Our long awaited oh-so important I-171H form has arrived from the United States Citizenship and Immigration office. This is the form that allows us to bring a foreign orphan into the United States to become a citizen. As you know with any government office you are at their mercy with little to no information on whether they received your documents and where you are in the stack. We sent our documents to request the form on November 17, along with a big check, they then sent us a fingerprinting appointment for December 22nd which we went to, and we have been anxiously awaiting the mail since. It finally arrived on Friday. This is our last document that we needed to complete the 5 month paper chase.
There are three parts to the China adoption process:
1. The Paper Chase-I don't even know if I have the energy to even to began telling you how much paperwork is involved. Every document (birth certificates, marriage license, medical exams, good conduct certificates, adoption letter of intent, employment letters, financial statement, home study and I'm sure I'm missing a few) has to be obtained as well as go through what they call an "authentication" process. Authentication means it has to go back to the Secretary of State where the form originated to receive a seal and then it has to go the Chinese Consulate in the state that has jurisdiction over the state where the form was originated to receive yet another seal. This has been an exhausting process and somewhat stressful one as you are constantly crossing your fingers (or in our case praying) that nothing gets lost in the transition.
2. The Referral-Once the paperwork is complete it is sent to China by our adoption agency (The Gladney Center) and logged into the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) system. The CCAA (God) will match us up with our daughter and will send us a picture and a medical report. Currently the wait time is at 6 months. So in about 6 months we will have in our possession a picture of our daughter...we can hardly wait!
3. Travel Approval-Once we accept the referral, we will be sent our travel approval to go to China and get our girl. Typically, you receive the travel approval 6-8 weeks after the accepting the referral.
Our best guess is that we will be traveling to China to pick up our sweet daughter next September. It definitely is a tough process and the waiting is definitely going to be the most difficult, but we know God will see us through and will have waiting for our family a precious baby girl.
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