I-800 Approval!!! April 19, 2012

Today we received word that our I-800 has officially been approved by the USCIS. Now we have to wait for the USCIS to send the approval to the National Visa Center who then "cables" the approval to the Chinese Consulate in Guangzhou, China. With modern technology (email) you would think that this would take a day or two. However, Holt tells us that it can take up to 2 weeks to receive the National Visa Center confirmation letter and another 2 weeks for the Consulate to receive the same (even though their "cable" is a simple email). We did read in the Rumor Queen blog that you can speed up the process by a week or so by emailing the NVC and requesting an electronic copy of their cable letter to the Consulate, so we immediately did the same. BTW, Rumor Queen is well known in China adoption circles as a woman who has a lot of contacts, time and talent in making projections on when parents will receive their referrals, current trends etc. She was a lifeline to many parents through this extended wait--in fact her blog first posted that parents with a Log In Date (LID) (date your dossier was logged in Beijing) of 8-31-06 would receive their referrals around the end of March which led to a mini celebration in our bedroom-No not that kind of celebration-when we read her blog at 4:00 a.m. on March 27th when I was up early that morning. (her blog is http://chinaadopttalk.com/category/referral-rumors/ for those who are interested) Well, another hurdle overcome. Just a few more to go.........