After weeks of procrastinating, it eventually became apparent that if Nico was ever going to get a sibling, Christian and I would have to bite the bullet and take a much dreaded trip to the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang. So we dropped the critters off at the pet store and Nico off at Ayi’s and spent Friday morning driving three and a half hours to the capitol of our province.
Unlike some of the other Consulates out there, like, say, the Guangzhou Consulate, which oversees all adoptions of Chinese orphans by American citizens, the Shenyang Consulate, wedged into a little barbed wire block with the Japanese Consulate, the Russian Consulate, and the North Korean Consulate, is a humble little place with a crazy amount of security.
Having learned my lesson on our two previous trips in the last two years, I pre-warned my dear consulate people that I would be arriving with a non-American. All of his information was entered into their little list. Still, when we arrived, we were greeted with a guard who glanced once at the Red cover on Christian’s passport and shook his head.
“He’s on the list,” I prompted. The guard when a step further by walking the passport inside the barbed fence to another guard inside the booth, who also shook his head. The first guard returned with the passport and shook his head once more. “They know he’s coming today. He’s on the list,” I insisted.
Guard one eyed me hesitantly before returning to guard two, who now obviously annoyed that we weren’t leaving, finally decided to pull out a booklet that was presumably “the list,” shuffled through it without much interest, made some notes, and we were finally waved in. It was an inauspicious beginning to what was actually an okay visit.
We had two tasks to complete on this adventure. The first was we to notarize more than a dozen separate documents, mostly mundane things like birth certificates, tax forms and whatnot. The second task was to file a document asking the U.S. government for permission to adopt. As part of this petition, we also had to have our fingerprints taken for an FBI background check. Fairly straight forward stuff for the most part. However, the Shenyang Consulate had never dealt with filing a petition for an adoption from a country that isn’t China. Makes sense since we’re in China and all, but it’s really a bad sign when you expect to be able to file a document with a certain office and the person working there asks, “So how are you going to get this to the Immigration office? Are you going to mail it?”
A bad feeling crept up my spine as I nervously pointed out that I’d been on the State Department and USCIS’s website and was under the impression the consulate was equipped to handle our petition, steeling myself for what I felt must surely be the inevitable denial and an insistence that I call USCIS when I get home.
However, the lovely government worker did no such thing. Instead she offered up, “Huh. We’ve never done this before. Let me just call the USCIS office in Beijing and see if we can accept it.” This was the beginning of a three and a half hour learning experience for everyone. USCIS was consulted several times. Signatures and sworn statements were done as well as a course in proper fingerprinting. Those government officials could have oh-so-easily turned us away, but instead they were game for a new adventure into bureaucratic paperwork, and it was awesome.
So thank you my little consulate, you guys rock. Though you really ought to do something about that fellow in charge of your list to get in.