Small Setback

Hi Friends!

We had a minor setback to our adoption process this week. Our Immigration paperwork was all sent back to us because of the letter "A." It took me 20 minutes on the phone with our adoption agency before we figured out that I mistakenly printed out the first page of the I-600 and the 2nd and 3rd pages of the I-600A. Sounds like a minor mistake, AND, for the record, the first two pages are almost identical (except for the letter "A," of course). But to our detail oriented government, and thankfully so, there are no "almost okays"...only perfection! Glad that THEY know what they're doing, because I obviously DO NOT!

SO! I retyped our cover letter explaining my mistake (A very humbling thing to do. Normally, you can call someone, or tell them to their face, but when you have to type out a letter telling someone that you are a dummy, that's a whole 'nother thing!). Then, I had to make copies of the "official notices" of the plethera of mistakes I made in this application. Then, I had to remove all the pages in the document that said, "MISSING PAGE!" and our previous application. Finally, I had to re-print and re-fill out the I-600A. After all that was said and done, then I called USCIS to make sure I was doing everything correctly this time. After I was reassured that I did everything right, I went to the post office and forked out the $18 more dollars to RE-overnight this packet to Immigration.

The good news? We were given this "GREEN PAGE" to put on top of the document. This green page is a notice to process all the dummies with special care and attention! Actually, I think it expedites it slightly, although I don't know WHY they would do that. It was totally my fault, so why would they put mine in front of someone who actually did it right the first time?!

How far did this set us back? Time will tell, but from the time that I overnighted our first attempt to the time I received the packet back from USCIS was 7 days, so I'm hoping the green page will work it's "magic!"