The Saga of the $800 fingerprints

One of the major milestones on the path to an international adoption is getting your fancy, expensive fingerprints from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. Today was the day for that -- and it was not quite what we had expected.

We got up at 4:30 this morning, leaving the older kids to sleep while we got ourselves and our toddler ready for the two-and-a-half-hour trip to St. Paul. We had a friend come over at 5 a.m. (thank you, Mary!) to get the kids off to school. Off we went, into the sleepy darkness.

The trip was uneventful, with only minor difficulty finding the place. (Anyone else who has to go to the Saint Paul USCIS field station should know that it's on west University Avenue, something they don't tell you. The place is located in a mall.) We arrived a few minutes before they opened, along with about a dozen other people, many of them speaking foreign languages. The first thing you encounter when you enter is a guard station with lots of warning signs: NO CELL PHONES - NO RECORDING DEVICES - NO CAMERAS, etc., etc. Fairly intimidating even for a citizen.

When Susan got to the desk she explained that we had an appointment for December 22 but had driven up a week and a half early to avoid the possibility of weather on that day. We knew we were in trouble when the guard frowned and said, "How do you know it's going to be bad weather on December 22? You're expecting a blizzard? It could be bad weather today, too!" She grimaced and said she would talk to the immigration officer.

At this point I'm thinking: We went to all that trouble arranging childcare for the kids and getting up early to travel all this way, and they're going to send us back.

But she comes back and says, "He'll talk to you. Have a seat."

So, we have a seat in the rather spartan waiting room and nervously wait, not saying anything. Baby boy is playing with the car keys, the happiest person in the room.

Before too long this harried-looking guy comes out and says to us rather sternly, "You have an appointment for December 22. It says right on the form that you could reschedule. So why are you here now?" And he goes on to explain that they follow a careful schedule and they can't work people in just because they show up, etc., etc. He is clearly more than peeved.

Susan begins explaining about not wanting to miss the appointment due to bad weather. He explains again that we could have rescheduled. We're giving him dumbfounded looks, so he elaborates on this a bit. Finally I put in, "But it says right on that form, in big, block letters, that if we miss the appointment, our application will be considered abandoned."

He checks. It does. "Well, that's not for adoptions," he says. "We can't print out separate forms for all the different types of cases. This is meant for people who miss their appointments, then show up a year later and want to reschedule." Hmm, thanks for the belated clarification.

At this point I'm thinking, "Okay, God, this is where you may need to come in." And I pray for the man, and for us. And I sit down, rather shakily, because it occurs to me that I am 6'7" and 225 pounds (I forget this sometimes), and it might be good to be looking up at him with my best big, brown, waif-like eyes (as best as a big guy in his 40s can muster waif-ish-ness). "Well," I say, looking at the toddler boy, "I guess we saw that warning and it seemed like it would be prudent not to have to choose between abandoning our application because of bad weather or dying in a car crash on the highway."

"Dying in a car crash on the highway is a sad thought," the man admits, smiling a bit for the first time. I'm thinking maybe we have a chance here.

"So...probably a better way for us to have handled this would have been to call ahead to check whether we could come early. But would we even have been able to reach this office?"

He smiles wanly and shakes his head. "Well, you'd get the call center in Missouri."

Finally, reluctantly, and with much sighing, he says he will work us into his busy schedule. The guard gives us a couple of forms to fill out. While we're doing this, the immigration officer is telling another couple -- loudly enough for the entire room to hear -- that..."I'm letting that couple with the baby go because they're all the way from Winona and they're worried about dying in a blizzard. You're only from Plymouth [30 miles across town]. You'll have to come back on your appointment day." A little more back and forth with them and they turn sadly away. Yikes.

After we hand in the short form, we get taken back to the technicians for fingerprinting, one by one. Susan goes first, then it's my turn. The fancy fingerprinting machine is basically a little digital scanner. The technician wets your fingers with a fine mist and then presses your fingers on the glass, one by one. As she does this, your fingerprints appear on a large computer display. So it's an extra-sensitive scanner that basically digitizes your fingerprints.

I asked the very bored and distracted technician (hey, it's only 8:20, lady!) what makes these special -- any different from the ink ones we had done at the local jail. She either doesn't get the question or doesn't want to respond because she gives me a series of non-answers. Oh well. Must be classified government immigration stuff.

On our way out, I stop by the guard station to make nice with the guard, who smilingly offers an extended, detailed explanation of how they really are quite flexible -- they routinely reschedule people who have to cancel an appointment due to weather, etc. These people are human beings working inside a bureaucracy -- it's their job to enforce a system they have no control over, which makes them the "bad" guys, but of course no one wants to be thought of as the bad guys. So I am glad she feels better as I leave.

And I'm very glad it's over. Good thing they don't have any issues with government bureaucracies in Eastern Europe! (ha ha)