Yeah!!

Because I used to live in South Dakota (during college), I had to get a child abuse clearance from South Dakota before our updated home study could be completed.  We talked to our social worker tonight, he now has everything he needs, and will have the official copy in the mail tomorrow.  Hopefully we will be able to send our I-800A off on Wednesday or Thursday!  We are very excited to get the paperwork rolling!!

Here's an update as to what our India social worker says our current timeline looks like:

1.        When your homestudy update is completed, you will file your I-800A.  This applications takes several months to be approved.  

2.       During the wait for the I-800A approval, you can complete the I-800 and I-864 applications.  

3.       During this time you will be working on your pre-referral dossier.  

4.       Once the I-800A is approved I put that paperwork together and submit again to CIS in what is called the Article 16 application.  It takes 3 weeks for the I-800 to receive Provisional Approval.

5.       Once the Provisional Approval is received, I will email the Embassy in Delhi the DS-230 visa application and a photo of your daughter.  By this time your dossier would have been sent to the orphanage. 

6.       The Embassy will then issue an Article 5 letter to the federal government of India called CARA and this takes about 3 weeks from the time I send the DS-230.  

7.       CARA reviews the copy of the dossier and child information they would have received from the orphanage and the Article 5 letter from the Embassy.  They take 1-2 months to issue a No Objection Certificate.  Once this is issued, the orphanage can file the case in court. 

8.       The court takes 2 months to make their decision.  After this, it takes 2 weeks for the written court order and then another 7-10 days for the passport to be issued.  At this time we can get you ready to travel.

9.   When you travel, because your daughter is very young, we don’t expect the trip to be longer than two weeks.  You’ll take 1 ½ days to reach India, spend 3 days at the orphanage, fly to Delhi and the visa process including the visa medical takes about 5 days, then 1 ½ days to fly home.