Lots of people who are doing an adoption from China talk about their LID. ”What’s your Ell Eye Dee?” they’ll ask each other. That’s because the Log In Date is a huge step in a Chinese adoption. In general, the Chinese Government, or more specifically the China Center of Adoption Affairs (also called the CCAA) processes paperwork in order based on the LID, so if you can find out that someone else with an LID just before yours has gotten their paperwork back, you can begin to guess how long it will be until yours arrives.
I think we all talk like this because there are so many months of just waiting around with no way to help the adoption move forward, so we begin trading stories with other adoptive families and come up with our own little language. So we have our LID from CCAA – it’s 9/7 officially.
The next step is to get our LOA back – that’s the official Letter Of Adoption saying that CCAA has given their final approval.
After that, we get an I-800 from USCIS – or in English, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office sends us back their final approval.
Then the NVC (that stands for National Visa Center) in China gets our paperwork and sends it to China to tell them that we’re all ready.
Then an Article 5 letter gets sent – that’s the part of the Hague Convention that governs adoptions – saying that we’ve met all the Hague Convention requirements to finish the adoption. Personally I think it’s just because they like paper.
Finally, once all of the paper in our immediate vicinity has been consumed, we get our CA and our TA – our Consular Appointment from the US Government and Travel Authorization from the Chinese Government – usually all at once. That will tell us when to travel, complete our adoption (also known as “Gotcha Day” and travel to the US Consulate to get paperwork to bring our new daughter back home.
Got all of that? There will be a test on this stuff.
