The dossier is a group of documents that the girls' birth country require. Each of these documents need to be notarized and the notarized documents all need to be apostilled (which means the notary signature is checked to see if it is legitimate). The documents include things like our home study, medical reports for all of us in the family, birth certificates for all, financial information, background checks, etc. ---all things to allow the country to know we are who we say we are.
Our dossier will be sent to the in country facilitator who will begin translating it while we wait for our USCIS fingerprinting. We sent all that paperwork on Monday. The paperwork race is almost over!
Many wonder why international adoption is so expensive---we've learned a big part of it is the cost of verifying who you say you are. There is a cost for the majority of the documents in some way---a cost for sending, pulling info (our county charged $20 per person for background checks). The home study is really a way to give the birth country a overview of who you are---all with a cost. We had to have checks on every county we lived in since we were 18---many had a cost to check. And all this is done for the safety of the adoptive children. We have had people ask why it is so expensive---the stack of paperwork we sent yesterday had a cost to it---all completely worth it! What is the cost of two lives? And we are thankful that the birth countries have requirements for the adoptive families to protect the children.
So thankful to have made the trip to Fedex yesterday!! Praying that all of it will be processed quickly.
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