Well, it is the week of our original deadline to have our dossier to China to adopt Mei Mei and we are STILL waiting on USCIS (immigration) approval. I emailed the officer in charge of our case this morning and she just received a file she needed in order to complete the investigation and thinks she "should be good to finish the case sometime this week." As expected, we had a set of fingerprints come back as 'unclassifiable' and jumped through some extra hoops for that. Though, to USCIS's credit, they let us skip one of their usual hoops - a second fingerprint failure - and proceed directly to giving a sworn statement.
Our adoption agency, Madison Adoption Associates, requested an extension of our paperwork deadline from China and this morning they forwarded me a copy of the approval notice. We now have until November 11th to submit our dossier to the CCAA. I originally hoped to be in China getting Mei Mei close to that time! Even with the delays we should be DTC by the end of August - hopefully even by the end of next week. This seems to put our travel into December under the best of circumstances. January seems more likely, especially given that under the new Hague regulations there is an extra step in between receiving our approval from China and getting our US Consulate appointment following travel approval.
There are some additional potential obstacles that we are also hoping to avoid that have nothing to do with our specific case. Swine flu being the first. Swine flu has caused some delays for adoptions in China. For a while Travel Approvals were not being issued by China, some SWIs have stopped allowing foreign visitors altogether, some adoptive families have been put into quarantine upon their arrival in China, and some parents and children have even been separated in the process. Everyone is on high alert and if anyone on your plane is found to be sick, the whole plane full will go into quarantine. Since a vaccine is being fast tracked through the US CDC and the WHO, hopefully things will settle down a bit and this will not impact our trip.
The second concern is a new US CDC (Center for Disease Control) policy that went into effect on July 1st of this year regarding testing all persons entering the US on an immigrant visa, including newly adopted children of US citizens, for TB. Because of the type of vaccine used in Chinese orphanages, many children adopted in China will have a positive reaction to the TB skin test. That test alone requires 3 days to be read once it is administered to the child in Guangzhou. If the skin test should be positive, a chest x-ray is required to determine if TB is present. If the chest x-ray is positive, the consequences are disastrous for the family and child involved. The first adoption related case that I am aware of that is testing the new policy involves a Virginia family who used our home study agency, Adoptions Together, as their adoption/placement agency. They now have a new 4 year old daughter who they had to leave behind in China until she tests negative for TB, which could take many months. You can follow their heartbreaking story on their blog: http://jayscruggs.livejournal.com.
Our adoption agency, Madison Adoption Associates, requested an extension of our paperwork deadline from China and this morning they forwarded me a copy of the approval notice. We now have until November 11th to submit our dossier to the CCAA. I originally hoped to be in China getting Mei Mei close to that time! Even with the delays we should be DTC by the end of August - hopefully even by the end of next week. This seems to put our travel into December under the best of circumstances. January seems more likely, especially given that under the new Hague regulations there is an extra step in between receiving our approval from China and getting our US Consulate appointment following travel approval.
There are some additional potential obstacles that we are also hoping to avoid that have nothing to do with our specific case. Swine flu being the first. Swine flu has caused some delays for adoptions in China. For a while Travel Approvals were not being issued by China, some SWIs have stopped allowing foreign visitors altogether, some adoptive families have been put into quarantine upon their arrival in China, and some parents and children have even been separated in the process. Everyone is on high alert and if anyone on your plane is found to be sick, the whole plane full will go into quarantine. Since a vaccine is being fast tracked through the US CDC and the WHO, hopefully things will settle down a bit and this will not impact our trip.
The second concern is a new US CDC (Center for Disease Control) policy that went into effect on July 1st of this year regarding testing all persons entering the US on an immigrant visa, including newly adopted children of US citizens, for TB. Because of the type of vaccine used in Chinese orphanages, many children adopted in China will have a positive reaction to the TB skin test. That test alone requires 3 days to be read once it is administered to the child in Guangzhou. If the skin test should be positive, a chest x-ray is required to determine if TB is present. If the chest x-ray is positive, the consequences are disastrous for the family and child involved. The first adoption related case that I am aware of that is testing the new policy involves a Virginia family who used our home study agency, Adoptions Together, as their adoption/placement agency. They now have a new 4 year old daughter who they had to leave behind in China until she tests negative for TB, which could take many months. You can follow their heartbreaking story on their blog: http://jayscruggs.livejournal.com.
I hope to post with good news soon! I will request new pictures and updates when we submit our dossier. :o)
Laura Beth
Morning LB - any news is good news!!
ReplyDeleteWe need to swap phone numbers in e-mail....we're starting to look more and more like we'll be 'company' while in GZ! Our USCIS came through OK - but - the doc's from Ky bounced yesterday. Marie made an all day journey to Frankfort and back to get the new ones and hopefully we'll be DTC in 10 days or so (we're praying for late December while the older kids are on break!)
E-mail when you have a chance and we can talk about H1N1 ideas etc - we're having the same angst!!
Still - excited for you guys!!
hugs - aus and co.