Canada Here We Come

Even though our social worker told us to go ahead and get the NBI clearance done, I emailed our agency this week to find out if there was any possible reason that we really needed to, because I was so not looking forward to doing it.  I was really hoping Wide Horizons would email back that we absolutely do not need it, because that is what they told us to begin with.  Well, they said to go ahead and “try” to get it done, because as of right now the USCIS is not accepting applications that just have a letter from ICAB attached stating that the Philippines does not have a child abuse registry.  They are saying it is not good enough and that they want the NBI clearance done.  Our agency is hoping they will relent on that eventually, but who knows when that will be, so they are still telling people not to get it done.  I think they told me to go ahead and do it, first just to see if it can be done (they seem to think that it can only be done in person in the Philippines) and second because they realize (as I made sure to point out in my email to them) how extremely unhappy I would be if it turned out that we did need it and didn’t have it when we could have been spending the last couple of months working on getting it done.  

I have done a lot of research on the internet on how exactly to go about getting this done.  They sure don’t make it easy to find the information.  What I found out is that if you live close to a Philippine Consulate than it is pretty easy to do, but if you don’t then you are basically screwed.  If you live close to one than all you need to do is bring in a passport size photo of yourself and a check for $25.  They have you fill out the application and then fingerprint you and sign and stamp your application.  You then mail it to the NBI in Manila with a certified check for $4.  That’s it-pretty easy I would say.  Now if you are unfortunate and don’t live close to a consulate than you have to mail in a request for the application and fingerprint form(certified mail $10) and wait around to receive it.  Then you take that to the police department to get your fingerprints done($15).  Next you have to take it to get notarized, but that is not good enough, you also have to then mail it(certified mail $10) to your secretary of state to get the notary certified($15).  Then you have to mail(certified mail $10) everything back to the consulate to get authenticated($25) and then they mail it back to you with their stamp of approval.  You then mail everything to the NBI in Manila($4 plus whatever certified shipping is).  I don’t have a clue how long all of this would take to get done and I don’t really want to find out.

Unfortunately for us, we do not live close to a consulate.  The closest one is in Vancouver, Canada which is 2 hours away, but we don’t know if we can get it done there because we are not officially under their jurisdiction.  We are under the jurisdiction of the consulate in San Francisco which is 16+ hours away.  My brother just happens to be on a business trip in San Francisco this week, so I had him pick up the application and fingerprint form for us.  That will at least take care of the first step.  We decided yesterday that we are going to go to Canada on Monday to see if there is any way they will let us complete it there.  That would save us so much time, work, and money.  I don’t know how important this jurisdiction thing is, but I am praying that it doesn’t matter for the NBI clearance.  

If the Canada plan doesn’t work out then we may just try getting the application filled out and fingerprints done and then mailing it to the NBI in Manila.  On their website it never said anything about all the other steps, I found that out on the consulate websites.  Then if that doesn’t work we will have to go back and complete all the steps.  I guess we will have time to work on all the other steps while we are waiting for our response to come back from Manila.  Anyway, that is our plan for now.  I guess we will just see how things go.  Nothing has been easy with this adoption, so I am not expecting this to go smoothly either.  If the Vancouver Consulate turns us down at least it won’t be a wasted trip.  We are planning some fun things to do while we are there.  We might even stay the night and spend a couple of days there.  It has been a few years since we have been there, so it is about time we go again anyway.