USCIS Approval of I-800A Application

"You have been approved." My four favorite words today.

We received in the mail our approval from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service to take the next step in the adoption process. This piece of paper, in official government terms called the I-797, Notice of Action, was the last document we were waiting for to complete our dossier. Now we just have to send it down to the Texas Secretary of State for apostille, wait for its return, make a bunch of photocopies of everything, and ship out our dossier.

For people who might read our blog and are wondering about turnaround time for the USCIS I-800A approval. We submitted our I-800A application on October 23rd. Had our biometrics appointment on November 28th, and received our approval notice in the mail today, December 8th. So from submission date, to approval date, it took six weeks and 4 days. Or if you are counting just in days - 46 days instead of the 90 days projected on the USCIS website. So when the website says within 90 days, that is just a wide range to allow them time to get the job done, not a minimum. So don't give up hope if you are running against a deadline, just keep pressing on!

Our adoption agency said we need to have the dossier shipped out by the 17th to them for forwarding on to the country, or otherwise, there was no point in doing anything until January 2nd as everyone pretty much shuts down things for the holidays. We want to be able to bring our girl home as soon as possible, so I am very, very excited to have the possibility to meet that deadline of the 17th. (I apologize to my elementary grammar teacher for the double adjective in the preceding sentence, but sometimes only a "very, very" will do.)

Praying for godspeed to our FedEx package I will be sending out to the Texas Secretary of State on Monday, and that we will get the apostilled document back by Friday. If so, I can make a quick turnaround of the dossier to our adoption agency on Friday the 14th by FedEx and just beat the December 17th deadline. Not for sure the timeline will work out, but God is good, and I just keep praying.

Until next time ...