Adoption Bureaucracy

Last week we filled out another bunch of documents from the agency confirming our acceptance of Tinsaye and Solomon, our acknowledgment of their genetic condition, and a bunch of documents showing that we have medical, dental, ophthalmic, educational, and counseling support in place for all of us.  We realized (AGAIN) that no one seems to care if you are in any way capable of parenting a biological child, but if you want to raise an orphaned child who has nothing, you need to prove to everyone in two countries what an amazing parent you are.  Can you imagine what it would be like if parents who had just had a baby were required to PROVE to multiple bureaucrats that they were financially and emotionally capable of raising that baby before they left the hospital?  

We also got the addendum from our home study agency stating that we were qualified to raise kids with disabilities (whatever) and forwarded that on to USCIS.  Speaking of bureaucracy, USCIS is United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (used to be INS or Immigration and Naturalization Services) and it is a part of the Office of Homeland Security.  When we sent our initial application to adopt an orphaned child/ren to them we were told MULTIPLE times to send it ONLY to a Texas drop box.  All applications must go through the TX center and then are forwarded on to regional offices, including the one in Detroit.  So we mailed our app to TX, they mailed it immediately back to the office 12 miles away from our house.  The Detroit office mailed us confirmation and told us to wait for our "biometrics appointment"... fingerprinting and God knows what else.  Retinal scans?  Palm prints?  Voice IDs?  Seems a little "24", but we just do what we're told.  So this week we got our "biometrics appointment" from the USCIS office in Vermont!  I'm thankful we don't have to go to VT for our invasive and ridiculous biometrics appointment, we just have to go to our Friendly Neighborhood Detroit USCIS office.  Wondering why someone in VT needed to schedule appointments for the office in Detroit???  Us too.  I'm pretty sure, however, that there are no actual humans at the Detroit office, since no one has ever known a human to answer the phone and clearly no humans are there to schedule appointments.  We will find out for sure on February 23 when we go for our appointment.  Maybe they'll blindfold us and drive us to an undisclosed location where Jack Bauer will interrogate us, perform our "biometrics", and then blindfold us again and dump us in a Walmart parking lot.  After that we'll probably get a letter from the Wyoming USCIS office telling us that we need to resubmit all paperwork due to a revision of Form I600A mandated by Congress last week. 

You know what?  It's still better than morning sickness, stretch marks, maternity pants!