We passed one more hurdle, last week we got our I171H in the mail from the Citizenship and Immigration Service! This is a "Notification of Favorable Determination" concerning our I600A which is the application for pre-approval to bring a foreign born orphan into the United States. In short, the US government thinks we're fit to be parents. Advance approval speeds up the process when we file the actual orphan petition at the American consulate in China.
This is the last big hurdle in the US, soon our Dossier will be ready to send to China where the officials there will examine it and eventually match us up with our daughter. Shortly we'll be starting the "Big Wait" for the referral to come through. We're hoping to see our dossier go to China in mid-December, the time to referral seems to be running around seven months or so. The referral comes when we are matched up with a baby, it will be a picture and information about the child -- name, age, weight, medical information, location and so forth. After accepting the referral, travel approval usually comes 2 to 6 weeks later, and allow another 4 to 8 weeks to make all the arrangements to travel.
What a trip, not just to China, but the whole process. Making the decision to leave the infertility route, agreeing that we still wanted a family, then deciding on adoption. We considered many options, domestic adoptions often involve long waits and our ages were a negative factor with many agencies. International adoption looked promising, some research revealed unsettling things, many eastern european countries have problems with fetal acohol syndrome and other health and adjustment issues, not to mention rampant corruption. In the end China was a very attractrive option, the process is straightforward and corruption is nonexistent. We have both known of others who have adopted from China and found the experience was as promised. The more we looked, the more we liked what we saw, and the decision to apply to China was an easy one.
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