The simple breakdown of the process looks like this:
- Identify Child to Adopt on Waiting Child List
- LOI {Letter of Intent sent to Ch*na by our family requesting permission to adopt Mason}
- PA {Pre-Approval received from Ch*na approving our family to adopt Mason pending dossier}
- Home Study Completed
- 3 Meetings with Social Worker including 1 home visit
- FBI Clearances
- Documents Collected - birth cert., marriage cert., employment letters, taxes, autobiographies, cps clearances, county clearances, state clearances, etc., medical physicals
- 10 Hours of On-line Hague Classes
- Notarize Documents
- Mail Home Study and Dossier Documents to AAC
- AAC Authenticates and Certifies & Translates All Documents
- I-800 USCIS Form Completed Mailed to AAC
- I-800 USCIS Fingerprinting Appointment
- I-800 USCIS Approval Letter Received & Mailed to AAC
- DTC {Dossier Mailed To Ch*na by our AAC}
- LID {Log In Date - Date dossier logged into the C C A A's}
- LOA {Letter of Acceptance} Sent to AAC from C C A A officially approving us for adoption
- Signed LOA mailed back to AAC
- LOA mailed back to C C A A
- Apply to Obtain Visas to travel to Ch*na
- I-800 Apply to Obtain George Mason's Visa to Immigrate to US
- NVC Letter
- Article 5 Issued to GZ
- TA {Travel Approval} Sent to AAC approving us for travel to Ch*na
- CA {Consulate Appointment} Appointment to obtain Mason's US Visa from our Consulate in GZ.
- TRAVEL to adopt George Mason!
And here are all the details, the long, and winding road back to Ch*na:
Once are home study is complete we can mail everything to our agency and they can begin the process of authenticating and certifying everything. While they are busy doing that, we will be waiting on the US to process our request to adopt an orphan internationally. We have to fill out forms and wait on that process to unfold before we can officially submit our dossier to Ch*na. We must be fingerprinted again, this time digitally, and those prints go to the USCIS. After our prints are taken, we wait until we have received the US approval/clearance letter. The day we receive that letter in the mail, we will priority send it to our agency {AAC} in Colorado. That will be the last document for our dossier.
After that they will translate documents, and finally they will mail our dossier {huge packet of all the documents we collected and signed} to Ch*na. The date our dossier is mailed is known as DTC {Dossier to Ch*na}. Once they have our dossier it goes in a pile to be processed. When it is logged into the C C A A's system, we will receive a LID {Log In Date}.
The next phase will be waiting for our LOA {Letter of Acceptance} to be mailed to us. The LOA means that the C C A A has reviewed our dossier and everything is approved. The LOA is Ch*na's official way of offering us the right to adopt George Mason as our son. We have PA now {which is Pre-Approval pending the review of our dossier}. The LOA is sent to our agency and they will call us when they receive it. They will priority mail it to our home for us to sign, then we will priority mail it back to them for them to send it back to Ch*na. :) We will then wait for Ch*na to receive the LOA and wait for them to issue our TA {Travel Approval}.
However, this is where the Hague Treaty has added a few more steps of waiting.
It has to do with making sure that the child we are adopting, in this case, our son, is truly eligible for adoption and is an orphan, and then gaining clearance from the USCIS for him to immigrate to the US on a US Visa as our adopted child.
So, after we sign the LOA, we will apply to the U.S Government, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for provisional approval to adopt that particular child (that's the I-800 form that our Agency sends in for us). The USCIS will determine whether the child is eligible under U.S. law to be adopted and enter the United States.
After this, our Agency will submit a visa application to a Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassy. The U.S. Consulate Guangzhou Adoption Unit requires that a copy of the NVC notification letter to parents stating the I-800 has been sent to the consulate be included with documents submitted by facilitators for Hague case Article 5 issuances.
The Consular Officer will review the child’s information and evaluate the child for possible visa ineligibilities. If the Consular Office determines that the child appears eligible to immigrate to the United States, he/she will notify Ch*na's adoption authority (Article 5 letter). Because we are adopting from a Hague Convention country, we may not proceed with the adoption or obtain custody for the purpose of adoption until this takes place.
After the we have signed the LOA and the U.S. Consulate has submitted an Article 5 letter (from what I'm reading on it looks like this Article 5 is cabled to GZ), our Agency will then receive an approval notice from the C C A A ("Notice of Coming to Ch*na for Adoption") otherwise know as our TA and will forward this information on to us. This document will bear the "chops," or red-inked seals of the C C A A. We must have this approval notice in hand before departing for Ch*na to finalize the adoption.
While we wait for TA, we will begin the process of obtaining our Visas to travel to Ch*na - the process above was to obtain our son's US Visa in Ch*na. David and I have to have a Ch*nese Visa in our passport to travel into their country as well. As you can see from the process above, TA's can come quickly or take weeks. Once we have been given approval to travel {TA}, we will wait for our CA {Consulate Appointment}.
The CA is obtained by our agency who approaches the US Consulate with our adoption time-line for traveling in Ch*na. The CA will determine when we will travel to Ch*na. Some families receive their CA right after receiving their TA and must travel immediately! Some families have to wait to receive their CA and do not travel for 2 to 3 weeks. The CA is based on the paperwork that needs to be processed in country. Typically, families spend about a week in their child's province gathering documents to adopt their child and obtain their child's Ch*nese Passport so they can travel in-country to Guangzhou {GZ} where the US Consulate is located. Every US family adopting in Ch*na must end their journey in Guangzhou at the US Consulate. That is where we are sworn in and given our child's US Visa to travel into America with our family as our adopted child.
The CA is that appointment date where we present ourselves with our child to the US official granting visas. It typically takes a week in Guangzhou to process all the US Visa paperwork which will include a mandatory medical exam for our son in Ch*na. These exams are issued and mandated by the US and right now many families are extremely upset by the number of immunizations that are given during these exams. Some children have been given up to 8 shots at a time! We are praying that law is changed quickly. We did not have to worry about that with Jessa's adoption, at that time they believed the doctor's immunization records in the country and allowed us to bring her home, obtain a lab test to see which immunizations had been given, and then set up a schedule with our pediatrician for the others. Something changed in the 2 years since we adopted, and now they are no longer allowing families to do this at home.
Once we receive our CA, we can REJOICE! because we will be able to travel to adopt George Mason!
1 comment:
You did an awesome job describing all of this! Now tell me again where you are in the process?
gayly
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