getting more and more frustrated (vent!)

3crazydogs · 11-01-2005, 12:12 PM

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with everyone and congratulations to all of those who are a step closer to their adoptions!
I am still waiting for my fingerprinting letter from CIS. They received my I-600A and all supporting documents (including home study) a month ago and I haven't received a fingerprinting appointment yet, and I'm starting to get frustrated. When I got the receipt from CIS verifying they had gotten my form, it was like a form letter and didn't acknowledge that I had already sent in the home study report. I am going to write them a letter to verify that they did receive it.

I'm feeling so frustrated right now because all of this is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. We started this at the end of June so it's already been four months and we have sent everything in right away, but then our home study took a while to come back and now apparently it's going to take forever to get our immigration approval. It's also difficult because I need to go out of town for a week or so in November and I don't know if I should leave because I don't know if we'll get our fingerprinting appointment. For those of you who have gotten yours already, how far out did they make the appointments from when you got the letter? I saw on one message board that someone didn't have their fingerprinting appointment until January 24th!!! and now I am freaking out.

I don't see how people can get their paperwork done in three months when it's already been four for us and who knows how much longer for the immigration. I can't even really express exactly how frustrated I am right now. I just want to get the paperwork over with because even though I know waiting for a referral will be really difficult, at least I will be waiting for a baby and not some stranger at immigration to send me a form.

Anyway, if your'e still with me thanks for reading!!! and thanks for letting me vent here. I feel like I'm going to go crazy if I have to wait one more day for this paperwork to be over.

Calantha · 11-01-2005, 12:38 PM

I think every CIS office does things differently. Here in Chicago it took us about a month to get our fingerprint letters. When we got them they didn't actually come with an appointment. They just said to show up within 90 days of the date on the letter. When we went to the office we just had to take a number and wait in line. Maybe you could contact someone else in your area who's been through it and find out if your office gives actual appointments or not? Then at least you'd know if it's safe to go out of town.

~Traci~ · 11-01-2005, 01:59 PM

Our HS report wasn't sent in w/ our other documents. We got the receipt in a couple weeks. We sent in all that paperwork on 8/3, I can't remember the exact date of the receipt. Our HS report was received by CIS on 8/22 and we got our fingerprinting letter on 8/23. The main reason is b/c we had already had problems w/ CIS.

I can't remember what CIS office you're with so you're going to have to refresh my memory. If you're w/ the Dallas CIS office, you can go in before or after your appt. date and don't even have to go in @ the time they give you. Our appt was for 9/6 but we went in on 8/30 b/c we weren't going to be here on 9/6. We had a 3 minute wait for our fingerprints, we were out in & out in 10! I'm not really sure about the other TX offices though but there is a Yahoo group for International Adoption for every state. TX is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/InternationalAdoptTX/ I'm sure you could ask on there to find out about the different areas.

If you are w/ DAllas, there's a new orphan officer that's very difficult to work with. She's been asking couples for extra paperwork and copies of things they didn't have to send in the first time or anything. We were very fortunate that we didn't have to send anything extra in.

I totally remember being so frusterated! It took us from April to October to finally be done w/ our paperchase and it just felt like forever! It took from April to July to even get a HS appt and a month from our HS appt to get our report so I never thought we'd be done!

Call your HS agency and see if they can check on it for you. Most agencies have direct access to the orphan officers and can contact them a lot easier than us parents can. There is no reason for the fingerprinting appt to take this long b/c they don't check any of your paperwork until your actual fingerprints come back.

This will all soon be a distant memory...I know getting there is hard though.
Traci

3crazydogs · 11-02-2005, 04:43 PM

Thanks! I'm feeling better today. We are going through the San Antonio office and it says on the receipt that I got that we will be notified of a fingerprinting appointment, but the form says when they receive our home study, which they should have already gotten when I sent in all the paperwork. I sent a letter to them today, overnighted it, asking what's going on, so hopefully that will make a difference! I just have a bad feeling that something is up because it doesn't seem like it should have taken this long (a month already) to get a fingerprinting appointment. But then again, you never know with all this!

Thanks again.