One Step Closer

We received our I-797C (I-171H) last Thursday. This form is issued by the USCIS and allows us to adopt two children from Bulgaria and to bring them back to the United States. We weren’t expecting the form to arrive until mid-February, so it was a huge surprise to see it so soon. Now that we have that form, we’ve been working extra hard to finish the rest of our dossier. We’ve done most of the work and are just waiting on everything to come back to us so we can head to the Secretary of State’s office to have it all apostilled. We’re still waiting on some paperwork from our home study agency, both of our employment letters, and our updated FBI clearances. It seems to be going okay so far, and we’re hoping to send our completed dossier to our caseworker in California sometime next month.

A Quick Update

It's been a couple of months since I've updated this blog, mostly because not much has been happening. We did get fingerprinted again at the Indianapolis USCIS office in early December. We expect our I-171H form to arrive sometime in February. We have officially started working on our dossier so everything will be ready when the last form arrives. It should not take too long to put everything together since we're getting really good at adoption paperwork. So for now, we're filling out forms, requesting employment letters, verifying bank files, and being checked for infectious diseases. If all goes as planned, our dossier should be ready to go in six to eight weeks.

Our I-800 Form

I picked up an updated copy of our home study earlier this week and was able to send our I-800 form into the USCIS office. I've heard it's been taking about three months to receive the I-171H form. (This is the form that will allow us to bring our children into the country as US citizens.) Since we already have fingerprints on file with the USCIS and a favorable decision for another country, we're hoping that our application will move through the system quickly. We plan to start gathering our dossier documents at the beginning of the year. Hopefully everything will go smoothly this time and we'll be able to send out paperwork to Bulgaria in February or March. It's a good thing that I can be very organized when I need to be.

More Fingerprints...

Since we had to start from the beginning with the USCIS, we had to redo our background checks and CPS checks. We went downtown on Friday before leaving for Iowa to get fingerprinted for another local criminal background check. We decided to get another set of fingerprint cards made while we were there since our FBI clearance will most likely expire before we complete our dossier. The results of the background checks should arrive sometime this week, so we should be able to submit our I-800 form to Immigrations within the next couple of weeks. We're not sure how long it will take to get approval, but we're hoping that it won't take too long this time. The path to our children has been rocky and we've had many obstacles along the way. This process definitely requires a lot of patience!! That's all for now...

Home Study Update

We met with our social worker last night to update our home study. We had to make some changes since it was originally written for Kazakhstan. The meeting was quick and we should be able to send our new home study and letter to request a country change to the USCIS before we leave for vacation. I don't know how long it will take to get a new I-171H, but we're hoping it will be fast. That will be the last document to complete our new dossier, so the sooner it arrives, the sooner we can send off the paperwork to Bulgaria.

The dossier for Bulgaria is much easier than the dossier for Kazakhstan. I posted a picture of our completed Kazakhstan dossier in a previous post. This dossier is much shorter and includes the following documents:

* Copy of passport of both parents
* Financial Statement
* Description of our Home
* Medical Forms for both parents
* FBI Clearances for both parents
* I-171H form from USCIS
* Home Study
* Social Worker License
* Home Study Agency License
* Home Study Agency Letter of Recommendation
* Marriage Certificate
* Authorization of Representation form
* Partner Agency Agreement
* Proof of Residency
* Employment Letters for both parents
* 10-12 Photos

Fortunately we already have a lot of these documents completed from our Kazakhstan dossier, and since they were done earlier this year, it's not a problem to use them. That makes things so much easier. Everything has to be notarized and apostilled, and it has to be absolutely perfect.

Things seem to be moving along just fine. We're still educating ourselves by reading books and by attending the monthly classes at Bethany. This Saturday we'll be attending a class where we are able to meet with the International Adoption doctors from Riley Children's Hospital to talk about health conditions that we may encounter with our new children. It should be interesting. Thats all for now!!