We Have Legal's

What does this mean? Well legals are the paper work that starts the process to bring our daughter home. The first thing we received is the I-600. The I-600 is a 2 page form that is a Petition to Classify an Orphan as an Immediate Relative. Our I-600 has been turned into our agencies Portland branch office. They will be filing it for us with The United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) which is a branch of Home Land Security. The USCIS also handled our finger prints and background checks along with our I-600a (also known as the Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition).

Now we wait for our I-600 to be approved.

After our I-600 application is approved, USCIS will notify us of approval. After approval our file (which has been growing with every document we submit) will be sent to the National Visa Center (NVC). In April of 1994, the Department of State opened a permanent Immigrant Visa processing facility at the National Visa Center (NVC) in Portsmouth, NH. The NVC will log our I-600 In and Out and we will be assigned an SEO number (the SEO is the case number).

After the NVC logs us out they will send our file to the US embassy in Seoul, Korea. The US embassy in Seoul, Korea will send a packet of paperwork known as the P3 to our agency in Korea. This packet /P3 needs to be completed by our agency in Korea and then returned to the US embassy in Korea.

In Korea an application for our child's Emigration Permit (EP) will be submitted. The Korean ministry will review the EP application and approve it. Once our EP has been approved, our agency in Korea will file for our child's travel certificate this is similar to a passport.

After our agency in Korea has obtained both our child's Emigration Permit approval and our child's Travel Certificate, the agency will then schedule our child for a Visa Physical. Visa Physicals are done by a non-agency doctor at our agencies clinic or at a local hospital. The Visa Physicals are typically scheduled once a month.

After the Visa Physical our agency in Korea will return the P3 packet with all the necessary documentation to the US embassy. At this point the US embassy will set an embassy appointment and a visa interview will be scheduled.

Our daughter does not have to physically attend the embassy appointment or actually be interviewed for the visa interview. Once those two things are done we will receive the call that we have been waiting for since we started this process. The call that tells us our daughter is ready to leave Korea and come home. At this time our plan is for me to travel alone to South Korea, stay between 3 to 5 days and bring our daughter home. We will keep the blog up to date as we enter and complete each of the above stages.