The Office of Children’s Issues is disseminating the following information as a courtesy to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS.) Please contact USCIS with any questions.

USCIS has created new notices to inform prospective adoptive parents who file Form I-600, Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative, concurrently with the supporting documentation for Form I-600A, Application for Advance Processing of an Orphan Petition, that we have found them suitable and eligible to adopt an orphan.

Prospective adoptive parents who would like to bring a child from a country that is not a party to the Hague Adoption Convention to the United States based on adoption using the orphan process have two options:

1. A one-step process, where the prospective adoptive parent files Form I-600 together with all the supporting documentation normally required for the Form I-600A (also called “concurrent” or “combination” filing).

When USCIS reviews a Form I-600 that a prospective adoptive parent filed together with all supporting documentation normally required for the Form I-600A, we will usually determine whether they are suitable and eligible to adopt first, and then determine if the child is eligible to be classified as an orphan.

Until now, when a prospective adoptive parent filed a Form I-600 without a Form I-600A, we did not have a way to inform them that we have determined that they are suitable and eligible to adopt separate from the Form I-600 approval notice. However, certain countries will ask a prospective adoptive parent to submit evidence that we have determined they are suitable and eligible to adopt before they can finish the adoption process.

To address this, we will start to issue separate suitability notices for prospective adoptive parents who file concurrently. The prospective adoptive parent will be able to submit that notice to the foreign authority, if needed, to show that we have determined that they are suitable and eligible to adopt.

2. A two-step process, where the prospective adoptive parent first files a Form I-600A and later files the Form I-600 with all the supporting documentation with each form.

A prospective adoptive parent can still file a Form I-600A before filing a Form I-600. If we approve the Form I-600A, we will send the prospective adoptive parent a Form I-600A approval notice.

As a result of this change, if a prospective adoptive parent has already identified a child and they choose to file the Form I-600 concurrently with the supporting documentation for Form I-600A, they will now receive a Form I-600 suitability approval notice from us. These notices are not final Form I-600 approval notices, but they will notify the prospective adoptive parent that we have found them suitable and eligible to adopt. They will still receive a final Form I-600 decision once we have finished processing the petition.