Miracle!

I can't remember if I explained this already, but in case I haven't, here you go. First you compile all your documents into a file called a dossier. One of these documents is that form we need from the USCIS. Then the Ukrainian State Department of Adoptions, SDA, assigns you a submission date. The submission date is when they will review your file and decide if they will let you adopt. This approval takes about three weeks. Then, they assign you a travel date. The travel date is about three weeks after that.

So, right now we are trying to get a submission date. I believe that we are looking at the middle to end of April. I hope I'm wrong. I hope it's sooner. But, it is what it is and I will try really hard to stay patient.

Our agency emailed me yesterday asking me to find out a time frame from the USCIS. You all know that I have been calling the USCIS to find out a time frame, but I decided to call them one. more. time. before telling the agency what they had already told me. I guess I was hoping that they'd give me different information than before. No such luck. Again, I was told our application was in a pile of papers, waiting to be assigned a case worker. The lady told me it would be another two weeks at least before that happened and then another couple of months after that. Bummer. I asked if they were still expediting Ukrainian adoptions due to the moratorium. She said no, the only way to expedite is if you have a court date.

Well, you can't get a court date until you have a submission date. And you can't submit until you have that approval from the USCIS. I asked the lady if by court date she meant submission to the Ukrainian government, the date that the government must have that paper by and she said yes! That is great! So, as soon as we could get a case worker and be put into the system, we could go ahead and get a submission date and then they'd process our application. I emailed this information to our agency and she replied saying that they'd try to get a submission date and we could hope that the USCIS had our approval by then.

But then, drum roll please,

I got the mail. Sitting there amongst all the Tuesday ads were two letters from the USCIS assigning us fingerprinting appointments!!! This is great! This means that we can go in before our scheduled appointment, get printed and they will get the results to the USCIS and our case worker will process our app!! At least that is how it should go theoretically. I was overjoyed! I do think it's funny though that for more than two weeks now I have been told that our app was sitting in a pile and that we wouldn't get fingerprinting dates for another two weeks. Go government employees. So, pretty much they didn't even really check. If they had, they would know that we already had a fingerprinting date and that it was being mailed to us. Whatever. The important thing is that we actually have that fingerprinting date, which means we are in the system. And, according to the USCIS, we are two weeks ahead of schedule! Hallelujah!!