Fingerprinting for the Sixth Time

Yes, in just over a two year span, I've done six sets of fingerprints.

Yes, that's crazy.

Since we began this adoption journey, everything with the exception of the FBI approval has gone fairly smoothly. Not all of it perfectly but at least without too many hitches. But the FBI fingerprints make me almost hyperventilate.

In order to adopt from Bulgaria you must receive clearance from the FBI CJIS division in West Virginia. The state headquarters are not adequate. The clearance must originate from West Virginia. And this is not a one time deal, but a yearly ordeal . . . for me anyway. In order to receive that clearance you must send fingerprint cards to WV which, up until today, I believed could only be done in ink. My fingerprints are notoriously hard to get . . . okay maybe not notoriously . . . I mean it's not as if they're talking about it up in Washington, but they're hard to get . . . and not many people (read almost no one in the state of Texas is trained to correctly take ink fingerprints). So I've asked over and over if they could be done electronically, and over and over I was told "no".

After having another set of prints rejected because the quality was too low, I decided to go to APD headquarters in Austin, and get them done by someone who, hopefully, knew what they were doing. When I got there this morning the lady told me they don't do ink fingerprints any longer, but they do livescan which prints on a card just like ink. Cue premature meltdown. I'm good at those . . . premature meltdowns. I was almost certain that wouldn't work. But Patrick was there, and he told me to call the home study agency. I took it one step further, I called both the home study agency and the FBI. If you've been following this adoption journey for any amount of time you know that Patrick hates when I call the FBI. And at this point, the FBI may or may not also hate it when I call them. But call them I did, and both the FBI and the home study agency said that livescan would be fine, and so we did them.

Now, I don't want to jump the gun so to speak, but these fingerprints are done on the computer and then printed on the cards, and I think they turned out substantially better than anything I've done so far. I've already over-nighted them to WV, and I'm praying that I get a positive, timely response. We really need it because, we have to have our home study approved in order to apply to be fingerprinted by USCIS in August. If we don't get our USCIS approval done and sent to Bulgaria on time then we are removed from the waiting list. So, as you can tell, it's kind of important.

So that's where we stand. Our home study isn't approved yet because my we're waiting on my fingerprints. Once we have approval on those we're good to go.

Now, if you'd be so kind as to not tell Patrick how many government agencies I mentioned in this post . . .