Adoption fingerprints?

[orbaya]

My husband and I are in the process of adopting internationally and we had our fingerprints taken yesterday. One set is being sent the FBI and another is being sent to our State for criminal clearances here.

I'm wondering how long it takes to get the results back from the FBI? I have heard different answers so I thought I'd check with people who have been through the process.

Also, what about the timeline for USCIS processing? Is it months?

Thanks!

 

[ImperfectGirl]

Hi orbaya! You should check our the adoption thread...there are a few of us here in various stages of the adoption process and others who have completed the process as well.

We are adopting domestically but did have to have FBI fingerprinting done. Our results came back in about 2 weeks.

eta: Congrats!!!

 

[Logan Sapphire]

Congrats to you! What country are you adopting from?

I don't remember exact dates but our I-600A took 9 months to be processed. Our I-600 was quicker than that- maybe 2 or 3 months. However, that was back in 2008-2009 and Bella_Mezzo has said that they've streamlined their process to be much faster these days.

 

[orbaya]

Thanks!

We are adopting from Honduras. Our homestudy will be started on Saturday! So excited for that.

Your I-600A took 9 months??? I really hope they've streamlined the process! Now I'm a bit nervous that ours will take that long!

 

[ImperfectGirl]

Honduras is awesome...my family is from the country right next door

Good luck with your homestudy! Not sure if international and domestic homestudies are the same, but ours was a piece of cake.

 

[Bella_mezzo]

Hi orbaya-

Welcome to the crazy international adoption journey!

We are adopting from Ethiopia. If your process is at all like ours (which I think it is) you will be finger printed several times during the process. It's crazy that the digital fingerprint databases aren't connected, but apparently they are not.

I think we were printed 3 times--conduct report from where we live for our dossier, FBI criminal check for the homestudy, and USCIS for I-600A. The FBI fingerprints for your homestudy are not the same as the USCIS fingerprints for the I-600A and they won't process your I-600A until they have your homestudy and your fingerprints (they send you an invitation for fingerprinting after they receive your I-600A application with homestudy).

We sent in our I-600A with homestudy on February 14, were fingerprinted on March 9th for USCIS, and have been stalking the mailman ever since...

Since we had several friends and acquaintances who got their I-171H within a few days or weeks of their USCIS fingerprints we called last week to see what the hold-up was. We were told that it was taking about 30 days from USCIS receipt of I-600A to be assigned a case worker and a total of at least 75 days to be issued an I-171H ...well, as of last Wednesday we had not yet been assigned a caseworker (way more than 30 days) . They said we were being processed that day, but who knows what that means...so, I am now calling every few days to check-in. We'll see what I learn Monday...We accepted the referral of a little 2 1/2 year old boy and are now even more anxious to keep things moving along as we know our son-to-be is waiting for us in an orphanage on the other side of the world!!!

The main thing that I have learned from the international adoption process is that everything takes 3 times longer than you think to be processed or completed (literally!) and that there are many, many factors outside of your control.

We're chronicling our journey on a blog. PS doesn't allow links, but I know some people have found me, so hopefully you can too if you want to

 

[AGBF]

I have a kind of nice story about getting fingerprinted for adoption.

We adopted almost 19 years ago, so our information about rules for fingerprinting is probably pretty irrelevant. I recall that for our homestudy we didn't need to be fingerprinted. There was a state police check by name only. We were fingerprinted for the FBI only because we were doing an international adoption. The weird part of that was that the fingerprints had to be updated every six weeks (I think). (My memory may be imperfect about the length of time that fingerprints remained good.) I found that very odd. If we had not committed any crimes before, would we start committing them just six weeks after being fingerprinted? And if we needed to be checked up on, why did we need to be fingerprinted again? Couldn't the first fingerprints just be run again? Etc.

My husband wasn't cooperating and the local police only fingerprinted on two afternoons a week. He was telling me he had to be at work in New York city and couldn't get to our town in Connecticut for that. I called up the Secret Service in New Haven, Connecticut and asked if they would fingerprint my husband since he had a job working for Treasury at that time. The agent I got told me I had just gotten very lucky because he had two adopted children from Korea. He called our police chief and arranged for my husband to be fingerprinted at any time he wanted, night or day at our local police station!

It all got done!!!

Deb/AGBF

 

[AGBF]

Honduras is awesome...my family is from the country right next door

Good luck with your homestudy! Not sure if international and domestic homestudies are the same, but ours was a piece of cake.

Yes, they really are. Some additional information may be requested by international sources, but the homestudy itself is basically the same!

Deb/AGBF

 

[orbaya]

Hi orbaya-

Welcome to the crazy international adoption journey!

We are adopting from Ethiopia. If your process is at all like ours (which I think it is) you will be finger printed several times during the process. It's crazy that the digital fingerprint databases aren't connected, but apparently they are not.

I think we were printed 3 times--conduct report from where we live for our dossier, FBI criminal check for the homestudy, and USCIS for I-600A. The FBI fingerprints for your homestudy are not the same as the USCIS fingerprints for the I-600A and they won't process your I-600A until they have your homestudy and your fingerprints (they send you an invitation for fingerprinting after they receive your I-600A application with homestudy).

We sent in our I-600A with homestudy on February 14, were fingerprinted on March 9th for USCIS, and have been stalking the mailman ever since...

Since we had several friends and acquaintances who got their I-171H within a few days or weeks of their USCIS fingerprints we called last week to see what the hold-up was. We were told that it was taking about 30 days from USCIS receipt of I-600A to be assigned a case worker and a total of at least 75 days to be issued an I-171H ...well, as of last Wednesday we had not yet been assigned a caseworker (way more than 30 days) . They said we were being processed that day, but who knows what that means...so, I am now calling every few days to check-in. We'll see what I learn Monday...We accepted the referral of a little 2 1/2 year old boy and are now even more anxious to keep things moving along as we know our son-to-be is waiting for us in an orphanage on the other side of the world!!!

The main thing that I have learned from the international adoption process is that everything takes 3 times longer than you think to be processed or completed (literally!) and that there are many, many factors outside of your control.

We're chronicling our journey on a blog. PS doesn't allow links, but I know some people have found me, so hopefully you can too if you want to

Thanks for the responses!

Bella - We too need 3 sets of fingerprints. We've done two and will need to do them for the USCIS later on. I am so not looking forward to waiting, waiting, waiting! I know it's part of the process, but I don't want to wait! LOL. How exciting that you have a son!! You must be soooo excited! How long of a wait did you have for your FBI fingerprints to process? The FBI website says 6 weeks I think, but am wondering if that is fairly accurate. I hope you get issued an I-171H very soon! Also, will the recent announcement of things slowing way down affect you?

Honduras requires PAP's to have a psych eval here, as well as one in-country. We did our U.S. one yesterday. I'll to see if I can find your blog because I'd love to read it. (edited to add: I looked but couldn't find anything. Are you allowed to give hints or tell which blogger you use?)

AGBF - Wow, 6 weeks is not long at all! I'm glad that it worked out for you!

 

[Bella_mezzo]

orbaya!

We are SOOOOO excited about our son-to-be!!!!

No psych eval for us, that sounds like an added pain in the you know what! Our FBI prints took 3-4 weeks if I remember right, but our homestudy agency was really slow and our actual homestudy took forever, so we weren't chomping on the bit as much re the FBI...

As far as finding the Ethiopian adoption blog, there's no identifying info on it but not many people adopting have a "woosha" (dog)...also, "ababa" means daddy in Amharic the language of Ethiopia.

 

[orbaya]

Found it, thanks!

The psych eval wasn't bad at all. It was about 2 hours long and we'll have the report in a week. The thing that I didn't like was the MMPI. It was 568 true/false questions, and was one of those tests that asks the same questions in different ways.

 

[Logan Sapphire]

Orbaya, can you tell us a little more about the process for Honduran adoptions? Do you get a preference in the child's sex? Do they have more boys or girls available?

How exciting for you!

PS- about the CIS timelines...again, this is awhile ago so apparently things have changed, but we were told things would take slower for us b/c we live in the DC area and there are a lot of people who want to immigrate to the area. If we lived in a "slower" region, things would've gone faster. The ironic thing is, the processing office is literally next door to my sister's condo, so every time I'd go to her place, I'd shake my fist at CIS.

 

[Bella_mezzo]

glad the psyche eval wasn't too bad!

Logan-that makes sense re CIS (although I am doing a lot of fist shaking as well). That's probably why our friends who live in the middle of nowhere got theirs in 2 days and we are still waiting (everything in NYC takes longer...)

 

[orbaya]

Honduras just reopened for international adoptions in February, so it's brand new. There are only four agencies that have been approved by Honduran officials for adoptions. As of right now, you can choose gender and there are infants up to age 14 available. To be honest, I'm not sure about the girl/boy ratio. I would imagine that due to it being a new program it's probably pretty equal. It is expected that this program will become popular very quickly due to infants being available, and the ability to choose gender. Another reason is that right now supposedly there isn't a huge wait for a referral, but with adoption, things can change in an instant.

Honduran requirements include psych evals here, and also in Honduras. We are required to take 2 trips. One will be for a week, and the other for a month. The children reside in orphanages and once they have been matched with a family, they are moved into a foster home.

We expect our dossier to be complete in the next 2 months or so. It depends on how long our homestudy will take and when we get our FBI and State clearances.

 

[Bella_mezzo]

OUR I-171H ARRIVED TODAY!!!!

So, tomorrow our last paperwork gets notarized and certified by NY, then the whole dossier gets wrapped up, sent via FedEx to DC to go through the Federal certification process and hopefully we will be in Ethiopia next week in the queue waiting for a court date!

 

[orbaya]

OUR I-171H ARRIVED TODAY!!!!

So, tomorrow our last paperwork gets notarized and certified by NY, then the whole dossier gets wrapped up, sent via FedEx to DC to go through the Federal certification process and hopefully we will be in Ethiopia next week in the queue waiting for a court date!

Awesome!!!!!!!

I just commented on your blog (and left a link if you're interested).

 

[AGBF]

OUR I-171H ARRIVED TODAY!!!!

So, tomorrow our last paperwork gets notarized and certified by NY, then the whole dossier gets wrapped up, sent via FedEx to DC to go through the Federal certification process and hopefully we will be in Ethiopia next week in the queue waiting for a court date!

Dear Bella-

The whole international adoption process has changed since we went through it, becoming more centralized. I feel odd cheering a form with which I am unfamiliar. (At least I don't think we did an I-171H, but maybe we did. I know we did an I-600 and/or I-600A. They just weren't processed in the same ways that they are now!)

I couldn't be more excited about your leaving for Ethiopia, though! Will you be able to stay on-line from there and keep us informed about your progress?

Hugs,
Deb/AGBF

 

[Bella_mezzo]

AGBF_Yeah, this international adoption thing is a constantly evolving process. When we go to ET we will definitely try to keep up our blog and maybe some PS every once in a while BUT I should have been more clear, hopefully our dossier will be in Ethiopia next week we still have to wait for our dossier to get processed on the Ethiopian side, get assigned a court date, and then go for the court date. Hopefully our court date will be sometime between June (or earlier, but that's doubtful) and early August. Realistically I think early July is the best we can hope for...

 

[Logan Sapphire]

Hey, congrats Bella! Things are moving along really well for you! So very exciting!

One thing I would really recommend to anyone adopting is to make sure you keep your files in good order as you go along. We started off really well, with all sorts of paperwork filed in different sections of our enormous binder but then as life caught up with us, we got lazy about keeping up with the filing. And once we got back from Korea, we still had to pull a lot of documents out for the courts and post-placement study, for CIS again, etc., so now we're in an even bigger disarray. And with two young kids, it feels like there's no way we'd ever have the time to sit down and get stuff back in order. Sigh.

So Bella, your child will enter the US as a citizen, correct? Do they still recommend that you seek a Certificate of Citizenship to prove that he's a citizen? We've had to file for Casey, even though we have VA court paperwork showing that she was made a citizen upon adoption finalization. But apparently that's not good enough so in order for her to prove her citizenship, we had to pay a lot of money ($500 or something similar) for this piece of paper that proves what we already know. As an adult adoptee, I'm very bitter about this. We can hand out free social security cards to people who aren't citizens (and I'm fine with that), but we make an adopted person who is already a citizen pay a lot of money (it's even more money if you're an adult) to prove their citizenship.

 

[AGBF]

Hey, congrats Bella! Things are moving along really well for you! So very exciting!

One thing I would really recommend to anyone adopting is to make sure you keep your files in good order as you go along. We started off really well, with all sorts of paperwork filed in different sections of our enormous binder but then as life caught up with us, we got lazy about keeping up with the filing. And once we got back from Korea, we still had to pull a lot of documents out for the courts and post-placement study, for CIS again, etc., so now we're in an even bigger disarray. And with two young kids, it feels like there's no way we'd ever have the time to sit down and get stuff back in order. Sigh.

So Bella, your child will enter the US as a citizen, correct? Do they still recommend that you seek a Certificate of Citizenship to prove that he's a citizen? We've had to file for Casey, even though we have VA court paperwork showing that she was made a citizen upon adoption finalization. But apparently that's not good enough so in order for her to prove her citizenship, we had to pay a lot of money ($500 or something similar) for this piece of paper that proves what we already know. As an adult adoptee, I'm very bitter about this. We can hand out free social security cards to people who aren't citizens (and I'm fine with that), but we make an adopted person who is already a citizen pay a lot of money (it's even more money if you're an adult) to prove their citizenship.

Back when we adopted, an infant wasn't automatically a citizen simply because she had been adopted by American citizens. Our daughter entered the United States, at under three months old, as our daughter, but as a foreign national. She came with a Colombian passport and a visa issued by the United States embassy in Bogota, Colombia! She was naturalized (by the time she was four months old) as a United States citizen. I then had to get her a new social security card and be sure, lest she have any problems in the future, that the new one was backed up by paperwork stating that she was an American citizen!

I also had to get a certification of birth issued by the state in which we resided stating that she was our daughter and that when and where she was born. Since it states that she was born in Colombia, however, I doubt that that that would ever be something that she could use in lieu of her actual Colombian birth certificate.

Deb/AGBF

 

[Lanie]

Congrats on the form Bella! I don't know if it seems like this to you, but it seems to me that it's going pretty smoothly and QUICKLY!

 

[Bella_mezzo]

Doesn't feel smooth to us, more like an iron man triathalon in the himalayas, but it is moving forward and for that we are grateful

more tomorrow (have to write a paper that's due tomorrow!)

but yes, B will come into the US as a full citizen on an IR3 visa so he'll already have a certificate of citizenship. The switch from IR4 to IR3 happened last year when Ethiopia started requiring a court trip and then an embassy trip...you have to see/meet your child before adoption as one of the requirements for the IR3....