My morning at the Immigration Office

Last night I arrived home to find my sweet Bernese Mountain Dog, Maddie, enjoying a nice snack of my afternoon mail. With great irony I noticed that the two pieces of mail she had not chewed on included a Pottery Barn catalog and my letter from Homeland Security requesting fingerprints for my I-600A. For those of you going through this process, you know that the formal invitation is REQUIRED (along with a photo ID) so had it been shredded into puppy-sized pieces, Maddie may have been spending some time in the dog house. She may be an ornery pup, but I think she is secretly on my side with this Nepal adoption process.

This morning I made it down to East Colfax and 225 to the Immigration Office and spent some time with sweet Ceasar. Ceasar said I was the first he had worked with at the office looking to adopt from Nepal. He also said he rarely ever sees a new application for China; just folks trying to maintain their status when their fingerprints expire in 18 months. He says Ethiopia is the big country for fingerprints right now, but I told him that might change soon with Nepal finally reopening their doors.

So my fingerprints were sent electronically to some service center. My homestudy agency says to expect the approval of my I-171H to take about 2-4 weeks from now. I am still waiting to get final word on the new dossier requirements, but I think I should be in good shape.

My agency rep is participating in a JCICS Nepal Caucus call on Thursday and plans to raise the notarization question. At this time, she says they have not received guidance from the Ministry that every page in the dossier needs to be notarized. I am sure that can change in an instant.