Today is our 17 month LID - a - versary. That means it's been 17 months since our dossier was logged in at the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA). Our dossier was actually received in China on September 27, 2005, but not logged in until October 18, 2005.Tony and I started on the road to bringing Lily home during the Summer of 2004. We began by doing a ton of research and attending adoption agency open houses and workshops. When we chose the agency we wanted to work with they had a requirement that we attend parenting classes before we could start the application process. We attended the parenting classes in October 2004. Gee, I wonder if we'll even remember anything from those classes! Once we completed the parenting classes we began the application process and officially started "the paperchase". The paperchase is the term people in the adoption community use when referring to gathering all the necessary documentation required for a dossier. The dossier is the stack of documents that must be submitted to China to apply for adoption.
Below is a partial list of the documents that are included in a dossier:
Application letter Birth Certificates
Marriage Certificate
Employment Letters
Certificate of Financial Status
Physician's Reports
Police Clearances
Home Study
USCIS Approval (Immigration approval)
Each of these documents must be notarized, then certified at the county level, and then authenticated at the state level. Just imagine jumping through hoops on fire and you get the picture.
Tony and I were so excited that we shared our plans with our family at Christmas time 2004. If we had only known how long the wait would extend we would have kept the wonderful news to ourselves a little bit (or a lotta bit) longer.
The paperchase took Tony and I a lot longer than we thought. The delay was caused by my lack of fingerprints. I was able to attain Police Clearances without too many hassles because the local and state police were willing to accept a letter from the fingerprint technician stating that my prints were not readable. They then did an alternative background check based on my Social Security Number and Date of Birth. USCIS (immigration) was not quite as understanding. Instead, USCIS required that I be printed and reprinted multiple times to come to the same conclusion....I don't have fingerprints! The cycle of being printed, having the prints fail, and being printed again delayed us receiving USCIS approval. The kicker is even if it is a documented fact that you don't have readable fingerprints USCIS still requires you to be printed, wait to receive a rejection letter, be printed again, and wait for a second rejection letter before they will accept that you don't have readable prints. That's about a 12 week process! As a result, it took about 3 months longer than we had hoped to submit our dossier to China.
At the time our dossier was submitted to CCAA the turn around time from LID to referral was approximately 6 months. Beginning in September/October 2005 the wait began to increase dramatically. There is a lot of speculation as to what is causing the slowdown but I don't think there is one clear answer. This slowdown is not limited to our agency and all families who are adopting from China are experiencing the same extended wait times. Tony and I waited over 16 months for Lily's referral and will wait over 18 months before traveling to bring Lily home. The wait continues to grow and in the future wait times are expected to increase to over 30 months.
I could lie and say now that we have Lily's referral the wait is completely forgotten but that wouldn't be the truth. What I can honestly say is that I realize now that Lily was more than worth the wait!
