Now, I'm going to deal with one of the more burning questions among families waiting for Russia to begin rolling out the accreditations again: Why did my adoption fingerprints expire? Think about it, folks. Fingerprints are a unique mark of your identity. In adulthood, which is when you are being fingerprinted, they don't change. Before DNA testing became widespread, fingerprints were law enforcement's chief tool for linking criminals to a crime, even one that had occurred long ago. So if fingerprints don't expire for a criminal, why do they expire for a prospective adoptive parent?

First, the ground rules. The United States Citizenship & Immigration Service mandates that fingerprints are no more than 15 months old when you file for your I-600A. Count 15 months from the time that the Federal Bureau of Investigation issues its OK of your fingerprints and plan on being back at USCIS for a re-take. (Actually, I set up a reminder in my computer calendar for 13 months because I didn't want to be in a mad scramble just before traveling. More about that kind of planning later.)

To get an appointment for a re-take, you'll need to write a letter to the USCIS office that did the first batch. You'll also need to include a money order or certified bank check for $70 per person, made out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as a copy of your I-171H.

But why, oh why, is all this necessary? In a word, computers. When the U.S. government switched from ink and paper fingerprints to digital in 2000, it made the process less messy. But as all of you probably know from your home computers, if you store a lot of information digitally, you eventually get a warning that your machine is out of memory. You can't add another piece of information without erasing some of the old stuff. Like your fingerprints.

The government ostensibly solved the storage problem in 2003. But not the problem of finding your fingerprints again--the search system has to be image-based, after all. And all the while, USCIS has been fingerprinting more and more people. According to one government official last year, the FBI has 50 million full sets of fingerprints on file. And 50 million times ten is … well, a huge search mess to handle.

There may be some good news on the horizon. The U.S. is retooling its fingerprint system again. Some parts of the new system are just about ready, like the fingerprint scanners that will be tested at airports in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Miami, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia and San Francisco this summer. There is also a pilot project under way to test the sharing of fingerprint and other biometric data between the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

The changes won't prevent your fingerprints from expiring on this adoption trip. But maybe when you first-timers go back to Russia for your second adoption, they will.