually review our file and make sure our ducks are in a row so they can approve the i600. They won't approve it initially because we will need to be re-fingerprinted, but once that's taken care of, we should get that approval. The total time frame is really hard to nail down. I think the fastest would be 6 weeks, and the longest, well who knows, but I don't think we'll wait more than 10-12 weeks. We would have to have some pretty serious snags for this to happen.

After we get our i600, then we our paperwork is sent to the National Visa Center where we start the process to get her Visa. This is a completely different timeline and process, so I'll explain that when we get there!

We appreciate your prayers and support so much! Thanks to all of you!

Immigration Problems

We filed our i600 with the United States Customs & Immigration Services (USCIS). This needs to be approved in order for Addison to get a Visa. Immigration is notoriously unhelpful and slow. If you make a mistake in your paperwork it can delay you weeks, even months. Case in point: When I filed the i600a a year ago, I sent a check for the wrong amount and by the time they sent the check back with an explanation of the problem and I sent a new check, the process had been delayed a full month. With that being said, we have now have three mistakes with our paperwork which we just sent off last Thursday.

#1: We forgot to date a form. To correct this we filled the form out again, typed a letter with an explanation of the mistake and what we did to correct it, and sent that priority mail today. We are helpful that this actually makes it into our file it with our paperwork so this is fixed and doesn't cause delay.

#2: Our homestudy was updated by our Social worker in September. She listed our first referral by name on the first page. I was unaware of this, because our first homestudy made no mention of any child at all. So now USCIS has a homestudy with the wrong baby listed. Not good. This means we have to wait for a new homestudy, and HOPE that USCIS doesn't notice this small detail, or that the mistake has no bearing on our case.

#3 Our federal fingerprints expire on January 25, 2010. We were informed that they needed to be current until we actually bring home our baby. This is a change in policy because before USCIS stated they needed to be current until we got out i600 approval. So, we met with an immigration officer today who stated we could not get updated fingerprints until USCIS noted our expiration date, puts our file on hold, and mails us the "fingerprint form." Once we have this precious form, we can go get printed, but not until then. This a guaranteed two week delay, and could be longer. We now also need to finger print Nick because he will be 14 by this time.

We are definitely in need of prayer. Here's how you can pray:

• Pray we don't worry, or become discouraged. God is good all the time. Even when its hard to see.
  Pray God watches over our paperwork and that these delays will be minimal and very easy to fix so these problems don't turn into months of delays.
• Pray we bring him glory, even now for He is always worthy. I really want to exalt him at all times, but I'm afraid I'm really struggling right now.

We appreciate all the support, prayers and love. It means so much.