Yesterday, I vowed to write a letter to my representative.  Here it is:

Dear Representative ———:

Thank you for representing us in Congress.  We were proud to vote for you in the 2004 Democratic primary and the 2004 general election, and we will be proud to vote for you in the upcoming election as well.

Both of us teach at ——— and live in ———.  We got married in 2003, shortly after we moved here.  We’re currently in the process of trying to adopt a child from China.  After almost a year of trying to conceive a child, we discovered that we couldn’t do so because of infertility issues.  We want more than anything else in the world to be parents, so we decided to adopt.  We spent the first seven months of this year collecting the paperwork that we need to adopt internationally, including the I-171H form from USCIS.  This month, our adoption agency sent our application to the Chinese government.

We are writing to ask you to support H.R. 5888, which would extend the expiration date of the I-171H form from 18 months to 2 years.  This bill, the Helping Families Adopt Orphans Act, was introduced by Representative Heather Wilson and co-sponsored by seven other representatives, including Representatives Barney Frank, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Bernie Sanders.

H.R. 5888 is important to us and to thousands of other families because it will help our adoption process.  It appears likely that it will take more than 18 months for China to refer a child to us and approve our travel to complete the adoption.  In the meantime, our I-171H form will expire, requiring us to renew the form at a considerable cost of time and money.  Extending the expiration date of the I-171H would do nothing to harm the welfare of children.  On the contrary, extending this date would save us—and many other families—money that we could then spend on caring for our new child.

Can you see what you can do to help H.R. 5888 make it through the House?  Again, this piece of legislation is very important to us. It will help thousands of families, and it will also keep the already backlogged USCIS offices from having to renew the paperwork for thousands of families. We would greatly appreciate anything that you can do.

Sincerely,

[Snow Monkey] [ZGirl]

I’ll mail it tomorrow.

Update: The letter is in the mail.  I’ll post any reply that we receive.