The Paper Chase

ONCE WE SELECTED a country, an agency, and a home study agent, we started the laborious and time-consuming paperwork process. We learned that the adoption process keeps paper mills and notories public in business. After all, an international adoption requires conducting business with local, state, federal, and international bureaucracies!

Agency Application
Every agency has its own application process and forms. However, every agency requires prospective adopting families to complete a thorough application. In general, the application requires disclosure of health conditions, family history, financial status, and personal identifying information. The CCAI application was thorough but easy to follow and complete. The agency included step-by-step instructions and offered unlimited telephone assistance. Most agencies will allow you to download their applications from their Web sites and provide Web pages to support your application and to preview the costs and timeline of the adoption process. Again, we found CCAI's Web site to be complete and well-designed; our first point of contact remains the Web site as we continue to download and complete paperwork.

Once completed, we mailed the application to the agency for review. We received notification of our acceptance within ten days. At that point we began sharing the news of our upcoming adoption with family and close friends; once our application was accepted, we felt confident enough to start sharing.

After our application was accepted, we began what adopting families call "the paper chase."

Vital Records Collection
Our adoption agency, after approving our application, sent us a lengthy instruction booklet outlining the process of collecting our vital records. The booklet included instructions for requesting records with contact names and addresses, along with sample forms and request letters to use as models. We discovered that remaining extremely organized and following the agency's guidelines in completing the process helped us navigate the steps more successfully.

The records we needed to collect and/or complete for each adopting parent were as follows: birth certificates, marriage certificates and/or divorce records, employment letters, financial statements, recent tax records, letters of reference, health examination and physical/psychological condition reports, and recent paycheck stubs. In addition to these records, we also needed to submit our home study report. That meant working with our social worker to conduct our formal home study.

Home Study
To begin our home study, we completed a brief contact sheet for Barbara Slaton, our social worker. She then came to our home to conduct the first, and most thorough, of several sessions we would have with her. We shared with her our rationale for adopting, our personal and family backgrounds, and our philosophy of childrearing, including discipline and religion. In short, she asked us to consider our own very personal attitudes toward children while maintaining a tone and attitude that made the session feel like catching up with an old friend, not an interview.

Part of the interview included her own experiences with adoption. She shared that she had traveled extensively with other adopting parents and offered some of those positive experiences. She explained the adoption process in greater detail than the instructions from the agency could cover. And she worked to get to know us as a couple in addition to assessing our qualifications for parenthood.

Barbara also interviewed each of us separately in her office. Here she asked questions that more specifically pertained to our individual personalities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Barbara visited our home twice more, once to complete the initital home study and once to complete a followup visit. Once she completed the initial interviews and visits, she wrote up the home study report and submitted it to us for review. One important detail we originally overlooked was to be sure our financial statement, tax records, and home study reported the same basic income. We had to revise the home study and our financial statements several times in order to match figures. Once revised, we were able to submit the home study report to our agency and focus on other aspects of the paper chase.

BCIS Approval and Fingerprinting
In order to adopt an ophan from overseas, adopting parents must petition the United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) -- formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) -- for permission to naturalize an adopted orphan. The petition form is the H-171, which requires a copy of the completed home study and proof of U.S. citizenship (passport and fingerprinting). Once the completed H-171 form reached the BCIS, we received a fingerprinting appointment at a regional BCIS office. The time between our submission of the H-171 form to our fingerprinting appointment spanned about three weeks.

We fulfilled our fingerprinting appointment at the regional BCIS office -- an easy, but not altogether speedy, process. The BCIS ran a check on our fingerprints, discovered we had clean records and were, indeed, U.S. citizens, then submitted our approved H-171 to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China. About 45 days later, we received our I-600A form from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, which approved our petition to adopt an orphan from China and enables us to file naturalization papers on her behalf when we travel to China.

One caveat: the I-600A approval has a shelf life of 18 months, but the fingerprint check that accompanies the H-171 has a shelf life of only 15 months. In our Chinese adoption, we learned we should have expected to update our fingerprints before traveling to China. Making an appointment to update fingerprints takes time, more time than we had. We were able to receive an expedited appointment by contacting our Representative to Congress. We discovered, to our delight, that our Representative worked very quickly on our behalf to procure an appoint for us. The lesson we learned is to be prepared for renewing fingerprints, and to contact our Congressional Representative for assistance.

Since our I-600A will remain valid when we travel to China, we did not submit a new H-171. That also meant that we did not need to schedule 45 days to await a newly approved I-600A. Updated fingerprints usual process in 2-3 business days.

Medical Examination
The paper chase required medical reports from family physicians and specialists. Current diagnoses and prescriptions, including psychiatric diagnoses, required documentation and explanation. Any past or recent serious illness required medical clearance in the form of a follow-up letter from the specialists involved. We received complete physicals, the results of which were included in our home study report. Ultimately, the physicians were asked whether, in their professional judgment, we exhibited the level of health required to parent an orphan. This included the physicians' prediction for our future health.

Finances and Employment
The paper chase involved submitting three past years' tax returns, preparing a financial statement, and submitting letters from our current employers. While we submitted these documents for our home study, we also collected them for the larger paper chase.

Our financial statement generally indicated our current financial status. The agency provided specific instructions on what information to include and how to calculate specific line items. For example, our instructions indicated that Chinese officials reviewing the financial statement might not recognize the difference between a 401k, a 403b, a penion plan, and an IRA -- we therefore combined all retirement investments into a category called "retirement." As previously noted, our financial statement needed to match the figures in our home study report and our employer letters. We discovered it much easier to document employment income that comes from an employer than to document self-employment income, so we ultimately omitted self-employment income from our paperwork to avoid the hassles it created.

Changes in employment status or employer part-way through the process require updating of the financial statement and home study report. While this updating process is relatively routine, we found it advantageous to maintain the status quo in our financial lives!

Local Notarizations
Once we had collected the majority of the paperwork required, we started keeping our local notary public in business. If your business, home owners association, or other entity offers free notary service, be sure to take advantage of it! All documents had to be notarized in the state from which they were issued, so birth certificates, for example, had to be requested as notarized copies. We had the following documents notarized: birth certificates, marriage certificates, divorce records, our financial statement, copies of our tax returns, and medical letters and reports. Some documents had to be notarized by the issuing organization or individual, meaning we had to include time for those notarizations to be completed.

State Certifications
Every notarized document had to be certified. The Secretary of State of each state or commonwealth in which documents were notarized certified that each notary public was, in fact, an active and registered notary at the time of the notarization. The certification typically included state seals, letters of certification, and even some medallions and ribbons.

Federal Authentications
Every notarized and certified document also had to be authenticated at the federal level by the Secretary of State of the United States. Authentication involved verifying that the certifying secretary of state of each state or commonwealth was, indeed, secretary of state at the time of certification. The authentication included a letter from the Secretary of State of the United States.

Chinese Verification
After receiving the authenticated documents from the office of the U.S. Secretary of State, we submitted the entire collection -- notarized documents, certifications, and authentications -- to the Chinese Consulate in Washington, D.C. Here Chinese officials verified that all documents were authentic and in order. The verification included a letter in Chinese.

Translation and Review
At last, after receiving Chinese verification, we were able to submit the entire dossier -- our collection of official paperwork -- to our adoption agency. Here the dossier reviewed for completeness and accuracy. Our agency then reviewed all of the documents -- including our completed home study -- and notified us that we were approved to adopt a child from China. The dossier was then translated into Chinese for its submission to the Council for Chinese Adoptive Affairs (CCAA) in China.

Dossier to China
Once reviewed and translated, our dossier was submitted to the CCAA in China. This became our dossier to China (DTC) date, from which our travel to China estimates were calculated. Our DTC date for Sydney was February 19, 2003. Our original travel estimate was 12-14 months from DTC. This was later revised to 10-12 months from DTC, then even hinted to be as early as 8-10 months from DOC. Our travel was finally scheduled for January 2, 2004, so our total wait between DTC and travel for Sydney was right at 11.5 months.

The Second Time Around
We completed virtually the same paperwork for our second adoption as we did for our first. There are no advantages to completing a first adoption in terms of reducing the amount of paperwork required. The only real advantage is a complete understanding of the process along with realistic expectations about the time frame for each step of the paperwork process.

As a result of poorly estimating the timing of our BCIS Approval and Fingerprinting during Sydney's adoption, we knew better when to schedule our fingerprinting. As a result, our original approval will be adequate for travel. In addition, CCAI is currently estimating only 5-6 months between DTC and referral, with an additional 6-8 weeks after referral until travel to China. Based on those estimates, we were able to work backwards through the process and know better when to complete and submit paperwork.

Overall, the paperchase has remained equally onerous to our first adoption, but our attitudes have shifted. We now consider the paperchase a necessary evil, more like an inconvenience than a horrendous process that invades our privacy and tests our patience. We are resigned to the process and know the wonderful results of completing it successfully.

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