A Reason To Hope

After months of silence, news concerning our court case arrived on Tuesday

morning.  As I was leaving for work, I received an email from The Home of God's Love (the orphanage in Taiwan serving as the legal "arm" of our adoption) stating that were missing some required paperwork.  A few months back, we were notified via mail about a new process USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration) was implementing for Taiwan.  It's called a PAIR (pre-adoption immigration review) process and it went into effect April 1st of this year (if you are interested, you can read more about it here).  Our court case was filed in late March, therefore, we (wrongly) thought we were exempt.  As it turns out, our court case was filed in one province prior to that date, however, it was transferred to another province (to Taitung) after April 1st.  As a result, the courts wanted to see our PAIR documentation.  The email stated they were sending the required documentation via FedEx.  I rushed home after work yesterday only to find the package had not been delivered because a signature was required.  I met Austin near our exit and picked up the form and headed right back to Nashville to get our package.  

As soon as I got back in the car at FedEx, I ripped into the package.  The amazing part of this?  Inside this package was information about Shay and his birth family we may not have ever known.  I know the name of the clinic where he was born, what tribe he is from, and maybe most importantly, I have have a written account from his birth mother on why she decided to put him up for adoption.  This is an amazing gift that I will blog more about later.

I called USCIS as soon as they opened this morning, only to be transferred and be forced to leave a voicemail.  

Fail.

I wish I could describe the mental and emotional energy it takes to spend trying to understand the legal/government part of this process.  It makes me want to pull my hair out at times because it shouldn't be this hard.  After several phone attempts and finally finding an email address for USCIS, I got some information.  

When we filed our immigration paperwork, it was the I-600A form (that "A" is really important) which is required for Non-Hauge countries.  We received approval for that in late December.  The email stated that we now have to file an I-600 form (which is a totally different form that the I-600A) and submit the following documents along with it:

1. Evidence of availability for intercountry adoption generated by the Taiwan island-wide database 
2. Signed adoption agreement between birth parents and prospective adoptive parents for use in Taiwan District Family courts 
3. Power of attorney appointing the Taiwan ASP to represent the prospective adoptive parents

Thankfully, all this needed documentation was part of the package we received last night.  So tonight, Austin drove to my office after work and we spent over an hour completing the form and making copies for our records.  After that, we drove to FedEx and had the package sent overnight to USCIS in Lewisville, Texas.  Per the email I received late this afternoon, it could take up to four weeks for USCIS approval........

 

Sigh.

 

And that my friends, makes for a looooonnnngggg 24 hours.  I'm pretty proud that I only had two major meltdowns, one of which my case worker (Jeff) had to witness over the phone (sorry about that).  Despite all this, we are one step closer to bringing our son home.  No matter how hard this is, no matter the roadblocks we run into, we will never ever give up. Shay is our son and we will keep fighting until we can bring him home.

 

Please join us in praying that our case will be expedited and that it will not take four weeks to receive approval.

 

Love you all! 

PS--For those of you that know us well, you know Austin and I both love music and it's constantly on at our house.  As I was writing this post tonight, we were listing to Ron Pope's song A Reason to Hope.  It seemed very fitting for the title of this post.