What Happens Next?

Now that we received our LOA, which is essentially China saying "Yes, we have approved your family to adopt Fu Min Wei," some of you may be asking what happens next. With Kenzie and Karli, we traveled about 40 days after receiving our official approval from China; however, both of their adoptions were not completed under the Hague Treaty. Once the U.S. ratified the Hague Treaty, all adoptions whose paperwork was filed with the U.S. government after May 2008, now have to follow the Hague guidelines. All this really amounts to before the approval is more work for our social worker. However, after the approval is where all of the big changes occur.

When we receive of LOA, we have to send the I-800 application to the USCIS for formal approval to adopt. Currently we have provisional approval, but as long as our home study approves us to adopt a child this age with special needs, we will get approved. This is taking about 2-3 weeks.

Then USCIS sends our file (via snail mail) to another branch of the Department of Homeland Security, called the National Visa Center (NVC). NVC scans the file into its system. Once they do this, the American Consulate in Guangzhou can now access our immigration approval and file. This takes about 10 days. The NVC will send a letter to us stating that our paper work was cabled to Gaungzhou. We will receive this about 5 days after everything was cabled.

Once we receive the letter from the NVC, we send it to our adoption agency who then sends it along with some more paper work to the Consulate in Guangzhou. Once the Consulate receives the papers from the agency, they will issue an Article 5. This takes about 2 weeks.

Once Article 5 is issued, a representative from our agency will pick it up and get it to the CCAA so our official wait for TA can begin. Most agencies have a courier pick it up and then overnight it to Beijing.

Then the CCAA will work on processing your TA. This is taking about 4 weeks.

So, we will probably wait 10-12 weeks to receive our Travel Approval. I am predicting a July 1, departure date, with Gotcha Day being July 5.