Prema's Passort Finally Arrived

It will soon be 14 months since Prema arrived in America at the Chicago Airport with me. We entered the country with a huge stack of papers that I gave the Immigration Officer for her file. I was told that in 90 days her green card would arrive in the mail. Still to this day we have never seen her green card. In October 2006 Prema and I went to the Immigration Office in Tampa to get the needed green card for various legal reasons. There was no record of her ever entering the country. The entire stack of paperwork I brought in with me was lost and never entered in the computer. However, I was told not to worry because they would still give me a green card. It too was supposed to arrive in 90 days and still has never come. In November Prema's adoption was finalized making her an immediate American Citizen. In January we went back to Immigration to apply for Prema's Certificate of Naturalization for any future need of varification that she is a citizen through adoption. We were told that we didn't really need the certificate, but that instead we should just go and get a social security card and American passport. We didn't follow their advice and applied for the certificate anyway which we hope to receive in 9 months. In April as we began to fill out our taxes we realized that we were unable to claim Prema as a child and get our adoption credit unless we had a social security number or a green card number. This was a problem because we had not applied for the passport or social security number because both applications required the green card number that we never had received. We decided to try and apply for the social security card anyway (in person) and we were told that we could not apply since we did not have a valid visa for her and thus needed an American Passport. So two days later we applied in person for the American Passport and much to our surprise it was accepted even without the green card number. We were told however that it would take 8-12 weeks to get the passport. So we filed an extension on our taxes in order to buy us time to get a social security number. Finally yesterday Prema's passport arrived. It took 12 weeks and 5 days but it did arrive. Now we can apply for the social security number and pay our taxes and not have to deal with the United States government again in regards to Prema's adoption. Hallelujah!! Her passport is pretty fancy too. Our government has updated it's look.

It makes you wonder how many other people are walking around American with no record of their entry....hmmmm. And with how confusing this entire process has been filling out all the paperwork properly, I am certainly glad there was no langauge barrier. I can't imagine what others are going through as they try to find their way through the mazes of our Immigration system.