Right after we accepted the referral for L. we filled out what's called an I-600 form with information about us and about L. Once our adoption agency submits the I-600 and other supporting documents to USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), the PAIR process will begin. PAIR stands for Pre-Adoption Immigration Review. Basically the PAIR process was an extra safeguard implemented by the U.S. government in recent years to verify the eligibility of orphans before they immigrate from Ethiopia to the U.S. This investigation of L's orphan status will take 3-6 months. During this time, USCIS can request further documentation or birth parent interviews which can add to this time line. After USCIS approves L. for adoption, we will receive a PAIR approval letter.
The second major step in the process at this point is completing our Dossier (fancy French word for "collection of documents"). It is a collection of 50+ pages that will be submitted to the Ethiopian court and MOWA (Ministry of Women's Affairs in Ethiopia) for approval once we have received our PAIR letter. The Dossier includes all sorts of things: our birth certificates, marriage license, passports, I-171H approval letter, criminal clearances, employment verifications, medical reports, financial information, references and our home study. The home study was completed by our lovely social worker Jody who spent MANY, MANY hours with us over the last couple years. Tomorrow Dave, Ben and I are planning to go to our agency to have our Dossier documents notarized. After three years of working on our Dossier, we are almost done!
{A picture of our Dossier checklist}
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