Form I-600A...huh?

We've received word from the global office that we're able to start preparing for our I-600A. For those of you who don't know, this form is the Application for Advanced Processing of Orphan Petition, got it? 

Okay, let's back up.

We have to file with the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (often referred to as USCIS). According to the USCIS website, the form is used by U.S. citizen who plans to adopt a foreign-born child and enables USCIS to adjudicate the application that relates to the qualifications of the applicant(s) as prospective adoptive parent(s).

Okay, I'll be honest, I had to look up the meaning of adjudicate—to make a formal judgement or decision about a problem or disputed matter. 

Basically we submit this form to USCIS and they will approve us to adopt internationally. The child you (or we) are adopting can not immigrate into the United States as an "orphan" until the form I-600 has been approved and the child has obtained an immigrant visa.

Along with this form, we'll need to include certified copies of our birth certificates, marriage license (I ordered these during our homestudy process), our homestudy report, as well as $720 to submit the form, and $85 per person living in the household (two people for now, and we'll have to do an addendum when Mkini comes to live with us...more on that later).We'll also need to get fingerprinted again and mail those in with this form, which if I remember correctly was $10 per person (again, Mkini will need to do this as well).

So that's what we're working on next. We can go ahead and get this filled out, and once our homestudy gets approved, we can send it in right away. After that, we'll start working on our dossier.

To see the form and read more about the form I-600A, you can click here and here.