With our Home Study complete and approved, we filed a 1-600A with USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services). This is an initial application for international adoption. It is a document that states our intent to adopt from Haiti with the US government. This is the initial steps for our son's visa. This takes about 30 days to complete, so hopefully we will have the Dossier completed by the beginning of October.
I did get an interesting lesson in a service the State Government can perform. If you have a document that has been notarized, but that notary needs to be confirmed, you can have the Secretary of State validate it with a Sate Seal. The Secretary of State looks at the notary's signature and compares it to what is on file with the State and then they applied a state seal.
Here is a chart the shows our progress. Hopefully this is a nice visual representation of where we are. We do need to get some documents translated, but we are hopeful they will be sent off by the end of this week
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When we complete this chart, we move on to all the steps in Haiti. I have another chart for the steps once we get the Dossier sent to the orphanage in Haiti, God's Littlest Angels. That is when the exercise in patience will really come in.
