BCIS fingerprint saga

The following describes your tax dollars at work. It is a sad, frustrating saga. Here's the story.

To adopt internationally requires you to be fingerprinted by several government agencies. We underwent fingerprinting for the FBI, ABI, and the Bureau of Citizenship and immigration (BCIS). The BCIS handles our child's immigration status. They were formerly known as the INS. After September 11, the INS was placed into the Department of Homeland Security under the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) and renamed BCIS.

The first time we worked with the BCIS was fall 2004. The process with the BCIS worked well without any complications. However, the fingerprints expire after a period of a year and you must get refingerprinted. To adopt requires active, valid prints. Ours are due to expire on February 22, 2006. Being the proactive & not waste time types, we mailed a check to the Atlanta BCIS regional office in December 2005 requesting we be refringerprinted. BCIS promptly mailed a receipt on December 27, 2005. Wonderful. Things were rolling. This is when everything broke.

After mailing the receipt, the next step was for BCIS to mail us appointment letters (one each for Jason and Wendy) to be fingerprinted at their office in Birmingham. We waited for a while and never received the letters. Meanwhile, we nervously draw closer to fingerprint expiration. After a month of waiting for the letters we called our homestudy agency (Villa Hope) in Birmingham to see if they had any BCIS contacts that could help us.

The answer was yes, they do have contacts. And yes, that contact did indeed find out what happened to the letters. The clerk at the Atlanta BCIS office mailed them to the wrong address!!!! DOH! Your tax dollars at work in the HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT.

After working out an appointment date of Saturday February 4 in Birmingham, BCIS said they would mail the letters to us again. They expected us to receive them on Tuesday. In addition, the appointment letters would be faxed to our agency in Birmingham.

Wednesday rolls around and we still don't have the letter. Our agency called us in the morning to followup with us. Once we informed them the letters still had not arrived, they faxed Wendy copies of the letters from BCIS.

Wahoo! Now we are making progress -- NOT! Wendy actually read the letters. There was an appointment letter for Wendy and another appointment letter for Wendy. Two letters for Wendy. No letter for Jason!

After calling Villa Hope -- again -- and Villa Hope called Atlanta -- again -- the BCIS folks faxed Villa Hope Jason's letter and Villa Hope faxed Jason's letter to Wendy. Now Jason and Wendy have their appointment letters.

Wednesday afternoon Wendy checks the mail. Guess what comes? An envelope from BCIS. Yes, it has appointment letters in it -- two for JASON. DOH!!?!?!?! I PITY DA FOOLS!!!

Your tax dollars at work...In the end Jason has 3 copies of the appointment letter for tomorrow and Wendy has 2. Our appointment is at 9:00. We'll see what happens from there...

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Sunday evening, February 5, followup. We arrived at the BCIS office in Birmingham around 8:45 Saturday morning. Things went well. We were in and out quickly. The staff in Birmingham is prompt and friendly. They kid around a lot which made it a much better experience compared to the DMV, for example. Both times we've been to the BCIS office in Birmingham, we've been treated nicely. See -- I can issue kudos when the are deserved...

Now the fingerprints go back to Atlanta for processing. We'll need an updated I-171 form returned reflecting our new fingerprint expiration. We'll take that form to the US Embassy in Moscow when we go on trip #2. Hopefully they return it quickly and this is the last BCIS rant from us for a long while!!!