USCIS shakes things up once again...

When the phone rang this afternoon and the caller I.D. read, "G SA DOJ IMMIGR," my heart jumped. Those last few letters had to stand for "immigration," so I knew it must be USCIS calling about our I-600A application. But why? We're in our 4th week of waiting for approval, and we were told earlier not to expect it until early November.

I answered eagerly and held my breath as the adoption officer introduced himself. His abrupt manner didn't bode well for the nature of the call, and sure enough his next words were, "We've got a problem with your home study." Not what I wanted to hear.

He went on to tell me (with no small amount of accusation in his tone) that the home study was supposed to be submitted on agency letterhead and accompanied by a copy of our agency's license. Huh? I thought. The format of the home study wasn't my responsibility...I was just the messenger!

"I don't know who messed this up, but someone really dropped the ball," he was saying. Then the questions began. "Who conducted this home study? Which agency are you using? Is the social worker who did this connected to your agency?" Deciding my AWAA family coordinator would probably be the best person to handle the situation, I began rattling off her office number in VA. "That's a Virginia area code," the officer interrupted. "Why are you giving me a Virginia number?"

By this point I was fighting tears. It's not every day I'm basically accused of fraud. Perhaps that's a bit harsh...the guy might have just been having a rough day. "I'll give this lady a call," he said in parting. "But if I can't sort this out right now, I'll have to put something in writing and send it to you in the mail." Not sure what that meant, but it sounded ominous and way too slow. I hung up the phone feeling like a criminal and wondering how long it would take to sort out this mess.

What to do? I couldn't call my family coordinator, because I didn't want to occupy her line while the USCIS officer was trying to call. Instead I pulled out my social worker's number. No answer on her extension, so I asked the receptionist for a supervisor. Still no answer. I explained the situation to the receptionist (assuming she was a receptionist...I really don't know, I suppose), and THIS is where I once again found myself abundantly grateful for America World Adoption.

As has been true of every AWAA employee I've spoken with, this woman was sympathetic and helpful from the start, and I knew I had an ally. Instead of sending me to someone's voicemail, she wrote an email on the spot, asking me several questions to make sure she understood the situation, and sent it marked "Urgent" to my social worker, my social worker's supervisor, and my family coordinator.

Fifteen minutes later I received a copy of an email my family coordinator had sent to the USCIS officer. I immediately called her and learned that she had spoken with him briefly, and once she listened carefully to his concerns, he warmed up to her (which doesn't surprise me, as she has a very soothing way about her) and they were able to work out a simple solution. It turns out the problem was really minor, so it's anyone's guess why he was so ferocious about it at first.

This became even more of a mystery a few minutes later when I received a second phone call from the USCIS officer. I barely recognized him thanks to his friendly tone. This time he was just letting me know he'd spoken with "that nice lady at your agency" and had what he needed. He proceeded to actually thank ME for helping HIM!

And then he said, "I think I might have jumped the gun a bit on your approval." Thankfully, the hiccup he was referring to turned out to be a false alarm. He couldn't find any record of our FBI fingerprint clearance, so he thought we hadn't yet been fingerprinted. We took care of that in August, so I knew it had to be a mixup. Sure enough, the technician who took the prints misspelled our names. Incredibly, nowhere on the I-600A application are we asked for our social security numbers. That means that the adoption officer could only search for our clearances using our names, and since they were misspelled in the database, nothing showed up in his search. Once I gave him our socials he found the clearances right away.

So, from the sounds of it, our I-171H is just around the corner!! I'm wondering if we might even receive it next week! I don't want to get my hopes up, but my family coordinator also implied that it's all but done. So this weekend I'll be throwing together our photo pages, photocopying all our dossier documents, and figuring out what we have left to notarize. As soon as that I-171H gets here we can take everything up to Harrisburg to be certified by the Secretary of State, and then our dossier is FINISHED!!

A huge benefit to getting our I-171H early would be that our physical exams are still valid. We have to submit our dossier to AWAA before November 10 in order to avoid repeating the exams. Since our insurance only covers one physical per year, this would be a costly process.

So thank you for your prayers today! Many of you responded to my Facebook S.O.S. following that first phone call, and the support was so encouraging! God is good!