The Process

China has the most regulated adoption process. Because of this, the timeline is "usually" easy to predict. The popularity of Chinese adoption has been steadily increasing over the past 10 years. It is currently at an all time high. The process starts with assembling the documents required by both the adoption agency and the Dossier. The Dossier is the packet that goes to China. Since it usually takes about 6 months to complete this process, we started in January, 6 months before I turned 30. China requires that an adoptive parent must be at least 30 years old. In January we enthusiastically gathered all of the required documents including two certified copies of our birth and marriage certificates, two notarized bank letters, referral letters written by our friends and family (thank you!), complete medical exams including lab work, notarized letters of employment, updated passports, extra passport photos to attach to both the application and dossier, proof of health insurance, police clearance, conviction statement, and our first set of fingerprints. We completed all of these tasks on the 2nd and 3rd weeks of January 2006.

Glen's ABI and FBI fingerprints came back 3 weeks later, all clear! My fingerprints were unreadable. The day that we received this information, I left work and had my fingerprints re-done. My FBI fingerprints came back in June and we are still waiting for my ABI fingerprints. When I read other people's blogs about their adoption process, they never talk about these fingerprints. I am not sure if this is something that Alabama requires, or if other states have faster turnaround time.

In addition to these documents, we also had to write a Statement of Motivation, Letter of Intent, an Our Child statement, and a ten page Autobiography (each). We are going to move forward with our Home Study, in hopes that my Alabama fingerprints come back within 6 months. The documents that we gather for the Dossier cannot be more than 6 months old. Remember all of those documents we gathered in January? Yes, we have to do it all again, even the certified birth and marriage certificates.

The homestudy is performed by DHR. We will have four visits with a social worker, both individually and as a couple. When my ABI fingerprints come back, our homestudy is sent to the immigration department, CIS (Atlanta in the Southeast) and we are given an appointment to go to Birmingham for more fingerprinting. Fortunately, these fingerprints are electronic and the clearance takes only 3 days. Our fingerprint clearances are then sent to Atlanta to meet up with our homestudy to be approved to adopt a foreign orphan, also known as the I-171H. This process usually takes about 3 months, but given our recent experience with Alabama’s fingerprints department, I’m not hanging my hat on it. After we receive the I-171H, it is authenticated and it goes to China with our Dossier.

All of the documents in the Dossier have to be authenticated, then they are sent to China. Our agency has a liaison in China who will ensure that all of our documents are received by the CCAA (Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs) http://www.china-ccaa.org/frames/index_unlogin_en.jsp. When China logs our application into their system, we are sent a letter stating our LID (log-in-date). This is the beginning of the wait. When we started the process, the wait was 9-10 months. For those whose applications were accepted in June of 2005, the wait has been 12 months. I am afraid that, due to supply and demand, our anticipated wait will be closer to 18 months. You can follow the progress on the CCAA website. They will update the dates of those applications that have reached two major milestones: the review of the application and the assignment of a referral (a child is matched with the parent(s)).

Anyone who knows us well already knows that we are requesting, “healthy twin girls between the ages of 0-12 months.” We will not know if twins will be placed with us until the day of our referral(s). Although twins are rare, our agency has had a higher than average placement of twins. In fact, all of the couples who have requested twins, received twins, except for one. This family was adopting during the SARS epidemic when the infants and low birth weight babies (including twins) were placed in quarantine. This family received the referral of a single child, but was told that if they did not accept the referral, they could be placed with twins once they were released from quarantine. I am hopeful that we will be placed with twins.

Thanks for following our detailed Chinese adoption process. We will continue to update this site at each milestone.