Vietnam to end adoption program with US

With all of the political problems going on in Vietnam there has been a lot of speculation on whether or not the US and Vietnam would continue their adoption relationship when it comes time to renew their bilateral agreement on September 1, 2008. Well on Friday we got our answer. Below is a statement issued by the Vietnamese Government.

On April 25, the Government of Vietnam announced that it will allow adoption to be completed in cases where prospective adoptive parents have been matched with a child and received an official referral prior to September 1, 2008. It further stated that in accordance with Vietnamese law, the DIA will suspend the acceptance of new dossiers on July 1, 2008. On September 1, 2008 any dossier that has not received a referral will be closed and returned to the Adoption Service Provider. In view of the processing time required in Vietnam from placement to the Giving and Receiving Ceremony, an adoption process begun now cannot be completed before the current Agreement expires.

to read more on this: http://wcbstv.com/nationalwire/22.0.html?type=national&serviceLevel=a&category=i&filename=Vietnam-US-Adoption.xml

What does this mean for our case? If all goes well and the US and Vietnam cooperate to get our case investigated, we can travel soon to bring Madison home. If not, our agency will have to make the decision to put us back on the list for another referral and we will have to hope that we receive that new referral before September 1. We really hope and pray that it doesn't come down to this, but at this point it is totally out of our hands. So please continue to pray that it all works out in our favor. I don't know how much more we can handle of this roller coaster ride.

Finally, an updated picture of Madison

We finally received an updated picture of Madison on Friday. She has really grown since her last picture and looks very healthy. She will be 9 months old on the April 29. With her in this photo is one of the nannies that care for her in the orphanage. We really hope that the good news we heard on Tuesday is true about Phu Tho allowing the investigations to continue. We will be in touch with our agency next week to see how things are coming along. Meanwhile, Kathleen is set to leave for Vietnam on May 8. We are so excited for her.

A Political Impasse

I’m sure most of you don’t follow news about international adoptions like we do, but if you do, you might have seen some things in the past few months about some problems surrounding Vietnam adoptions. I will try to explain all of this as simply as possible. Back in October-November of last year, the USCIS (Customs and Immigration) discovered some fradulent/suspicious activities surrounding Vietnam adoptions, i.e. evidence of baby trafficking, etc. This lead to the US changing the process in which they handled international adoptions. I actually posted about this back in November. This change in the process lead to a delay for everyone going through the process, because of longer waiting times (60+ days) to process their 1-600 forms, a form needed to be able to issue the babies visas to bring them back to the US. This is one of the final stages in the adoption process, once completed you are allowed to travel to Vietnam and get your baby.

When we got our referral, there was good news and bad news, the good news obviously was that they had a referral for us, the bad news was that she was from one of the provinces that was involved in suspicious activities, but we were told that her case was far enough along that they did not foresee any problems, so we accepted the referral. This was on December 11. On February 28, we received a letter stating that our case had been delayed due to Vietnamese officials refusing to cooperate with the US to complete investigations into our case, basically refusing to let them into the province of Phu Tho (where our baby is). (Apparently the Vietnamese are angry with the US for making public the information about the suspicious adoption practices). We learned from our adoption agency that we were 1 of 4 families from our agency that was affected by this delay, because all of our babies resided in the Phu Tho province.
In the past couple of weeks we gradually learned more about what is going on. The bottom line is Vietnam WILL let the US in to investigate our cases as long as they abide by their countries laws and have a Vietnamese official present when the US investigates the cases, makes sense right? Not to the US, they are being very stubborn and assisting they do it on their own terms, when and how they want. So because of this we are still at an impasse. Just a couple days ago we received very upsetting news from our agency saying that if this situation isn’t resolved very, very quickly they will have no choice but to put our names back at the top of the waiting list for new babies. Of course this is extremely heartbreaking for us as we have been looking at our baby’s picture now since December 11, and calling her our daughter. Until now, we haven’t posted anything about any of this on our blog or told many people, because we thought it was something that was just another delay and would eventually work itself out, but it appears now that it is much more serious than that. I am sure in the next couple of weeks there will be decisions made about our cases, and we will definitely keep you updated. Until then, please help us pray for a miracle that these two countries can come to an agreement, some agreement, any agreement that will result in us being able to go to Vietnam to bring these babies home. It seems so unfair to put these innocent little babies at the center of a huge political battle, when the main reason for all of this is to find these babies loving homes and families. This whole situation has helped me learn more about politics than any other book I ever read in high school or college.

I will end with a quote that I think is very appropriate:
……“some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."
-gilda radner-