New Photos for November 2006.

So sad that there are now a year's worth of photos here.

Hopefully we are closer to the end of this than the beginning.

EXPIRED FINGERPRINTS


So now we're running into the problem that all of our paperwork is expiring, due to the bureaucratic delays in Guatemala.

We started this process with a "homestudy", which is the social worker review of our house, lives, etc. And in that the social worker says that we were looking for a child 12 months and younger. Well, on 12/02/2006 Maria turns 13 months, so that means that our homestudy has "expired".

Performing an international adoption is like a marathon of paperwork, through various agencies (state agencies, federal agencies, private agencies, international governments, etc.). And every piece of paper seems to have a different expiration date.

For example, about 16 months ago we had to go get fingerprinted by CIS (the agency formally known as INS). And as it turns out, the CIS fingerprints "expire" after 15 months. So we had to go renew those. Now you're probably thinking like I did, how do fingerprints expire? Acid? Burns? Too much Bar-B-Que?

Actually, what happens is that CIS runs these fingerprints through the FBI files to ensure that we're not bank robbers, kidnappers or terrorists. Which makes sense that CIS would want to check that after a period of time. Because of course, while we're waiting for word from Guatemala, we're going to kill an afternoon by knocking over our local Citibank branch.

But why not use the same fingerprints that they received 15 months ago? Are they really thinking that those changed?

Of course CIS has their process, and taking a(nother) copy of our fingerprints starts this process. But what a delay. And a pain.

More specifics in the next post.

SO WHAT'S THE HOLDUP?

Boy, don't we wish we knew!

Without going in to all the details, which may or may not be correct, lets leave it at that. We wish we knew. On the positive side, our lawyer is meeting with the head of the agency on a weekly basis and they are trying to clear up the problem. We are hopeful that the process will be resolved this year. That would mean that we could start forecasting again, and we would be able to pick Maria up in January or February.