Alternate title to this post: Why You Can Be An Idiot & Work at USCIS in LA
Flashback to Sept. 2005. We begin our initial adoption paperwork. In Dec. 2005, the social worker sends our homestudy report to USCIS (aka "immigration") and we were fingerprinted by Dept. of Homeland Security. In Feb. 2006 (after waiting 9 weeks and me having to contact someone before they did their job), we finally received approval from LA's USCIS to adopt internationally. (We're basically asking for permission to bring an immigrant into the country.) We released a huge sigh of relief as our paperwork headed to China.
Fast forward to Aug. 1, 2007. Our approval and our fingerprints have expired and we have to file this paperwork again. I mail the application and our fingerprint fee and asked for another fingerprinting appointment. The fingerprint fee was returned to us (by USCIS) with the explanation we didn't have to pay the fee again since this was just a renewal. We knew the application fee would be waived and were pleasantly surprised the fingerprint fee was waived too. Good....so we thought.
Fast forward to this morning. I faxed the immigration officer (as suggested by our social worker) regarding our fingerprint appointment. We haven't received it and I sent a very friendly reminder that we really needed to be scheduled. Well, I received a call around 4:00 today stating that we had not been scheduled for fingerprinting because we didn't send the fee. What?!?!?!? We send the fee and USCIS sent it back to us!!!!!! Our paperwork has been sitting in New Orleans collecting dust because some incompetent employee (which basically includes all of USCIS) returned our money to us!!! International adoption is hard. For us, and many others, having a family is hard. Why must every step of the process be a struggle?
Our adoption agency warned us they have trouble with immigration in two states: New York and Louisiana.
Onto referral news....the cut off is Nov. 30th. Yep...5 whole days. I'm off to pour a glass of wine now.
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