Sent inquiry email...

Still waiting for the I171H form (the approval of the I600A).

I'm starting to get a bit concerned since others in the yahoo group from San Francisco said they received theirs...what was the phrase?..."at the speed of light." Now, light travels quite fast!!

So...I called the number...went thru the automated prompts...finally spoke with a real person...who told me to email them. So I did.

Apparently they have this process for receiving questions.

I hope they didn't opt to not approve us. I hope they didn't lose our fingerprints...or drop our application packet onto the floor...and someone came by and accidentally kicked it under the desk...and now it's covered in dust bunnies and spider webs...

yikes!!

...checking the mail.

Still waiting for the 171H to arrive. Nothing to do until it does....

Hold off...

The placement agency reviewed the docs I sent....and said everything looked great. (Now, all docs have been reviewed and blessed by our agency...that's all done).
***

I learned that we should wait for our I171H form to arrive, and include that in the packet of documents to take with us to Sacramento. Maybe it has to be authenticated too (but I didn't think so since it's a form that comes from the federal government (immigration)...why would the State authenticate a federal document??)

Nonetheless, it's not like we can get a referral for a child without the I171H form (even if our dossier documents are all authenticated...so there's no harm, or time lost, in waiting to go to Sacto).

So we'll wait for the 171H form...

...then we'll go to Sacto. Some say they received clearance (i.e. the 171H form) in weeks. Hopefully we'll receive ours soon. Hopefully nothing will come up on FBI fingerprinting (like some sort of identity mix-up, or a traffic violation in college....???)

Until then...we wait.

FBI fingerprinting done for the USCIS and Dossier is Complete - 3/11

So, all of our dossier documents are complete!

And we both had our fingerprints done today for the USCIS.

Our placement agency is to receive copies of our dossier documents in the morning for final (re-)review before we head up to Sacramento on Thursday for authentication.

Now...we wait for our I600A approval (the I171H), and we authenticate our documents.

Update

So, we did receive our notarized copies of our homestudy, the homestudy license, and a couple of other forms that we had to have the Homestudy agency fill out for our Placement agency.

We have our FBI fingerprinting in the morning. Actually they give you a 5 day stretch to just show up between 8:00a and 3:30p or so. We're gonna go tomorrow.

We didn't get the homestudy until Saturday afternoon via fedex...so we'll have to go to Sacramento later this week...

Maybe, Wednesday.

The USCIS FBI fingerprinting appointment came - 3/4

That was way fast. The homestudy was mailed just yesterday. Maybe she mailed it Thursday...and they received it yesterday, and mailed out the appointment yesterday...that we received today??

Nonetheless....
...YAY!!

Our appointment is the week of 3/11.

Papers review 3/4

today I sent copies of everything (notarized dossier documents) to the placement agency for review (before going to Sacramento for authentication). I made additional copies for us to have.

the homestudy was mailed yesterday to USCIS (we were told by the HS agency). And our notarized copy is to be mailed in the morning. Hopefully we'll get it by Thursday 3/6 so Hubby can take it to Sacramento Friday (along with our other dossier documents that will hopefully be done with their placement agency review by then too).