We hope you'll find some commonly asked questions to our adoption process - the how, what, whys of a very complicated system. Thank you for being a part of it with us.
Why Adoption
Children have a right to grow up within a family. For some children who are unable to stay with their birth family, this is a positive way forward.
What is international adoption like from Korea?
Children have been adopted from Korea since the mid 1950's, when many children placed for adoption were bi-racial children fathered by U.S. military personnel during and after the Korean War. Most children available for adoption today are placed by unwed mothers who are concerned about the stigma against children who are born out of wedlock.
Korea now places the 5th largest number of children with American families. Typically, infants are relinquished at birth and live with a foster family until they're adopted. New regulations in Korea require a 5 month attempt to place an infant within the country so children may be slightly older by the time they join an international family.
Timeline
What's happened so far?
1/1/07 - 4/30/07 - finalize research and preliminary adoption application 5/4/07 - East Meets West adoption conference in Dallas 5/15/07 - mail final adoption application to Holt International 5/31/07 - we're accepted by Holt to begin the adoption process 6/8/07 - first fingerprinting appointment 6/9/07 - parenting class modules 1 & 2 6/25/07 - first medical exam 7/16/07 - second fingerprinting appointment
12/8/09 - first phone call from our social worker with news of a baby boy
12/9/09 - finalization begins on the match for Henry Min-wu McKeon! 7/17/07 - CPR and AED class (for fun) 7/20/07 - Tim's second fingerprinting appointment 7/26/07 - First aid class (for fun) 7/27/07 - Second medical exam 7/27/07 - Received confirmation that file is complete and we can begin our home study! 8/17/07 - Police Clearance 9/4/07 - Our 2nd Anniversary and we officially meet China's marriage requirement. 9/11/07 - First home study meeting 9/19/07 - Second home study meeting 10/2/07 - USCIS appointment to file I-600A 10/8 & 10/9/07 - Our biometric fingerprinting appointments 10/12/07 - receive home study from social worker 11/8/07 - receive China Program approval 11/12/07 - send home study to Masha for dossier 11/13/07 - walk home study into USCIS office 11/29/07 - receive I171-H from USCIS 12/4/07 - documents back from state of CA for certification 12/14/07 - We are Dossier To China! 1/10/07 - Learned our LID date is 12/19/07
6/07 - Attended a Holt picnic and discussed with our social worker our options for changing countries as our frustrations with the China timelines stretched from 2 years to a 4 year wait
9/10/08 - We decide to officially change to the Korean Adoption Program
10/17/08 - USCIS is notified of country change and given updated home study to complete our immigration file. Request for re-fingerprinting is entered.
12/8/08 - first phone call notifying us of a baby boy
12/9/08 - finalization on the match of Henry Min-wu
12/11/08 - We begin the daunting visa paperwork
2/18/09 - Our social worker does an updated homestudy due to our move
2/27/09 - We submit our I-600 we updated homestudy to USCIS
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