We received our form today that allows us to get our fingerprints done for our FBI background check! And before you ask, the answer is yes - this is a 2nd and completely different background check than the one the Texas DPS is conducting.
You may remember the problems we had with USCIS several months ago. Well, our homestudy was mailed to the Dallas office of USCIS in January, but our original application was sitting in the pending homestudy file in the Tulsa office. We e-mailed the Dallas office back on Feb 13th asking them to track down our application from the Tulsa office.
A week went by, and we heard nothing, so I e-mailed the Tulsa office asking them to track down our homestudy. Thankfully, they e-mailed me back the same day and said they would get the homestudy forwarded to them so that they could process it. At the same time, they also said they would mail us our fingerprint instruction form. We weren't holding our breath waiting for it, so it was to our complete surprise we received it today (only 3 business days after we heard from them). I am surprised I didn't pass out when Brandon called me at work to tell me that we had received it.
So now we have 90 days to go get our fingerprints taken so that they can complete a separate background check (because obviously one isn't good enough - yeah, right).
And in case you were wondering, the Dallas office e-mailed me back 2 days after the Tulsa office responded to me to let me know that Tulsa would be doing the processing. Gee, thanks for the "news"!
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Government Conspiracy
Brandon and I had to send in finger prints to the Texas Dept of Public Safety for them to do a background check on us. We mailed the cards to them on Jan 2nd. We were told that it takes them 2-3 weeks to process. So on week 4, I decided to call them to see what was going on. They informed me that they didn't have us in the system yet which meant 1 of 2 things:
(1) they had not received them back from the dept that does the actual check yet, or
(2) they had received them but they had not yet been put into the system.
So they told me to call back the following week.
That was 2 weeks ago, so I called again this past Friday. The lady looked our names up and said that they had sent everything back to us because payment was not included. Well I did include the $32 payment in the form of a money order, which I guess they lost. So in order to track the money order down, I have to pay $15 and that takes a month to process. So rather than wait, I sent the forms back yesterday with a personal check this time (easier to track, even though the first time I was told a money order was preferred).
Since this is the 2nd government agency that has basically messed up our paperwork, you can only imagine how livid I was at this point. So livid, in fact, that on Saturday when we got the documents back from them in the mail, I wrote both Texas Senators and our US Congressman to tell them how messed up the process is. Doubt it does any good, but it made me feel better at the time.
After mailing the package back to them via FedEx last night, I met Brandon at our favorite Chinese restaurant. We talked a little more about the phone conversations that I had with DPS trying to track down our money order and that led to a discussion on the incompetence of government agencies, which got our blood boiling a little more. At the end of dinner, Brandon opens her fortune cookie to find not 1, but 3 fortunes in it. 2 of them read as follows:
"Don't give up. Your problem gets better next month."
"A short stranger will soon enter your life with blessing to share."
I'm not saying we believe in fortune cookies, but it is kind of ironic that we got those on a day like that. The good news is that it had us laughing and our respective blood pressures went back to normal.
(1) they had not received them back from the dept that does the actual check yet, or
(2) they had received them but they had not yet been put into the system.
So they told me to call back the following week.
That was 2 weeks ago, so I called again this past Friday. The lady looked our names up and said that they had sent everything back to us because payment was not included. Well I did include the $32 payment in the form of a money order, which I guess they lost. So in order to track the money order down, I have to pay $15 and that takes a month to process. So rather than wait, I sent the forms back yesterday with a personal check this time (easier to track, even though the first time I was told a money order was preferred).
Since this is the 2nd government agency that has basically messed up our paperwork, you can only imagine how livid I was at this point. So livid, in fact, that on Saturday when we got the documents back from them in the mail, I wrote both Texas Senators and our US Congressman to tell them how messed up the process is. Doubt it does any good, but it made me feel better at the time.
After mailing the package back to them via FedEx last night, I met Brandon at our favorite Chinese restaurant. We talked a little more about the phone conversations that I had with DPS trying to track down our money order and that led to a discussion on the incompetence of government agencies, which got our blood boiling a little more. At the end of dinner, Brandon opens her fortune cookie to find not 1, but 3 fortunes in it. 2 of them read as follows:
"Don't give up. Your problem gets better next month."
"A short stranger will soon enter your life with blessing to share."
I'm not saying we believe in fortune cookies, but it is kind of ironic that we got those on a day like that. The good news is that it had us laughing and our respective blood pressures went back to normal.
Friday, February 1, 2008
One Approval Down, One More To Go!
We received word that we were officially approved by our adoption agency as an adoptive family! This is the first big milestone that we've been working towards. We still have a long way to go, but we know at least feel like we've gotten somewhere.
The next steps are as follows:
1) We are still waiting to receive our criminal background check from the Texas Dept of Public Safety. We hope to have that in the first week or two of February as that is part of our dossier that has to go to Russia. (FYI - a dossier is all the important documents that Russia needs in order to approve us)
2) We just got a packet of documents that our dossier service sent back to us to have signed and notarized. So glad that we hired Kate to help us with our dossier because that's one less thing we have to worry about getting right. She basically checks our work and organizes everything. Well worth every penny to have a few less headaches in a process that is chocked full of them.
3) Send our dossier to the state of Texas for a process called apostille. From what I understand, they just go through our documents to make sure that all the notarys we used are valid.
4) Once the dossier is back from the state, we send it to Russia for their approval. Once we are approved by them, it's supposedly about a 9-18 month wait.
Thanks to everyone who is keeping tabs on us. Please keep the thoughts, prayers and well wished coming because we sure need them.
Oh, almost forgot - we still need to go get our 3rd shot in the series of TB2 shots, plus a couple others (like one for menongitis, I think). Yeah for us!!!
The next steps are as follows:
1) We are still waiting to receive our criminal background check from the Texas Dept of Public Safety. We hope to have that in the first week or two of February as that is part of our dossier that has to go to Russia. (FYI - a dossier is all the important documents that Russia needs in order to approve us)
2) We just got a packet of documents that our dossier service sent back to us to have signed and notarized. So glad that we hired Kate to help us with our dossier because that's one less thing we have to worry about getting right. She basically checks our work and organizes everything. Well worth every penny to have a few less headaches in a process that is chocked full of them.
3) Send our dossier to the state of Texas for a process called apostille. From what I understand, they just go through our documents to make sure that all the notarys we used are valid.
4) Once the dossier is back from the state, we send it to Russia for their approval. Once we are approved by them, it's supposedly about a 9-18 month wait.
Thanks to everyone who is keeping tabs on us. Please keep the thoughts, prayers and well wished coming because we sure need them.
Oh, almost forgot - we still need to go get our 3rd shot in the series of TB2 shots, plus a couple others (like one for menongitis, I think). Yeah for us!!!
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