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Jane,
I believe you can look up that info. online or call the INS directly. I am sure you have tried these, I know when we called the INS it was really difficult to talk with the right people. What did your agency say? I would think they could tell you that information:) Good luck, I will see if I can find that info out around here.
TanyaB
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At least ours did here in Georgia..... Ours was set to expire this month, and our fingerprints were also set to expire. So, we had to re-do fingerprints and start from scratch with the I171H. A new application, pay the fees again, and resubmit homestudy etc- a referral or court date can't extend it. Because you don't want it to expire while you are in process, I'd start early if you are concerned. I submitted all our new stuff in November to make sure it was processed before the old one expired.
Kirsten
Kirsten is absolutely right! Which is why we're beginning to panic with ours expiring June 23, 2004 (and no referrel, yet)!!!
Call the INS office that serves your state and ask how long the I-600A approval is taking now. (Ours only took 2 weeks once we sent in the homestudy! Now it's up to a month).
That way, if it's taking 7 weeks, you'll know to send your file in (even if it hasn't expired, yet) 2 months before the expiration date. Like Kirsten said, you DON'T want to be stuck in Panama with your child ready to start the immigration process and find out that your I-171h (approval to adopt from Panama) has expired!
Ugh.
Rebecca
P.S. We had to redo our homestudy in November, 2003 and our FBI fingerprints in Dec, 2003. So to reapply, we'd just have to pay the $460 and re-send them our birth and marriage certificates and husband's divorce decree (since they have a current homestudy and fingerprints on file). But we won't do this unless we haven't traveled by May 1. And franky, if we don't have a referral by then, we'll probably just give up on Panama.