5.13.2013

N-600: Citizenship for International Adoption & the USCIS text alert program

We are still on the hunt for our Certificate of Citizenship for Little Man. We sent the application in months ago and this week complied with the request to send in his green card (boy that was hard to give it up). Hope that means USCIS is getting close to completing the process and Little Man's citizenship will be completed!

For those of you playing at home with your international adoption, I figured out a handy feature that U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services has on their website to allow you to see where in the N-600 process your paperwork is.

After you have submitted the N-600, check updates on your case's status, go to: https://egov.uscis.gov/cris/Dashboard.do

Enter the receipt number that you will find on the I-797C, which should have been sent to you after the N-600 was received. Type it in, hit check status, and you can see easily what's going on with your case.

One thing that I've found super helpful is to register with USCIS (free) and create a customer account. They only need basic information to do this. You'll find the link on the left hand side of the page, "Sign up for case updates" (or just CLICK HERE).

Once you have created an account, you can click the link "add a case to your portfolio" at the bottom of the page. Enter the same receipt number and you will be able to log in easily and access the information.

But the coolest reason to do this is that USCIS now has an email and text alert program that will notify you of any updates with your case. The text alert program is a pilot one, and there might be text messaging fees based on your phone plan.

Certainly a nice feature by USCIS though, so us obsessive types don't have to keep logging in repeatedly. Not sure if you can also add other cases currently in the USCIS system to the same alert system. Someone try it out and let me know!

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UPDATE:  Well, it was a great idea, but I have to give the system a big fat 'F'. When I log in our status still says "initial review" which is the same thing it has said for months. Last week we received our COC via certified mail which means our process is complete. We never received a text message nor has our status ever changed from "initial review". Bummer. Maybe the system works better if you are processing something other than a COC?

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