Our paperchasing days are officially over.  No, our dossier is not completely finished yet but I don’t have to generate or request any more documents. I sent our last 2 items for certification this morning (thank you Kendra for walking them through for us…send your gift requests).  Once I get those back, I will send the whole thing off for authentication.  Then, I will send our entire dossier off to our agency and begin the wait for a referral.

Let’s review how many attempts for each document gathered (just to prepare those in the beginning steps of the chase…I mistakenly believed one try would do it for each).  I believed I would have this all done in 30 days.  It ended up taking almost 4 months.

Marriage and birth certs – 1 (CA birth cert took almost eight weeks to receive and certify)

FBI ink fingerprints – 1

State Police Clearance –   Me 2; Steve 3

Employment letters – Me 2; Steve 5

Doctors letters – Me 5; Steve 5

Witness letters – 1 letter passed first try, other letter required 2 attempts

Name affidavit – Me 1; Steve 1

Homestudy – after initial corrections only 1

171H – received 6 days after submitting I600A!

Tip to avoid prolonging your paperchase?  Sign with an agency early.  I ended up having to re-do many documents already gathered to meet my agency’s standards because I started my paperchase before choosing an agency (was actually waiting for the one we wanted to begin taking new clients again).

I wrote a letter of thanks to our USCIS office to give them kudos for returning our 171H only 6 days after we submitted for it.  I hear so many others waiting weeks and months and I wanted to give kudos to a government office doing it right (it is a rather rare thing to find).