FINGERPRINTED!

Scott and I have officially been fingerprinted! Or, if I use the correct terminology, we have had our BIOMETRICS CAPTURED! Our appointment was Thursday morning at 10am in downtown Atlanta. 30 miles away according to mapquest. Mapquest's estimated time for that trip is 38 minutes. But, knowing this is Atlanta and the traffic is heavier now that school is back in session, we figured we better play it safe so we left a lot earlier. (Oh yeah, for any of you "up North" we start school a lot earlier- some areas started back 2 weeks ago, and all areas were back as of this past Monday.) We decided to allow for 1hr and 15 minutes even though our appt time didn't need to have us driving during the morning rush hour. As we were driving we had a panic moment or two when we heard traffic reports of a major accident on 400. Scott figured out another way to go and it only ended up taking us 50 minutes! Once we were there it was relatively quick. We were most likely the only Americans in the place. One of the workers looked at Scott, and without looking at any of his paperwork asked him, "So where are you adopting from?" The process is pretty simple. It's all done on computers now. No more ink stained fingers! Yeah! Scott has been fingerprinted many times before for his work, but this was a first for me.

First we waited in line outside while everyone was looked over and told to put purses and bags back in their vehicles. We had our hands and ID's looked at and we were allowed in, and then we waited in line. When we got to the head of the line our hands and ID's were looked at again along with our appointment letter from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then we were handed a clipboard and some paperwork and pointed to a seating area to go fill out the forms. When we were done filling them out we waited in line. Then our hands and ID's were looked at again and we were given a "deli " number and pointed to another seating area where we waited (in line) for our number to show up on the deli counter. We were lucky that there weren't too many people there at that time of day. Otherwise it could have taken a long, long time (like when you go to the SS office or the DMV!)

We had our hands and ID's looked at again by the final person before they took the prints. They wipe down your hands then squish them onto glass- it made it look like I had really fat fingers! Then they did each individual finger, rolling them from one side to the other. It actually went very smoothly! Scott was talking to his fingerprinter and found out that they do approx 300 fingerprints a day. And almost all of those are people trying to become citizens! Now multiply that by 50 states!!!!!

So that's the fingerprinting process! Now all we have to do is wait for our "Golden Ticket!"