Do you really want to know?

Ahh the joys of bureaucracy! I love the US Govt!!!!

So do you really want to know the realities of all the hoops we jump through, paperwork, glitches, bureaucracy, etc, etc for adoption? I don't post alot of this stuff because, well, its boring and frustrating and who wants to rehash boring and frustrating? Not me! But, I thought this example was a good one of some of the things that plague adoptive families on a day to day basis throughout their journey. It should give you a better idea of what we have been and will continue to go thru.

So everyone knows we are finished with our paperwork and in the waiting phase. Waiting for a referral (i.e. to be matched with a child). We we really aren't "done" with all of our paperwork. One of the pieces to the puzzle involves filing a petition to classify an orphan as a US citizen with the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Dept). Well, we filed this very important form with USCIS back in Jan...yep, you heard me right, JANUARY! Once it is filed, we are scheduled to be fingerprinted. We were fingerprinted in February. Included in the application is a copy of your Homestudy (the document written by our social worked that includes who we are, where we come from, how we parent, finances, marriage, families, home, etc, etc...basically more information about myself than I know about myself!). Fortunately the USCIS allows you to file this application (called the I600A form) and get fingerprinted before your Homestudy is complete (i.e. you have met a bunch of times with your social worked and they have written this very long document). This allows the process to go much faster and to get approval in plenty of time for the adoption. Well in the state of RI, approval happens usually within a few weeks of recieving your completed homstudy. Ours went to USCIS about 3 months ago. So you can imagine that when I had still not recieved our approval letter 2 months later, I was getting a little worried. I knew all of our paperwork was in order, I had been down to the USCIS office in providence like 4 times already (for other hoops, bureaucracy, etc that I did not and will not get into), other famalies I know adopting in the area had heard back (multiple times) from USCIS who had filed after us. Ughhhh...what was going on?

Well, I would not have been as worried....except for the small fact that we are skyrocketing up the waiting list! And the reality is that we could get a referral as soon as July! We can't go to pick up our child if we do not have this approval letter. You can image why I was getting a little antsy.

So I called our Homestudy Agency (who is great by the way, they are so helpful and have been great to work with) and they finally did some digging since we were past the normal window to hear back. Well, for weeks, we were not hearing anything....they were putting in calls to their USCIS adoption contact in RI and hearing nothing back. Again and again. UGHHHH!!! Finally after a few weeks, they got someone on the line who informed them that their contact was no longer handling the adoption paperwork. They gave our case info and were told the new person would call back. Yeah right!!! Finally I decided to take matters into my own hands, make an appointment and head down to the USCIS office in Providence.

Ahh, my favorite place to be!

Not so much.

After waiting 30 minutes past my appointment time, I was told that the man I needed to speak with was not in and of course would not be in until the middle of the following week. Could I come back then? Umm hello, I work, I have a toddler... Well fortunately the adoption guys supervisor (this nice man's name was Mike) came out to try to help me (no I didn't pitch a fit...he just did this when he was asked about) . He admited that even as a supervisor, he was not trained on the I600A form and wasn't sure he would be able to help me today but offered to do some digging in case he might find something. Well he did...the first thing he found was that they didn't have our homestudy. Now you would think that we might get notified to this fact. But no, our file with approved fingerprints was just sitting in a file waiting for said homestudy to arrive.

UGHHH!! What? I had already jumped through like 6 hoops (including previous apptmnts at USCIS) to get my homestudy added to my file. As I went to call my agency, Mike went to do even more digging. As luck would have it (well luck for that moment I guess), before I could get my agency on the phone, Mike found our homestudy in a pile on some other desk. Misplaced in the switchover from the "old adoptoin guy to the new one." The new guy will be back in the office and apparently our file will be on the top of his desk and he is supposed to call us first thing on Tuesday to make let us know we are all set and to get it officially into the system and have an approval letter go out to us. I don't have a ton of faith that this will actually happen...I guess we will see next week.

So the moral of the story is...had I not gone in personally, talked to just the right person, or Mike not happened upon our misplaced homestudy, we would still have no idea what was going on. It is amazing that they tell you adoptions are their first priority at USCIS. If they are then how come they are losing the paperwork? Come on.

Welcome to the crazy world of adoption.

It is so worth it!