This is an I800A, or I797, an Application for determination of suitability to adopt a child from a convention county. This would be a most precious piece of paper.  This paper gives us permission to adopt one child of either gender, 0-4 years old, healthy or who may have mild or severe medical needs from the Peoples Republic of China.  Immigration has a 90 day window to do this and ours only took 32 days!!  Yipee!!

I800A fingerprints

We have a receipt date for our I800A request of 7/19/12, but our appointment was not scheduled until today.  

 

We finally got our notices two weeks ago and I have wanted to walk in since then, as sometimes they will let you walk in early to be fingerprinted as long as you have the notice.  Unfortunately, the Atlanta USCIS office has not always let people walk in early, so on the chance that David would arrange his schedule to go down, only to be sent away, we did not try to go early.  

 

We arrived at 11:15 for our 12:00 appointment and had to wait in a line outside to get through Security.  David was not thrilled that he was not allowed to have his cell phone with him, but he did okay without it!!  :)  After the initial line, things moved quickly and we were out by 12:00.  David and I both had to have a couple fingers redone.  The agents were pretty formal, but once David's agent started to tease him about being too tense, my agent yelled across the room to the other agent that his wife was tense too.  They started teasing us both and we all loosened up a bit and were able to get the fingerprints done right. 

 

Now we just wait for the approval.  Could be up to 2 more months to still be in their 90 day window, but they have been getting approved pretty quickly lately, so I would love to get approval in a week or two.  Then all our dossier paperwork will go to get county certified, state certified and then to the Chinese consulate in Houston.  I can't believe we are finally getting close to DTC (Dossier to China.)