171H Update *Edited*

http://www.gopetition.com/online/17673.html
This is the online petition that people can sign asking our Senator to personally call USCIS herself rather than have her aide call. Jody, a fellow parent in our agency is REALLY good at this stuff and this is her idea to get this ball rolling. Please take a minute and sign the petition for us.

I had a busy day fighting the 171H fight. Kathy Boyer emailed me Monday night and gave me the name of Patricia Torres at the SA USCIS office. I called Torres Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon, and this morning and left a message each time. I called Congressman Carter’s office again and left a message with them asking about the case. I called our agency to ask them for any other ideas and C gets on the phone and tells me she was trying to avoid telling me, but it looks like we are past our window of opportunity to get our 171H in time for court. She said she is surprised that the Russia office hasn’t been calling her asking where the paper is. She explained that after USCIS gives us our approval, they send the paperwork to New Hampshire via courier and then onto Russia. They used to send a cable but they don’t do that anymore. She also said that normally the judges want the paperwork on their desks before the court date and that it can take 2-3 weeks to get the paperwork there and we are just about out of the window to make this happen. I asked her if I could have until the end of the week.

I called Torres again and left another message explaining that our court date looks like it will get cancelled if we don’t get our paperwork. When you call the SA office it tells you to put in the extension and then dials that person for you or you have the choice to put in the first three letters of the person’s name you are calling. I decided to just start punching in names to see if I could get a live person…Smith; user not found, Brown; user not found, and then I remembered how it seemed that everyone at that office was Hispanic when we were there in January so I tried Villanueva and the phone started ringing! The lady answered and I just started spilling my guts telling her everything I could as fast as possible and she said she would call the adoption department and find out who handles the paperwork but she didn’t think Torres did it anymore. She assured me that she would call me back.

After that a gentleman that has used our agency and has some connections in Washington called me at C’s request and started giving me ideas and phone numbers to try. I ended up calling Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s office and found a very sympathetic ear from a lady named Carolyn that handles these situations with USCIS. She said she would immediately call them and find out what is going on and see if they can get the ball rolling for us. In the meantime I sent another email to the SA office and literally begged them to help us and explained that court looks like it will be cancelled if we don’t get our paperwork.

Around 2:00 p.m. I get a phone call from the SA USCIS office and the lady says that Torres had asked her to call me and let me know that she is interviewing all day today and tomorrow and won’t be able to get to our case. I said, “Oh you must be calling since I filed a complaint with the Congressman’s office and the Senator’s office.” She said, “No, you got a hold of our HR person and she called us.” That must have been the Villanueva number I punched in earlier in the day. The lady calling did act a little surprised to hear I had contacted my congressman and senator and said the congressmen go through another office that she figured would be calling her soon. I started pleading with her and told her I was begging her for help and that I was asking her as a human being to another human being for help. She kept giving me the standard answer that there are other people in front of me, blah, blah, blah. I explained again that we submitted everything back in December and she said we submitted an incomplete home study and therefore when we sent in our addendum it put us at the back of the line. I told her our home study wasn’t incomplete that they just wanted our child abuse clearance date written inside the home study instead of being stapled to the home study and that we weren’t omitting information, they were just being technical on issues. She told me that if Torres wants it a certain way then we have to do it a certain way and that it now puts us at the end of the line.

At this point I start to cry and cry hard. I let it all out on this lady and told her all about our 6 years of infertility and how doctors have never been able to find anything wrong with either of us but we can’t get pregnant. I told her all about DHL losing our dossier and having to redo everything. I told her all about Artem and how he is sitting in a Russian orphanage and rocks himself to self-soothe and needs to be home. I explained all about the plane tickets, apartment reservations, tourist visas, everything that will cost us money to be redone. I told her that Artem will be 17 months old when he comes home and if they cancel court and put it off we will have to redo our I600A because it states we can bring in a child 18 months or younger and he would be too old according to the paperwork. At this point I was crying and speaking in a pitch that only dogs can distinguish and I asked her, “What would you do if you were me?” She told me she couldn’t answer that question and said our agency should not have let us travel without our 171H. I explained to her that our paperwork had been in their office for 2 months at that point and in the past the SA office has always been so efficient and fast that they had no reason to doubt that this time would be any different. Again I asked her what she would do and she said she couldn’t answer that question. My crying turned into a cry/hyperventilate and I just told her “I’m begging you to help me” and asked her if she had any idea when it would be processed. I apologized for “unloading” all of this on her and told her we are so close to bringing our son home after all these years and I needed her help. She sounded like she was softening a little and told me she couldn’t answer that but she would pass along my concern to Torres. She said our case is “special” but said there are lots of special cases out there from people needing help. I told her I understood that and said I didn’t think a lot of people out there were facing court in 19 days and facing having it cancelled. She continued to give me the standard response that Torres is interviewing, she’ll pass along my concerns and she couldn’t tell me how long it would be. I don’t know if I got anywhere with her. I did get her name and unfortunately for her my cell phone has caller id so I’ve got her number now.

About an hour later the Congressman’s office called to let me know that someone from the SA office finally returned their call and told them their system was down and they couldn’t look up our status but as soon as the system came up they would call the Congressman’s office back.

If court does get cancelled, I’m not sure if we can get an April court date or if we would go into May. There is a Russian holiday in May that would push us back further and then we would have to amend our home study AGAIN and redo our paperwork with USCIS to raise the age of the child we are permitted to bring in the country.

So that’s where we stand. All I can hope for is Torres’ heart is softened and she gets our 171H issued. I’m also hoping our judge is enjoying their vacation and is not around to notice that our 171H is not on their desk. I have no idea why we are being tested like this. I don’t know how much more we have to endure to try to become parents. If we hadn’t met Artem already I would throw in the towel and say, “I quit.” This is really more than someone should have to put up with. But we’ve already met this little guy and fallen in love with him and now all I can do is fight my hardest to get him home.