March 14th, 2010

Paperwork is going along quite well, at least on the surface! For the dossier, all of the documents that we are gathering have to be notarized. But wait, that's not good enough for Bulgaria. They need to be certified by the Clerk of Courts in each county that the notary resides. Oh wait, I'm sorry, that's *still* not good enough for international paperwork. Now that each notary has been certified, it has to be apostilled by your state. Then it can be sent to Bulgaria. Let the fun begin, as our paperwork has been notarized by people in three different counties. Like Stark County, in Canton...2 hours away...see I told you that was going to be a problem. Here is Rani's blog post for this date:

We received our ‘invitations’ to be fingerprinted in Friday’s mail - not a bad turn around time! Dare we hope that all of the processing of our I-800a form goes this well?

In the meantime, we have to start the process of going to the various counties in Ohio to get our notaries certified by the clerk of courts in the county of said notaries - a requirement for the apostille. Lucky for us, that is only 3 counties, and we live in one. Unlucky for us, the furthest one away has very limited information on their website concerning doing this. Still, gotta love a challenge…

March 1st, 2010

The second of our paperwork errors today, but it was easily rectified about a week later. Amazingly enough, tucked into the paperwork there is a toll free number for USCIS that actually gets you to a human immediately. If only I had found it the first time (of many) that I called USCIS. We are also waiting for USCIS to set us up with our fingerprint appointment. Yes, that's right, the state of Ohio, the FBI and USCIS don't talk to each other. They all need our fingerprints. Gotta love that! Here is what Rani had to say on this date in our original blog:

We received a letter from the government today stating that they have received our I-800a application - hooray! Alas, the personal information (Mike’s birthday) is wrong. Let the fun begin!

Trying to follow the instructions on how to rectify this, Mike called the USCIS customer service number. Perhaps it is from our call center work experience, but the experience failed to impress. However, after much time spent in prompter menus and two humans later, it was established that he needed to call a different number.

He called that number, spoke to a woman who knew what he was talking about (the prior number had never heard of the application), but advised that she couldn’t do anything about the error because the actual application hadn’t made it to her yet. After I mistakenly sent the application to Chicago, it was sent to Texas for processing. From there, it is apparently sent to Missouri, which is the actual location of the home office for adoption stuff.

We were just too on top of things, it seems. But, all is well, the application is at least received and making the rounds. Hopefully we can get the information corrected and get our fingerprint appointments soon!