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Our first step in applying to adopt from the People's Republic of China is to begin compiling our "dossier" which is an application containing all of the information that China needs to completely assess whether or not we will be suitable parents. In the international adoption community, the process of building your dossier is commonly referred to as "the paperchase". It is estimated that the paperchase will take between 4-6 months to complete. To get an idea of what the paperchase is all about, take a look at the following list of documents that have to be obtained and then certified prior to being sent to China:
Each of these documents has to be a state certified document or be notarized and then depending on the state where the document originates, may need to have a seal applied by the clerk of the county court. Then each document is sent to the secretary of the state to receive an official state seal, sometimes called a "certification" or "exemplification". From there the documents are sent to the Chinese Consulate General in Houston, Texas for final authentication before being sent to China where it will enter the next phase of the process. In addition to these documents the People's Republic of China requires that a home study be conducted by a state certified social worker. We've chosen Lori Fraas of Adoption Support Services of Florida in Oviedo to conduct our home study. China has specific guidelines for the home study process and requires the following topics be covered:
As part of the home study process we have to collect another long list of notarized documents as well as write an in-depth autobiographical profile. One of the most important documents to be completed is the "I-600 A" or Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition. This form must be submitted to the local United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Orlando. After submitting the I-600 A along with your completed home study and FBI fingerprints to USCIS, they will process our request and hopefully approve our request to adopt a child. The approval notice is known as the I-171H and is usually the last piece of paperwork needed before submitting your dossier to your agency for final authentication before being sent off to China. Important Dates in our Paperchase: February 20, 2006 Living Hope Adoption Agency application mailed. March 16, 2006 Living Hope contract mailed along with initial fee. March 27, 2006 Living Hope dossier preparation workbook arrived today. This workbook will guide us through the entire adoption process. April 12, 2006 Interview with Lori Fraas of Adoption Support Services of Florida, Inc. for our homestudy. Contract and fees mailed to Lori today. April 18, 2006 First of four homestudy visits with our social worker Lori Fraas complete. April 26, 2006 I-600A mailed to USCIS in Orlando. May 3, 2006 Notification that I-600A was received by USCIS and that we should appear on May 12, 2006 to be fingerprinted. May 12, 2006 Fingerprinting at USCIS office in Orlando. When we drove into the USCIS complex there was a life size bronze statue of a Chinese warrior standing guard! A visit to AAA to have passport photos taken. A stop at the Volusia County Sheriff's Department for our local background checks. Lastly, to the Volusia County Courthouse to apply for our passports. May 24, 2006 Passports arrived today! May 26, 2006 Packet of homestudy documents mailed to Adoption Support Services. These documents will help Lori prepare for our home visit. May 31, 2006 Second of four homestudy visits with our social worker Lori from Adoption Support Services complete. Two down, two to go...! June 6, 2006 Visit to our doctor's office to begin tests for our medical reports. June 15, 2006 Third of our four homestudy visits with our social worker Lori. After our home visit Lori will begin preparing our homestudy. June 16, 2006 Home visit with our social worker Lori Fraas. Lori was very informative and gave us additional resources to prepare our home for the time when Lili is with us. We were both impressed by the ease of this seemingly daunting part of the homestudy process. June 19, 2006 Physicals complete and medical reports signed by our doctor. June 22, 2006 Final list of homestudy documents notarized and mailed to Lori at Adoption Support Services (big thanks to Nicole!). Received LHAA authorization of all documents that require agency approval prior to being authenticated. June 29, 2006 Rough draft of our homestudy submitted to LHAA for approval. July 5, 2006 Official copies of our homestudy arrived today. One copy mailed to USCIS in Orlando so we are now officially waiting for our I-171H. July 12, 2006 I-171H arrived today!! WOW! USCIS in Orlando is Awesome! The I-171H is our official approval by the US Citizenship & Immigration Services to adopt a Chinese orphan and to bring her into the United States as an American citizen. Many adoptive parents have experienced a 90 day wait or more to receive this form from their local USCIS office. Thank You USCIS Orlando!! Can you tell we're excited?? July 13, 2006 Our documents that need authentication are on their way to our Tallahassee courier, Karen Rubin, who will walk them through the authentication process at the Secretary of State's office in Tallahassee and then Fed Ex them back to us. July 14, 2006 We are so impressed with Karen Rubin's service. She left us a message today that all of our documents have been authenticated and that she had already dropped them off at Fed Ex. We didn't realize that because two of our documents were double-notarized that the cost for authentication would double on those two. Karen's message indicated that she had paid the extra cost out of her own pocket so that we wouldn't have any delay! How many people would do that for complete strangers? We feel truly blessed by the kindness of so many people in this process. July 17, 2006 Our authenticated documents arrived today from Karen Rubin, our Tallahassee courier. We assembled all of the documents for our dossier and sent it on its way to Living Hope this afternoon. Living Hope will audit our documents and if everything is in order they will be sent to the Chinese Consulate in Houston for the next set of authentications. Unfortunately Living Hope's deadline for monthly dossier submission is the fifteenth of the month so we didn't make the July group. We tried so hard that is a little bit disappointing but we also know that everything happens in God's perfect timing. July 18, 2006 Dossier received at Living Hope at 9:53 AM this morning. July 22, 2006 Authentication Application for the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China mailed to Living Hope today. This form will be sent along with our dossier to the Chinese Consulate General in Houston, Texas whose consular jurisdiction covers the state of Florida. There our dossier will receive the final seal of authentication. July 25, 2006 A second form that was requested by the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Houston submitted to Living Hope today. August 15, 2006 Elizabeth from Living Hope emailed us today and informed us that we are officially "DTC" today! DTC is "Dossier to China" and means that all of our paperwork has been processed on this side and is now on it's way to the China Center for Adoption Affairs to be logged in. When CCAA logs in our dossier they will notify Living Hope who will then give us our log-in date or "LID". LID is the official beginning of the waiting period. Simply put, LID means that every family who has applied to the People's Republic of China to adopt an orphan is waiting in line for the opportunity to be matched with a child. Referrals are offered to those who have been logged in the longest, so the sooner the LID the better! Joined the August 2006 DTC Internet group. This is an online group for others who are also adopting from China and who are DTC during this month. This type of online group is very important to us because it lets us share our hopes and fears with others who know exactly what we are experiencing. August 25, 2006 We have a brown envelope! Actually, it's "THE" brown envelope. From what I've read, some families receive a brown envelope and some don't. The ones who don't are usually worried because they didn't get theirs. Well we got ours today! The large plain brown envelope is from The Foreign Service of the United States of America - US Consulate General, Guangzhou and contains a letter that gives us our case number and discusses what to expect during our consulate appointment as well as a packet of forms that we will have filled out during our stay in Guangzhou. The forms include a Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative, several medical examination and medical history forms and Application for Immigrant Visa. Considering that we are at least 12-24 months away from our consulate appointment in Guangzhou it seems strange to receive this packet now but hey, we're not complaining! It was a nice surprise to look in the mailbox and see that envelope! September 2, 2006 The August 2006 DTC group that we are members of has chosen a name. We'll now be known as the August 2006 DTC Lucky 8's. The Lucky 8's will keep each other company, swap squares and baby gifts and generally support each other during the rest of this amazing journey. September 10, 2006 Based on the amount of time others are seeing between their DTC date and LID we think that we'll be LID sometime in September so today we joined the September DTC group. We have a long wait in front of us so we hope to keep busy with activities with both our August Lucky 8's and our September groupmates. September 22, 2006 LID! This is our "log in date"...the day that our dossier was logged into the CCAA in Beijing. This is the "official" beginning of our wait for referral. We are now in the long line of families waiting for the opportunity to adopt a Chinese orphan.
November 1, 2006 Today we got our notification from Elizabeth at Living Hope that our dossier was logged in at the CCAA on September 22nd. September 20, 2007 A whole year has passed since our LID and now we must prepare to renewal our paperwork because everything has to remain active until we return from China. Today we sent our home study update contract and check to Lori so that we can get started. November 9, 2007 Lori completes and submits our home study update. November 14, 2007 Request for the free renewal of our I-171H was mailed off to USCIS today along with a copy of our current I-171H and our home study update. November 29, 2007 CCAA announcement that September 2006 LIDs are officially out of review.
December 15, 2007 Appointment to be re-fingerprinted at USCIS in Orlando. January 7, 2007 I-171H renewal granted by USCIS. This most important document is now valid until July 2009.
If you would like to follow us through the next part of our journey please click on "The Wait" button to the left.
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