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!