IT'S ABOUT TIME!

Today we finally received Amanda's passport. We applied for her passport way back in mid-January. We even paid extra $$$ to have it extradited! Soowan has been calling the Passport Offices down in Houston for the past month in a half and all they had to say was, "The passport is still being processed."

We did not apply for a passport because we're planning to leave the country or anything like that(although somewhere far and tropic sounds very nice at this moment). It's because we can't file our taxes and claim Amanda as a dependent until we have a U.S. Social Security Number for her. Since we did not get her passport on time we had to file an extension, something we've never had to do before. It's really not a big deal to have to file an extension, but it has everything to with dealing and waiting on ANY US government agency to get ANYTHING done... THAT is the headache. I'm serious!

When we finalized we received Amanda's U.S. birth certificate, but apparently that's not good enough to prove U.S. residency to get a SS#. So we were told to get a U.S. Passport (to prove she's a US citizen... Umm... HELLO... When we finalized she became a U.S. citizen!!!) then apply for a SS#.

Tomorrow we will head off to the Social Security office and get Amanda a SS#. This will help out tremendously with filing claims with our health insurance agency as well. It has been such a pain that I don't have a SS# for her,to write down when sending in a claim and then have to go through the whole shmeal of "We adopted her from South Korea and we do not have her SS# yet... Yada...Yada...Yada."

Our next and last step of paperwork (even though our adoption has been finalized and Amanda is ALREADY an official U.S. citizen already) is to apply for a COC (Certificate of Citizenship). In all honesty I'm not sure why we need this, but we've been told it's good to have. I think it's all because the left hand of our government has no idea what the right hand is doing, so this covers all areas in between to prove Amanda's U.S. citizenship. I think it has something to do with the government will only recognize Amanda as a legal resident (which is different than being a U.S. citizen) if she does not have a COC. WHATEVER!

So it's HAPPY-HAPPY-JOY-JOY time (NOT!) once again. I loath the USCIS office here in Dallas. They are slow as molasses and I seriously don't think anyone there knows how to do their job. And it's not just me! Other international adoptive families in the DFW area share my sentiments. ;0) OK vent is over. YAY for passport... Boo we need to deal with the USCIS again.

It's comforting to know all this doesn't matter to our Heavenly Father. We are his children without any formal paperwork, stamp of approval, etc. PRAISE GOD!!!


For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
~Philippians 3:20