The Best News We've Had So Far!

I told Pat, from our agency, about my concerns over my fingerprints. She gave me the email of a lady at the INS. I emailed her today and here is her response:

we have your fingerprints.


So the countdown did begin on October 2nd. The couples in our group who most recently received their I-171H received it in 94 and 119 days. It's supposed to take 90 days, so I'm hoping that good luck will start coming our way. It would be AWESOME to receive it before Christmas, but that may be too optimistic.

Quick Update

After posting the last blog, I received an email from our agency saying that our Homestudy went out on October 2nd. This would put the ETA of the I-171H around the week of January 1st and with the Holidays, I'm gonna guess it will be late.

Just some China news.

Well, we never received anything from INS, so I'm taking this as a good sign that our fingerprints were not rejected. We are now waiting to receive our I-171H. This is the final document we need before our Dossier is sent to China. The average wait for the I-171H is 90 days from fingerprinting. Our fingerprints were made on September 14th so i'm hoping that we will receive it the week of December 11th. As we get closer, I will speak with our agency to find out where we fall in the creation of groups. Our Dossiers are sent to China in batches of 4 - 8 families. I hope that we make it at the end of a group so that we will not have to wait for other families to receive their I-171Hs before our Dossier is sent to China.

In other news, I have been learning a lot about the China adoption slowdown that started in November 2005. When we first started the process, we were told that it was because the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) was moving offices and that it would speed back up soon. The wait in January was 8.5 Months. Recently, I learned that prior to October 2005, the CCAA was only in charge of 25% of China's orphanages. In October 2005 they were put in charge of all of the orphanages. I do not know the details behind this change, but I think that this would better explain the slowdown. A lot of people are saying that the number of orphans has decreased, however, it seems that it is the number of paper-ready orphans that has decreased. Maybe with the CCAA changes, they have been unable to ramp up in order to handle the increased number of orphanages. The current wait is 13.75 Months.

The slowdown is looking terrible for us since we have not sent our Dossier to China yet. I can't help but think that this slowdown will affect the number of people who choose to adopt from China and will hopefully lessen the wait for us.

Along with other Waiting Families out there, I have created my own tables to run the projections. Before I jump into my findings, I probably need to explain some of the measures. China releases a new batch of referrals (babies) once a month (appr. every 29 - 30 days). They are matched in the order that the Dossiers are Logged-in. This is also known as LID (log-in date). The only reliable measurement we have to go by is the number of days (LIDs) completed in a batch. However, this measurement is not accurate since the number of Dossiers logged-in varies daily, monthly, and yearly. There are some sites that take polls of their visitors' LIDs to create a representative sample of the what is actually logged in, but for now, I'm going to stick to number of days matched.

There are actually four ways I've looked at the data: 20 Month Average, 6 Month Average, and 20 and 6 Month Average taking into consideration the variance of each month (ie. the wait is consistently growing).

One Major Assumption I have made is that our LID will be between January 15th, 2007 and March 15th, 2007.

I think it will be fun to post my predictions monthly to see how they change.

So, for October 2006, my predictions on when we will receive our referral(s)are:



I need to work on this graphic. It didn't turn out very well, huh?

To keep me focused on the end result, I like to keep up with other families who are getting their referrals and traveling to China. Here is my blog for the month:

http://salsainchina.blogspot.com/

Follow along with Rod and Mary-Mia as they travel to China to meet theit twin daughters, Rose and Marie. They arrived in China on Friday, October 20th and are getting their girls today or tomorrow.

INS Fingerprinting, Part III

I just wanted to post an update. We are still waiting to hear about our fingerprints. I am still optimistic about mine being readable since we haven't heard back about Glen's yet. In Birmingham we were told that we would hear something in about a week and a half. That passed last Monday. Glen was finally able to speak to a human after calling the customer service number. He told Glen that it will take 30 days.

This is our final big hurdle that can greatly affect the timeline. If my fingerprints clear, we are on track to receive our I-171H around three months from that point. After that, our dossier goes to China. My current estimation is February 2007, six months later than expected.

The CCAA released the latest batch of referrals last week. They are still not showing any signs of speeding up. The current estimated timeframe for the dossiers that are being logged in now is 18 months. When we started the process in January 2006, the timeframe was 9 - 10 months. We are still counting on the year of the Pig (lucky year to have a baby) to speed things along. Because of that, I will place my optimistic estimation on June 2008, the Summer Olympics!