Hope this is a good week! Come on I-171h!

Can't believe it's already Sunday evening. Just finshed watching the Soprano's (gotta love it!) and I had a need to post before bed. This week will be busy at work so I will not have a ton of extra time to post. I'm recovering from a bad cold and my productivity was below average last week. Need to make up for it this week. As you can see from our timeline, we are *simply* waiting on our I-171h. For those of you readers unfamiliar with this term (as I was 3 months ago!), it is essentially the US govt's approval to adopt a child from another country. We have been waiting a glorious 24 days for this which I genuinely believe is too long. I have posted an article below that gives some insight into my thinking here. The Philadelphia USCIS offce has one woman who processes these petitions. Ironically enough, I contacted her on the 15th of May because our tracking # wasn't working. Her voicemail said: "Today is Friday May 4th and I will be out of the office until May 29th. " I thought, great, as much as I respect our govt workers I just thought it funny that she was on vacation for the whole month of May! Thankfully, there was a gentleman filling in for her-and though he accepted my call-- he did not give me any information on when I could expect to receive my approval and told me that the tracking numbers don't work and haven't in a long time. Hmmmm. . .perhaps they should consider taking that part out of the letter (novel idea!). Anyhow, I contacted this woman on 6/1-- thinking she'd be refreshed from a month of vaca. She was abrupt but she did tell me that my case was received, on her desk, and would be processed within 6 weeks of 5/11/07. I did feel better after this brief conversation in which I repeatedly thanked her and told her how appreciative I was of her time (hey- hoping that would get me some bonus points!). At the very least we now have a more tangible timeframe in which to expect this precious little piece of paper. And, I can assure you, when we receive it, I will not hide my excitement. This little piece of paper will get us on the referral list for a baby boy! The second (and I do mean second!) we receive it I will fax it to our wonderful adoption coordinator, Natalia, and we will officially be waiting parents. Ahh- can't wait! Anyhow, say a prayer for us that we will receive it soon. I am secretly hoping it comes before the 14th- that would be a great Father's day gift for Rich! :-) Sweet dreams to all and I will post soon-- and as soon as I receive it! Goodnight.

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USCIS ARTICLE

In 2005 the US State Department says they processed 21,895 orphans into the U.S.
The USCIS site shows that they have 75 offices that process I-600A applications.
21,895 divided by 75 is 292, barely more than one per business day. But, let’s say that 30 of these offices only account for about 60 applications and the rest have to process everyone else.
That would mean that 45 offices are processing 21,835 applications per year. That is still only 485 applications a year per office. If you figure a month of vacation time and another two weeks of holiday time we are left with 230 working days per year. That is 2.1 applications per day. So, WHY ARE SOME OF THEM TAKING THREE OR FOUR MONTHS TO PROCESS THEM? Twenty minutes to read through the homestudy, ten minutes to check off that everything else that is needed is included, and thirty minutes to do whatever is needed to get it entered into the system and the information sent to GZ and the I-171H ready to mail. That’s an hour. But let’s say it takes two hours, they should still be able to get 4 a day out the door!
Sorry for the screaming, but this is outrageous to me. We hear sob stories of there only being one person who processes them in some offices. Well, if they only need to process two a day to keep up then I should hope that they only have one person assigned to this job. But since they are behind, maybe they should put another person or two on the job to help get caught up?
If they get 485 applications per year at that office, then that is $264,325 per year coming into that one office in I-600A fees. Subtract out the cost of one office (or maybe just a cubicle), salary for one employee, and stamps for 485 letters and that is still quite an income generator. Especially when you multiply it by 45 offices. I think they should be able to afford to put another person on the job so they can get caught up.
This entry was posted on Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 8:53 am and is filed under I-171H. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.