Case Family in Hong Kong

We are currently in the process to adopt our son, Cristian Javier, from Guatemala. As you know, the international adoption process with Guatemala has recently seen difficult times and has left many families and would-be adoptive children waiting to be united. We are one such family and Javier is one such baby boy. However, as we write this letter to you, we are no longer awaiting the Guatemalan government, but the U.S. government.

We began the process to adopt Javier (by submitting form I-600A) in February 2007 and were approved for this adoption in July 2007 (by receipt of form I-171H, valid for 18 months from date of issuance). Now, 17 months after filing that first form, we remain in process to adopt our son.

Currently residing in Hong Kong (while my husband pursues a PhD), we arrived in the U.S. on July 8 for a 6-week stay—during which time we were expecting to make a trip to Guatemala to pick up our son. We found out on July 9 that the U.S. embassy in Guatemala had emailed us requesting an update on our fingerprints, and the subsequent issuance of a new I-171H form, indicating the updated fingerprints. This, they said, was the only remaining artifact necessary before we could travel and meet with them to be united with our son and bring him back home with us!!! We went as early as possible, on July 10, 2008 and had our biometrics (i.e. fingerprints) redone. This involved writing a letter of request for one free update on fingerprints. On this letter, we placed our current Hong Kong address. The attending officer looked at both our letter and our file and changed this address to align with our prior U.S. address. We didn’t think anything of it and went on to be fingerprinted. We then emailed an adjudications officer with USCIS, Louisville office to ask if she could please expedite processing on our case, as our son was ready to pick up—awaiting only the updated I-171H, detailing updated fingerprints. In this email, we asked if she could please send the updated form to our current U.S. mailing address. She replied in email format asking about our prior mailing address and if we were still living at that residence. We replied that we were not. Finally, we received an email from her saying that we would need an updated home study in order to continue. On July 15, 2008 we went into the USCIS office to meet with adjudication officer. We tried to explain our situation of currently residing outside of the U.S., and while in the U.S. staying with and receiving mail at our parents’ address. She basically told us our case was out of her jurisdiction and should now be in the hands of the U.S. embassy in Hong Kong. She said they would file our case away, not throw it away, but it was basically no longer the concern of her office. We had no idea that our adoption process would go on for 17+ months and that our home study, which is actually a document that details who a family is, not merely the physical layout of a home, would be invalidated by our moving. We were unaware that this would disable us from adopting our little boy who is now nearly 11 months old; we received his referral when he was just over one week old. He has been a part of our lives, though not physically living with us, for nearly 11 months. He has a new birth certificate and passport with our family name, Case. He is awaiting our arrival in a children’s home in Solola, Guatemala. We want nothing more than to go and pick him up and end this very arduous process in order to start our lives together! We plead with you to pray on our son’s behalf.

Our request of you: please pray on our behalf and that of our son. As stated above, we have spoken with and met with the USCIS adjudications officer. Our case is currently in her hands, and that of her superiors. We ask you to pray that God will intervene in our son and our family’s situation. Please pray that God will use Congressman John Yarmuth and Senator Mitch McConnel to be our advocates convincing the INS to update our case with the new biometrics, concurrently issuing a new and updated I-171H form. Once this form is in the hands of the U.S. embassy in Guatemala, we can bring our son home. We are not underhanded people; in fact, our honesty in this process is what has us in this situation in the first place! Please pray the USCIS officials understand that we are the same family they approved nearly one year ago! Our approval still stands. Changing homes does not mean changing values, beliefs, character, and ability to parent children, all aspects which a home study is designed to assess.