Certificate of Citizenship

Finally, more than a year after submitting Di-di's COC application, today we received the notification from USICS that we will get his COC on July 11!! It took much longer than I had expected, because of a huge backlog. Supposedly, many people rushed to apply for their COCs the same time as we did before last July's fee increase.

Since Di-di came to the U.S. with an IR4 visa, he only received a "Green Card" when he entered U.S. which means that he could be deported back to Taiwan if he commit a crime (is it too early to worry about that?:) The quickest way to get his COC was to readopt him in CA, which we had always planned to do anyway so that he would have a "delayed" birth certificate from the state of CA. We figured that it would be a pain for him to try to track down his original birth certificate in Taiwan if he ever need a new copy in the future. In addition, with the readoption, we petitioned the court to officially change his name from "Chen-Yu" to "Shaun Paul".

If I had not gone through an international adoption myself, I couldn't have imagined the amount of paperwork required throughout the process (for both governments), even though Taiwan is supposedly a country that requires the least amount of paperwork compared to the other countries. Of course, I would have walked on water if that was what it took to bring Di-di home, BUT it is nice to finally finish the paperwork and not to worry about it any more. COC is absolutely the "final" piece of paperwork we need in regards to the adoption, so we are celebrating!! WOOHOOO!!!!