Final Paperwork

I wanted to post a little about the final paperwork that we had to do, since we chose to do it a little backwards from what we thought we had to do. When we did the paperwork at the US Embassy, there was a check box to apply for a social security card. We checked it but the nice man who was helping us recommended that we also go to our local SS office and apply again. About a week after we got back, I took Alex to the local SS office and applied for a number. They asked to see the court decree and birth certificates (both in original format), his immigration visa in his Ukrainian passport and my passport. It was a relatively easy process and they gave all the documents back to me after verifying them. The SS card arrived about 3 weeks later.

I had waited to do the Ukrainian paperwork for the embassy until I had the SS card and an American Passport applied for. I was worried that they wanted me to send in the original Ukrainian passport with the registration form and I was worried if it got lost, that I would have no way of proving that he was an  American citizen. So I did the application for the American passport. They wanted to see the Ukrainian passport and send it in with the application but I explained that it had to go to the Ukrainian embassy, so they just made a copy of it and the immigration stamp and gave me back the original. They also wanted the original court decree and the original birth certificate with our names on it, so I reluctantly surrendered it. I better got those back!

Then I sent in the registration paperwork with Alex's original Ukrainian passport to the Ukrainian consulate. I am really unhappy about giving away all these documents, but I have to have faith that they will come back to me.

I think in reality, most people register the Ukrainian paperwork first, but I wanted to get the American passport started first. I am somewhat confused as to what would happen if someone questioned our parental rights of Alex now. I do not have anything except copies of the documents and the SS card, but hopefully this will be rectified when we receive his American passport.iiii

If anyone has any info on this to share, please do. It seems somewhat of a muddy area - since we did not get anything from immigration except a stamp on his Ukrainian passport.