Adoption Stress

OK, no one ever told me an adoption would be an easy process. Today both me and my wife got voicemail from our adoption agency saying “I need you to call right away”. My wife has the remarkable talent of assuming the absolute worst, so she’s in a total panic.

It turns out that the US Embassy in Guatemala lost the CIS (Citizen and Immigration Service – now a part of Homeland Security) approval form that was sent to them back in September. This would be the I-171H form, of course. Without that form, nothing can happen.

It’s not a huge deal. You just have to get the NYC CIS to resend it. Sure, piece of cake, get one bloated bureaucracy to resend a document.

My adoption agency suggested contacting my Senator or Congressman. Well, I’m sure Hillary Clinton would take my phone call, but just for kicks I went with our congressman. They were actually quite helpful. All politics is local, right?

So we currently have our congressman’s office nagging CIS and our adoption agency lawyer nagging the embassy in Guatemala. Maybe someday this will actually go through…