Home Study Report to USCIS; Update on Where We're At in the Adoption Process

Besides receiving a favorable home study, we need approval from the USA to adopt a baby. The approval goes through the USCIS department – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (And even when we receive our referral of the baby, the baby referral will go through the USCIS to confirm with Nepal that our baby is indeed an orphan. The USCIS will require Nepal to show them documentation that this baby is an orphan.)

The governmental form to complete for USA approval is the I-600A form, “Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition”. You complete the form, and send in the following items with it:
• Birth certificates
• Marriage certificate
• Home study report
• Social worker credentials
• Home study agency credentials
• $800 application fee

You can send in your I-600A form and money with all of your documents before having your home study approved. Then, when you get your home study approval and report, you can send that along with the social worker and agency credentials.

I sent our I-600A form, certificates and money on July 14. We received a letter from the USCIS on July 24 saying they had received our application and would begin processing it. It also said they would not complete until our home study was received and they would not schedule our fingerprinting appointment until they received the home study.

Having received the home study report on Oct. 22, I immediately sent it, along with the social worker and agency credentials, to USCIS on the same day. They say it takes 6-8 weeks to receive USCIS approval, so I wanted to get the home study stuff in the mail immediately.

Now, we wait to get our date in which we to go to Yakima or Spokane to get official fingerprints taken.

We’re getting so close to having everything done! I am in the process of sending all of our documents to the Secretary of State to certify that the notary on our documents is a true person and a true notary. This process is called “State certification”. Once I get all of our state-certified documents back, and the USCIS approval to adopt, we will be done with all of our paperwork. This paperwork will be put into what’s called a “Dossier”. We expect to be able to send our Dossier by the end of November.

We will mail our Dossier to our case manager. She will confirm that everything is there, and everything is right. If we need to make any changes, she will let us know. After Dossier approval, she will send it to a native-Nepalese speaking translator. That person will translate everything. Then, it will officially go to Nepal in January and we will officially be waiting for our baby!