leejcandle

Primarily because we live and work in the US, we don't have possibly months or more in time and effort to handle this ourselves in Nanning. We tried, to no avail, in 2006. My wife was in the process of formal adoption in 2003 when the turmoil of her divorce threw a wrench in the works. So as knloregon explains in his later post, we need competent, knowledgeable persons to help out.

Robert S.: You really hit the nail on the head with her character. She talks to the girl several times a week about her grades, and she in years past took care of some other orphans, boys her sons age, that are now in their 20s. Thanks for the support guys. :-)

Carl, PM sent. Thanks. :-)

knloregon, thanks for the suggestion. I'm starting my search.

It's frustrating. But my wife explained beforehand it would be complicated. When my wife and her ex divorced in 2003, living accomodations got complicated. So she sent the child to live with my mother and father inlaw. So now, changing the child's address registry would be complicated; my wife lived on her own for at least a year without the child (necessary). Then she's been here since Feb 2005. At some time, some other change was made to the child'n status (I don't have a handle on) which further complicated the registry issuse. From the standpoint of US rules, the 2 year rule may have been difficult to certify. Though the child has been with my wife or her family since birth, my wife had to live separately for the last few years. But the reason given by the last official (which I don't accept) was that there's no guarantee the US would allow the child in, so they didn't want to go through the hassle. They said for me to apply for the child here, get the ball rolling, then come back to China to work on their side. So though it will cost more money and time, I'll have to do what I can from here. We're trying to get this process going again. It's hard to believe it's been so long since I last posted about this. One big problem had been getting family members to get paperwork done. But now my wife tells me the birth certificate and residency certificate are in hand. We visited with her last January. My new avatar is a photo we took together. We talk to her regularly by phone; I just exchanged Chinese New Year and Valentine's day wishes with her. So given the earlier consensus that it's easier for my wife to adopt her, I want to go down that route again. But I feel I want to have someone there to drive the process for us. Depending on family (busy with jobs and their own kids) has been a hair-pulling exercise. I'm looking to find a lawyer in Nanning or Binyang to help us work out an adoption on my wife's behalf. Any recommendations, suggestions? Attorney or other competent agent we can contact? Thanks in advance. (Some photos and video from our January 2009 China trip.)

I think I'll go on VisaJourney to see how apps are coming out based on those timelines. If the Texas processing dates were truly to be believed, the apps transferred to California in July may have moved the date. Hard to say. Looks like the USCIS Vermont processing dates are bogus. There's a steady stream of approvals coming out since last January; the latest on 2008-01-09. Looks like they're taking 6 months to process, based on comments in the timelines. http://www.visajourney.com/timeline/liftli...ervice%20Center

I think I'll go on VisaJourney to see how apps are coming out based on those timelines. If the Texas processing dates were truly to be believed, the apps transferred to California in July may have moved the date. Hard to say.

Things are moving in the Texas Service Center, if not moving things elsewhere. A few days ago, I noticed the Processing Times page had been updated, and they were handling I-751s submitted April 19th 2007; curiously the same day my wife's was accepted. Then yesterday we got an email notice: our case has been transferred to the Vermont Service Center. So maybe they're starting to clear the logjam.

I just checked the VJ timelines again. Something's burning me up; a bunch of July-August submissions were transferred to California and processed in 2-3 months time. Submitted after ours, but completed 6 months ago. What happened to 1st come 1st served?

Well, we were also quite comfortable, up to the point where 6 months had passed, with no word about the 10 year card since biometrics. We're now biting our nails looking for something in the mail. Theoretically we have until July. But this makes my wife very uncomfortable, because it's unfinished business we have no control over. On the VJ timelines; the nice thing is the categories and sorting; one can focus on a particular service center, sort by date. Seeing that others since last January hadn't processed (assuming they'll update their data) reassured me it isn't just us. But my wife is losing lots of sleep over this seeming open-ended process.

Any updates? On the VisaJourney timelines, there's a bunch submitted starting last January that haven't been approved. http://www.visajourney.com/timeline/liftli...ervice%20Center

Some seem to have taken only 3 months. Others nearly a year. I wonder why the spread, some arriving later and approved ahead of others?

dnoblett, That's very helpful. Thanks.

The USCIS "Processing Times" web page was last updated Nov 14th, stating April 7th as the date of the applications being processed. Our receipt date and Biometrics date is in my sig. Anyone using Texas Service Center got their 10 year Removal of Conditions, applied since spring 2007?

There are plenty of movies available for you that way; and can be bought in US releases; Mandarin language with English subtitles. But there are some problems: Mandarin syntax is very different from English; often what's being said is reversed, might even have different parts of a sentence in different frames of video, the English and Mandarin parts of sentence can be in different frames. Without some basics and glossary, difficult to pick up much. Many times, the translation is far from literal; the English translation could be saying a totally different phrase from the Mandarin; so they don't associate. (I studied Japanese for some years, and I had lots of fun pointing out how subtitles were different from the spoken dialog; really funny sometimes once your listening comprehension is far enough along.) Some "period" movies (for example CrouchingTigerHiddenDragon) use archaic speech. Sometimes following along with both the English subtitles and holding the Chinese text in hand, I had a hard time finding some Chinese words in the dictionary, because they're not used in modern speech. Of course, there are many western movies with the same sort of challenge for a new speaker of English. Back to your original quest; most of my US releases of Mandarin language with English subtitled movies, I bought on Amazon. On the information pages, you can check for the language and subtitle options. More importantly, there's a category search; look for "Art House and International", then by "Original Language". Then amongst the titles offered, check each DVDs page for whether the original language is Mandarin or Cantonese. Sometimes both are available, and including English subtitles.