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Just a quick adoption update.  Karen and I headed down to the USCIS office again today to have our fingerprints redone so that a new I-171H form could be issued (The famed I-171H is the “most holy’ of documents giving us permission from US Immigration to adopt internationally).  Our current I-171H expires in March.

I jokingly asked the technician there today if our fingerprints had changed any in the last 18 months, as I wondered why the need to redo this process.  His explanation was two fold: the government only keeps these prints on record for a certain length of time before they are purged, and it gives the government an opportunity to see if we have wandered down a path of criminality in the last 18 months.  Makes sense mostly, but then I simply chalked it up to bureaucracy.

As for when this process will be done, I quote one of our more recent emails on the process in China:

The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with their office before March 02, 2006 . . . The CCAA has finished the review of dossiers registered with their office before March 31, 2007 . . . The current wait from LID to referral is 36-37 months and increasing. This represents the wait time for families who may receive a referral in the next 1-2 months.) For families with LID dates after that time, the wait time trend continues to increase half a month to a full month each month.

Our LID (Log In Date – the date our documents were received in China) is November 21, 2007.  Which means we continue to wait.  We can continue to pursue a special needs child as our documents are in order, and will do so.  We could certainly see this processed finished this year with a special needs referral, but probably won’t see a referral in the regular process until 2010.

Tags: Adoption, China, Emily