As we've gotten out of the last several steps of our adoption process, many people that we've talked to have assumed that surely...at this point...we could go get our girls. And the answer has always been NOPE, we've got a few steps left. Even now, as we celebrate that the girls have passports, quite a few people have thought that meant we could travel. And once again, the answer is NOPE, we get to wait through ONE MORE STAGE!
The final stage in this process before we can finally bring these girls home is the U.S. Visa process, which is handled by the office of USCIS at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince. ALL of the paperwork for us and for our girls from this ENTIRE process will hopefully be submitted to USCIS as early as Monday October 21st. In this process there are a few "steps" before we get on the plane bound for Haiti.
The first step is called I600 approval. The I600 is an official form that needs to be filed in every international adoption. We filed this form in person when we went to the Embassy in May. Now that all of the Haitian steps and documents are complete, the U.S. government needs to approve our petition to adopt Chelley and Naika into our family. Right now, that approval process has been taking about a month. This was only taking 7-10 days in August but slowed down just before and during the U.S. government shutdown. The hope is that now that the shutdown is over, the Visa process will pick back up and not take a full month for approval. There are 10-12 other families adopting from our orphanage that are just ahead of us in this process so there are many families that need to receive their approval before it will be our turn.
Once we do receive our I600 approval, they will assign us a Visa appt. date and time, generally about 7-10 days out. This is an appt. that Chelley and Naika will need to go to with a representative from GLA. I don't fully understand what the purpose of this appt. is but I have heard that it is, in part, a medical clearance assuring that the girls are in good health and are able to enter the U.S. GLA is great about medical care for the kids in their charge so we have no worries about the outcome of this appt.
Once that appt. is completed and successful, which is pretty much a given, we will get the best email EVER from our orphanage, telling us that we can come to GLA and get our girls the following week!! We expect to have about 6-7 days' notice in buying our plane tickets. This could possibly be delayed a little bit by the large number of families that are at the end of this process. GLA needs to have room for these families and their kiddos at the guest house so we may run into a little delay if there are too many families all trying to get there at once. That is a GREAT problem to have and we are rejoicing that so many of these precious kids are finally getting to go home with their forever families!
So, based on those various steps, we're still looking at possibly the end of November or beginning of December for us to be traveling to bring our girls home. Even as we rejoice at being this close to the end, we are still just SO READY to be done. We'd get on a plane tomorrow if we could, but we have to survive this last bit of waiting before the process is complete. It is becoming more and more real, and we are working hard to make sure everything is ready for the big transition coming up for all of us. That's about it for now. Soon, I'll be sharing more about our plan for helping all of us to survive and thrive through the major transition of bringing them home. As always, thank you for your prayers and support throughout all the ups and downs of this long process.
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