Some adoption questions

[newmomto3kids]

Hi everyone.
DH and I are in the process of adopting from Haiti. I have a couple questions for people who have adopted or are in the process.
We sent in our 1600A but have not yet gotten back approval. We have our dossier mostly together also. And our homestudy will be completed in the next 3 weeks.
So here are my questions...
Should we wait until we get BCIS approval to send out our dossier for authentication? The reason I ask is that it will be $850 to authenticate and then $2000 upon submission. I hate to spend all that money (after aldready spending over $5000) if the BCIS does not approve us.

What did you ask of your references for the letters for the dossier? Everyone keeps asking what they should include in the letter. I don't really know what to say. Any main things they should highlight besides the obvious?

Thank you all...I have never posted but I enjoy reading all of your updates and stories.

Cara

[hjdong]

HI - Each country is different (we adopted from China) so I don't know how helpful my inof will be. Are you working with an agency or a lawyer? I would think they would be the most helpful.

Here would be my answers - following the above disclaimer. BCIS wouldn't approve our I600A without our homestudy, so you're in for a bit of a wait there. We needed to authenticate our BCIS approval (I think? It's been a while) as well as the rest of the documents. We could authenticate a piece at a time (I'm assuming that autenticate for Haiti means the same thing it means for China - getting the stamp from the state that the notary is actually a notary, or that the document is actually original). There was a time limit, but we weren't in any danger of running out, but I remember being stressed out about it nonetheless.

I wouldn't worry about BCIS not approving you if your homestudy approves you and you meet the basic income requirements (and you pass the fingerprints). It's pretty much an annoying rubber stamp process.

For the references, if you can choose people who have kids, that have seen you interact with them, who can talk about how they have seen what great parents you would be, your patience, how they wouldn't hesitate to leave their kids with you, etc.

Good luck, I hope that's helpful.

[NEVE three BUGS and a BEE]

because I needed to include that in my dossier, I needed to make a copy (if I rmember corectly it is amazng how quickly it turns fuzzy) and in MY STATE (they are all different) I had to notarize that it was a true and exact copy. So I needed it to put the stamp of approval on the whole package (authentication). I also needed the homestudy to do this part.

sure I could have done bit by bit but it helped to do it all in one big swoop!!!

Now all the States are different
but here in NC I had to have notary...then county seal to say the notary was real and then state seal to say those were real (cha ching).
so while my homestudy agency (in a different county) had a notary I still had to send it to their county deeds to have it county sealed and then to my Raleigh office to have it State sealed.

Also my BCIS didn't approve us UNTIL they got the homestudy. So it was the homestudy I Think that influenced that...

I would not worry about your BCIS...I think they used our fingerprints but I also think (again fuzzy) that they used the homestudy.

Goodluck!!!
If you have not join a local (your state) yahoo board on adoption it will help you with time frames and protocol specific to your state.

Keep us posted, how exciting!!!!

[holliam]

Just a follow-up on what has been said. We actually got our dossier completed and authenticated while awaiting BCIS approval. We adopted from Guatemala and live in NC too like Neve. So, I think there is considerable variability depending on your state and country.

For us, we had to get the notary seals on each document and then just get state authentication on each. We did not require county seal for Guatemala. However, after this was done we then had to send everything to the Guatemala consulate in the US to have them stamp everything too.

We live 15 minutes from where you get the authentications done in our state so my DH just went there a couple of times.

Holli

[NEVE three BUGS and a BEE]

and now that I think back on it we use to have send them to Secretary of States office in DC and I think (THINK) it had to do with the haque convention and participation of it that changed that.

I do know we needed county seals on top of notary though and that was a pain in the bootie since you couldn't just drive there, but turn around time was fast.

But cha ching cha ching everytime I turned around!!!!