Tag: News

News

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

LS

Many of you have asked and we are sure others are wondering – what is happening with our never ending citizenship drama?

Well…the short version is…

Unfortunately the emails sent to the State Department (OCI) have not gotten us anywhere. Lifeline graciously sent this out using the terminology drafted by our adoption/immigration lawyer. However, other than a quick response email to let us know they had internally transferred it to the proper overseeing department, we have not heard anything. This upcoming Tuesday will mark 4 weeks with no response on something that was supposed to be relatively routine, simple, and understandable (moving our immigration visa – DS260 – from the U.S. Consulate in Brazil to the U.S. Consulate in Germany).

With the time passing and our window for remaining in Germany rapidly closing, we have found ourselves between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand we cannot legally work in Germany beyond July 13th. We could buy a little additional time if we can demonstrate we are on vacation for the purpose of packing and moving, however, extending that too long runs the risk of us being denied social security for violating our 5 year window to work in Germany. Furthermore, our housing contract expires August 2nd and Luke and Elijah’s residence permits expire at the end of July. All this means that we need to leave the country shortly after July 13th and before the end of the month. Unfortunately, due to the chaotic citizenship process, we cannot get the kids into the USA without completing one of the two open routes.

Where does that leave us?

Well, in consultation with our lawyer, our adoption agency, and our missions agency, we have two options available:

  1. We can attempt to return to Rio de Janeiro where the U.S. Consulate is in order to try to complete the DS260 (immigration visa that was never closed). Our lawyer suggested this would be, on paper, the most advisable route as it would allow us to return to the U.S. immediately upon completion. HOWEVER – as with just about everything in our lives at this moment, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. The foreseeable issues with this route are that the DS260 is designed for people who intend to reside permanently in the U.S. (i.e. they are immigrating there). We are very much on the borderline of meeting this as our long term goals are to transition to Austria, not remain in the U.S. Normally, this would require us staying more than a “short time” to avoid risking having citizenship certificates cancelled. Historically this time frame has been understood to be 6 months, although it still astounds us that children of two U.S. citizen parents could have their citizenship revoked for not remaining in country longer than 6 months. However, lately the issue has been that, like all the other processes, the DS260 is taking much longer to process than it used to. In fact, a family in Brazil at the same time we were, only just recently received their DS260…more than 7 months after application. This means that citizenship was not granted until then, passports could not be applied for until after this point in time, and we would be looking at 8-9 months from start to ability to return overseas…and that is if everything went on the same timeline as a family who followed the “normal” process. The trouble is, that nothing about our situation has been following “normal”. This could put our timeline for Austria in jeopardy. And the trouble with this is that it was constructed to bear in mind the residence permit process and to time school schedules…which could mean kids trying to jump into new schools, in new languages, in a new environment partway through a school semester. In addition, there is the concern that the consulate in Rio de Janeiro was already contacted twice regarding the DS260s…initially to ask them to close these (when we learned they had never been closed) and then, more recently, to ask them to transfer these to Germany. Both requests were met with a response of the consulate not being willing to take any action without directives from higher up groups (hence us attempting to contact OCI to get this directive). In consultation with our adoption agency, they advised against going this route. The reason being that while we were in Brazil, the consulate, who had never had an expatriate family, did not properly issue a critical document (Article 5) despite everything being submitted properly. It took them 2-3 weeks after we had already received custody of the kids for this to be done (despite this supposed to be finished before we arrived in country). Lifeline (our agency) also informed us that this involved a good bit of correspondence with OCI, which was a reason it was so delayed. Their concern is that based on this they would likely not issue us the DS260s, would consult OCI again (which would lead to significant delays), and may very well require us to do additional steps with a very different timeline (because the other timeline is designed and strictly regulated for adoptive families in country and in process). This is a rock for sure.
  2. We can leave Germany and temporarily settle in another country while we wait for the N600-K process to be completed (the citizenship route for families living outside of the U.S. which involves a non-immigration visa). In consultation with MTW (our mission’s board), we do actually have an option that would provide us 6 months of time, with the ability to homeschool (to help complete getting our kids caught up to the proper grades), and the opportunity to pulpit supply for a church currently without a pastor. HOWEVER – just as with the first option, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Completing the N600-K process means our kids will be issued a non-immigration visa requiring their stay in country post citizenship to be less than a “short time” (i.e. 6 months) or we risk having our kids lose their certificate of citizenship after issuance and having passports revoked. We fail to fathom why two American citizens could have this occur for their adoptive children, but the current political climate means this is not simply an empty threat, but a real concern. That would require us to shorten our time frame in the U.S., reducing the amount of time we would have to raise support, experience our home furlough, and spend time with family. Furthermore, the N600-K process has been ongoing since October with no known end in sight despite repeated inquiries. An additional complication is that recently checking on the USCIS average wait times for the N600-K process in St. Louis (where our application was filed) showed that their timeline has changed. We had been warned by Lifeline that all the signs were indicating that USCIS is really far behind and even updating wait times online is behind. When we first filed the average wait time was 8.5 months which is about where we are right now. Legally we are not allowed to file a complaint, request information, or require USCIS to either expediate our case or inform of how much longer it will take until we have exceeded the average wait time. When we checked just a few days ago, the update was 65 months. Although we anticipated an increase, an 8-fold increase was completely shocking to us and absolutely unthinkable…why does an adoption citizenship process take more than 5 years to process??? Our lawyer did say that if we went this route, she would help us move our application to another USCIS center and push for faster processing. However, this would mean essentially restarting this application at a new site. It would run the risk that 6 months out of Germany might not be long enough. If that was the case, we might need to simply move to Austria earlier than originally planned, only go to the U.S. for the citizenship hearing, and then plan a home furlough for later when the timeline works better for us. Thankfully our support is strong enough to allow for this, but we do need to raise more at some stage especially since we are still operating on the same budget from when we had one child. This is our hard place.

As hard as it is to believe, this really was the short version. And our timeframe is rapidly disintegrating. Early this week we need to make a decision to either begin moving to set up option 1 or option 2. As you might be able to tell, we would greatly welcome and very much need prayers for wisdom. We are thankful that though we feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, God is in perfect control and He is not trapped in the slightest. We look forward to seeing how He works this all out, what He will teach us through this, and how His hand will move. We are learning so much more about trust and reliance on His sovereignty than we ever thought.

And thank you for asking, for your concern. It means so much to us! Your support and prayers have been an enormous blessing and the Lord is sustaining us through them. We are thankful to know the One who is writing our story and we are thankful that He is writing you into it too!

News

Rebooting

LS

It has been a long time, too long, since we last updated. That certainly doesn’t mean that life has not had anything worth sharing. Quite to the contrary, life has been so busy that we have hardly had any time for anything else. This has been unfortunate as we have enjoyed keeping you up to date and have heard so many of you share how much these posts have meant to you.

So, this is our attempt to reboot…hopefully somewhat more successfully. Thankfully, with more than 3 months unpublished, there is much to share and no end to resources.

Perhaps one of the biggest developments we have been facing is how to get into the USA on schedule. We are rapidly approaching the 5 year deadline set by governmental agreements between the USA and Germany. We have to leave at the 5 year mark to avoid losing our social security for exceeding the short term worker definitions. This date for us is July 15th. In addition, we have been struggling to get the citizenship process sorted out to allow our children into the USA.

In October, upon returning home, we immediately filed the N600-K applications which are designed for children of USA citizens who are living abroad. Unfortunately, our requested date range of February for a citizenship appointment came and went with no news. As March rolled around, with our deadline starting to loom nearer, we tried to reach out to USCIS (US Customs and Immigration Services) to get more information. We then discovered that one of the downsides of advanced technology and AI is that it is impossible to talk to an actual person, and computers don’t care about your particular circumstances.

This led us to reach out to congressmen for help to try and figure out the status of our case and any potential time estimates. Thankfully, one congressman’s office proved very helpful and willing to track down any possible information. They advocated on our behalf with USCIS and started raising some concerns about our situation. The USCIS congressional liaison began asking why we had applied the way we did, how long we intended to be stateside, and why we had so many active applications. It was then that we learned that we had an open immigration visa at the consulate in Brazil which has apparently never been closed (as it should have been) when we returned to Germany. We were also told we had a non immigration visa open in Frankfurt, which was truly puzzling as we had never applied for this.

After more back and forth and assistance from the congressman’s office, we learned that Frankfurt had no record of anything in our name. Lifeline, our adoption agency, attempted to help us with the situation in Brazil, but were told that only USCIS could now close the open visa applications and the embassy wouldn’t do anything without them requesting and initiating it. Lifeline encouraged us and helped us get connected to a lawyer who specializes in adoption and immigration cases.

Last week we were able to talk with the lawyer and learn that N600-K applications are designed for people who reside overseas. Given our situation of going on home assignment, we would need to make sure we did not remain stateside for more than 6 months or we would risk having the citizenship canceled and any passports revoked. On the other hand, the immigration visas (IH-3) are designed for people permanently residing stateside and if we went that route we would need to make sure we stayed stateside longer than 6 months or risk having citizenship cancelled and passports revoked. The lawyer advised us that the best chance of us meeting our deadlines would be to request the immigration visas be transferred to Germany and completed here. Theoretically this should be a relatively simple and straightforward step.

At the lawyers advice we reached out to the National Visa Center (NVC) to request the case transfer. We also asked Lifeline to help us advocate for this transfer. Lifeline then messaged the NVC, the consulate in Brazil, and USCIS. Although we never heard back (it is amazingly difficult and disappointing how hard it is for US citizens to get any answers about their own case), thankfully Lifeline did. After jumping through several hoops to get things in exactly the format NVC wanted (including having to send 4 separate emails – one for each child), NVC finally came back with the answer that once they transferred the case to the consulate in Brazil in July, 2025, any changes or updates needed to be handled directly by the consulate and not NVC. The consulate came back to Lifeline and repeated that they will not do anything with the case (transferring or otherwise) unless requested to do so by USCIS. USCIS responded to Lifeline to say that these case file numbers submitted applied to aspects which were transferred from USCIS to the NVC and that any questions about them should be directed now to the NVC. An endless loop of finger pointing.

We are now awaiting further counsel from the lawyer about best next steps and options. Waiting for the N600-K to go through has an unknown time frame, but almost certainly after July. It also comes with a shorter time stateside than we initially intended. But the immigration visa transfer has proven to be more difficult than it should be. As you can see, we could use prayers for wisdom and much guidance. Planning is extremely difficult and there is much uncertainty with looming deadlines – above all it would be helpful to simply know what our best backup and next step needs to be.

We look forward to rebooting and Lord willing, sharing more soon (we promise in less time than 3 months :))!