Well, today I met with Senator Fred Risser, President of the Wisconsin State Senate. I shared my meeting with Anne (my home study social worker). Believe it or not, he spent 1.25 hours talking with us! I found out that he is a father of 3 domestically adopted children. He was so sorry to hear about what we've been having to go through - with all of the varying expiration dates of our fingerprints, I-171H, and home studies and especially the longer than 2 years that we will be having to wait. Since he is on the state level, and not the federal level there is really not much he can do. He suggested that Anne and I write an article and try to get one of our local papers to publish it. He also offered to write letters or to help in any way that he could.
After leaving his office, we headed over to meet Andrea Baglowski - in Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin's office. She is in charge of the fingerprinting and adoption section in the Congresswoman's office. Congresswoman Baldwin is on the Judiciary Committee to approve H.R. 628 to extend the I-171H to 2 years. The one good thing we found out is that our fingerprints will be renewed once for FREE! The USCIS had been so unclear on that, so that was so nice - saves us $160. Yeah! She seemed to think that it would be hard to bring about change, but that's what we all thought about the I-171H's and now we are getting our FREE renewals on those, too. The squeaky wheel is the one who gets things done...
My next stop is to get in touch with the lobby group in D.C. that deals specifically with children's issues regarding international adoption. I have an e-mail out to them already. Just waiting on a response. Wish me luck!
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