I800a submitted

The same time we sent off our documents to South Dakota's Secretary of State we also sent off a very important document to the USCIS.  The full name of the document is the "Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country" but its most commonly referred to as the I800a.  The USCIS will go through our application and our approved home study and decide whether or not we are suitable to adopt a child from China.  We are assured that this is not as scary as it sounds because we wouldn't have gotten pas the home study process if we didn't meet the guidelines.


Based on information taken from www.china-adoption-online.com this is what happens now that we have  sent our I800a off to Texas via express mail...

• About 7-10 days after sending our USCIS Form I-800A and all supporting documents to the address listed above, we will receive a Notice of Receipt from the lockbox in Texas. 



• Then our your application will be forward to the National Benefits Center (NBC) where all I-800A application are reviewed and approved!!



• Several weeks after that, we will receive your biometric (fingerprint) appointments from USCIS. 



• Once we've been fingerprinted at our local USCIS office, an officer will be assigned to our case. He or she will review our homestudy and your fingerprints, and if all are acceptable will then issue approval our approval!!!



• Once your Form I-800A approval has been received by you in the mail, then you can notarize, state certify, and authenticate it for your dossier.  This is our very last step before tying up loose ends and getting our Dossier to China (DTC)!!!

And so we wait...and wait some more...