Today in the mail we received another approval (one more amongst many). This time it came from USCIS (US Citizenship & Immigration Service). Several weeks ago, we sent them our I-600A form (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition), which basically is a pre-approval application for our side to make sure our home study, record checks, birth/marriage certificates checked out. Then they sent us an appointment for fingerprinting, and we did that on 6/27 - I think this was to check to make sure there were no FBI files on us. Today we got their approval, in the form of the I-171H form/letter, basically saying that we have been approved to adopt two children. YEAH!
That approval is good for 18 months, so we have until about December 2008 to file our two (one for each child since they are not biological siblings) I-600 forms (Petition to classify Orphan As an Immediate Relative), which is one of the final steps (if not THE final step) before we can bring our kids home, basically that the US government recognizes them as orphans and will allow them to be adopted by us and become US citizens. I think also, if we're running close to the 18 months, we can apply for an extension on the I-171H approval, but I'm not sure how that works - I've just seen posts referring to this on one of the message boards I keep up on. Hopefully we don't have that problem though - that would certainly be really frustrating if we have to wait that long. The other funny thing is that our fingerprinting is only good for 15 months, so if we think we're going to be hitting close to that, we can renew our fingerprints at 12 months just to be sure they're still valid at the time we file the I-600. Sheesh - this is complicated!
Anyway, one more set of documents to go in that fireproof/waterproof safe we bought. I'm thinking we're going to need another one - or a bigger one! Maybe I'm just being paranoid though. :)
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