International Adoption Guide

This week, there is a change in the address for I-800A applications. Starting immediately, please send your I-800A application package to the following address:

USCIS
Lock Box Facility
PO Box 299008
Lewisville, TX 75029

For families who have sent their I-800A application package to the address in Chicago recently, your documents have been forwarded to the correct facility in Lewisville, TX.

I got this comment from Christine and wanted to post this.

I want to clear up some confusion so your readers don’t think that a person with a BMI higher than 40 can adopt a child with Special Needs from China. The rules are the same in regards to BMI for a Non-special needs or special needs. There are exceptions sometimes made on the parents age if there is a hard to place child.

Congratulations on starting your new journey to your daughter.

That is correct. Although you are adopting a special needs child, you DO have to meet the BMI requirement, in majority of cases. I do have to mention that there are slight considerations that MAY happen. This is due to my own experience. Let me explain.

My Husband and I have had previous experience with deaf, diabetes, and paraplegic individuals. Since I was only 29BMI and my husband was 44BMI, we would have to “pre-qualify” for adopting a child with the conditions we were already exposed to. We received a letter from CCAA regarding the approval for identifying a child with those needs and that they would have to “approve” the match before we could continue the process. We did meet all other China Adoption rules except the BMI for my husband.

Each agency can “advocate” for you on your behalf but don’t count on it. It is very rare that they would do this and BUT they will consider each case on a one-by-one case.

Again, Christine is correct. In Majority of cases, the BMI will not be changed or modified. Ours was a special case but it does happen.

Hope this clarifies our situation. As an update to our search for our daughter, we decided to switch to the Russia Adoption program. That’s a whole set of different rules.

O.K.  I need the input.  I have a webpoll activated and need to find if you would watch news stories or feature stories on video.  I’ve also included the poll here.  Please help me out and just click your response and vote.

Thank you in advance for your help and I hope to have a video series started explaining the dossier process.

Lisa