Dossier

“Heyy Hey! Ya baby! …Here I am baby. Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m yours!”

I was singing this song and strutting along with a smile after leaving the office of the Notary Public this morn’.

It took us about 9 months to complete almost all the paperwork required for our dossier. The final piece we were waiting on was a letter from Canada Immigration for approval to sponsor a wee babe from DRC. Thanks to the help of our immigration consultant (GES & Associates Consulting Inc.) our application was approved in 3 days. However, we lost 3 precious months waiting for it…because it had been mailed to the wrong address. Then Canada Post went on strike. Ah well–what can you do but bite your nails, throw up your hands or giggle hysterically? We trust that babyzook will be ours in God’ perfect timing.

Anyways, the letter from Immigration was in our hands as of last week.

We had our long time lawyer notarize all of our other documents for our dossier for a very minimal fee (we promised not to tell.) But because we were down to the wire with this last piece of paper and needed it notarized now, I made some calls to our local notary public offices. $50 + GST was the answer I got from all. For one paper.

DRC requires all dossier documents notarized even if they already come on official government letterhead.

For those of you hoo are going the Permanent Residency route vs. the Citizenship route, you will get a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada with a Client # and Kit ID #. The lawyer was hesitant to notarize this document because there was no notarization line on it and it did not seem to clearly state that we were “approved”–it seemed more of a letter of explanation of the process. We got GES on the phone and clarified that it was indeed an approval letter for if it wasn’t we would have received a letter that read something like: “We are sorry to inform you that your application to sponsor a child has been rejected, etc…” Plus, in big bold writing it also said “THIS IS THE ONLY COPY THAT WILL BE ISSUED TO YOU.”

Here are a couple pointers from “Successful Adoption:A Guide for Christian Families” in putting together your dossier:

-Always carry a blue ink pen with you, in case you need a signature (like a doctor’s) on paperwork. Why blue? Some countries require that all signatures be in blue ink, because today’s printers are so good at making photocopies that it is difficult to distinguish originals from copies when signatures are in black ink.

–Never remove the certification pages or authentication pages from any document for any reason, including to make photocopying them easier. No staples should be removed from the documents, or it might invalidate the certification and authentication, and you would have to start all over.

This is not all going to fit in an envelope!

Good luck!

Lizzy  [*~*]

P.S. We are now #12 on the referral list!