USCIS Progress

我们七月份将领养申请交到移民局后，一直在等待批准。因为是新程序，移民局速度很慢，而且很挑剔。这两个月中，我和他们通过几次电话，催问进展。 现在有了小安娜在等着我们，我更是着急。上周五我给他们写了一封邮件，表达了焦急的心情。小安娜是有特殊需要的孩子，只因移民局工作繁忙而拖延， 实在让我们无奈，希望他们特案特办，给我们优先审阅。周一我又给他们打了电话。谢天谢地，这次我碰上了一个心地善良的女官员，她说马上审阅我们的申请。小安娜真有福气，碰上了好人。更让我惊喜的是在四个小时后，我就收到了她发来的邮件，告诉我家庭报告哪些地方需要修改。移民局自从今年四月起采用了新的国际公约，对家庭报告可以说是鸡蛋里挑骨头。好在对我们的修改意见都是词句文法，没有实质性的。今天我们社工已将修改稿电邮给了移民局。如顺利，下星期我们可能会得到批准。之后，我们就可以进入下一步，向中国收养中心申请最后审批。 那又将是一个漫长的等待。
We filled out our I800A-petition to adopt an orphan and submitted it in July to the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) for approval. We got our fingerprinting done on September 9 and are now waiting for the final approval paper, the I-797. I have made a few phone calls in the last 2 months to check our status. Now that we have Anna waiting for us in China, I couldn’t resist asking them to expedite our case. I emailed USCIS on Friday and called them on Monday. I explained to them that Anna is a special-needs child and that we wanted to bring her home as soon as possible. Thankfully, I talked to a very nice lady at USCIS and she graciously agreed to review our application and homestudy. To my surprise, we received an email from her only four hours after I called. In the email attachment, she indicated what changes were needed on our homestudy. They need some changes in the wording and language, as they are now extremely strict on how sentences are worded. I called our social worker and forwarded her the email regarding the changes. She called the lady at USCIS, and luckily the changes were relatively minor and could be emailed to USCIS. Our social worker then talked to our adoption agency and made the changes. She will email the updated homestudy to USCIS soon. I hope that this will satisfy USCIS and that we can get our final approval next week. After getting the I-797, we will have everything needed for our dossier in China. Once our dossier is logged in by CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs), we will begin the next phase of waiting for a LOA (Letter of Acceptance).