What Now?

The paperwork is done, the CCAA has us on a list of names that is 25000 long. I imagine we are number 25,000, maybe 24,999 if we're lucky. But no matter what the wait is going to be long. Here's an overview of what happens next. 15 months from Jan 31, 2007 our fingerprints expire. I didn't know your fingerprints expire, but they do. We'll have to go back and get them redone. 18 months from February 21, 2007 our I-171 expires. We have to reapply to the USCIS for another one. There is a bill in congress right now to extend the time of the I-171 to 24 months, but who knows if that will happen or not.

Other than those two things we are in "waiting" mode. I don't know how much you have picked up in the previous posts about the wait period, but it is going to be long, much longer than we ever anticipated in December. I don't want to get on my soap-box about what the adoption agencies knew and when they knew it, as far as the back-log of dossiers in China.

The CCAA moves through the list of names in the order that they were logged-in. When your name gets to the top of the list, they match you with a child that is available for adoption.

The CCAA just finished matching families with log-in dates through November 1, 2005. Now that doesn't seem so bad, it was 18 months ago. This is the really depressing part: the CCAA started working on families with log-ins dates between October 1 through 31st of 2005 during the first week of January 2007. It took them 4 months to get through 1 month of LID. If they keep going at that rate it will be 6 years before they get to our name on the list.

I will be 52 years old and Jeff will be 54. We expected to have a referral before I turned 48. Right now, we are just going to see what happens over the course of the next 18 months when our I-171 expires. The CCAA has some things they are trying to get more "paper ready" babies available for adoption. Hopefully we will see a speed up in the process over the next 6 months.