We finally received the last piece of our paperwork - the Immigration approval. We are approved to bring 1 child to the U.S., and this approval is valid until August 2008, 15 months after our fingerprints were taken. Many people on the adoption board reported a very bad experience with the USCIS (US citizenship and immigration service), but I can't say anything but good about the Buffalo office. The officer in charge of adoption personally called us to tell the good news about our approval.
Our next step is to have the notary's signatures on all our documents certified at the county clerk's office where the notary is qualified, and then go to Albany to have the documents apostilled at the Department of State.
And then the million dollars question - who will submit our dossier to the State Department of Adoptions in Kiev? We are still trying to find the connections to help us there. Stay tuned!
Hi there. Our names are Oleg and Nataliya, we were born in Odessa, Ukraine and immigrated to upstate NY in 1996. We are high school sweethearts and have been married for 21 years. We have 2 wonderful bio kids - 20-year old son Alex and a 6-year old daughter Victoria. We started our international adoption journey in September 2006, and in January 2008 we finally brought home our 10 (now 11)-year daughter Rachel from our hometown Odessa in Ukraine.