We received great news this week from China! We received our Travel Approval and our tentative travel date is Oct. 23. We were really excited to be able to go pick up Hai Yan so soon.
Then we received bad news from the IL Immigration office. We had been waiting on a form that we had to redo this summer when it expired. We had sent all the paperwork in back in June, and were expecting to receive the approved form anytime. Instead, this week we received a letter telling us that our social worker did not get the necessary paperwork in before the expiration deadline, and that Immigration quit processing our request.
This paper is necessary to bring Hai Yan into the US, and we can't even make any appointments in China without it. So, our agency said that if we don't get it by next week, that we won't be able to travel in October. The worst part is that if Immigration does not process our current petition, we'll have to reapply under new requirements, and the processing time for those is running 3-4 months.
So, needless to say, we're really upset about this mistake, and we're doing everything we can to try to persuade the Immigration office to help us. We've written to many people in the office, as well as congress people. Unfortunately, our agency and social worker have told us that this particular Chicago office has a reputation of not expediting requests, and not budging on processing times.
We feel like we've been on a roller coaster this week. Please pray that we would have patience during this time, and that Hai Yan would be well taken care of until we can pick her up. It's so difficult for us to think of her just waiting in China, while we wait here for a piece of paper to be approved.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment