Last night we received some disconcerting news from our adoption agency. The U.S. Embassy is conducting a “significant” investigation in the province where our referral (daughter) is, and this could disrupt some adoptions, potentially ours. We were given a few options, including proceeding as planned with our current referral, or choosing to wait for our agency to provide us a referral from a different province.
We have decided to proceed as planned with our current referral. How can we give up on Baby Hedge? Our agency is recommending that if we choose to proceed with our current referral, we consider filing a petition with our local U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services in Detroit to obtain what one might consider a “pre-approval”. Obtaining this document prior to our travel to Vietnam would mean there would be less concern about the U.S. Embassy denying our adoption after we’ve spent 3 weeks with our daughter in Vietnam.
Unfortunately we don’t consider obtaining this “pre-approval” document an option for us. This is due to the fact the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services office in Detroit has a huge backlog, resulting in long wait times in receiving these documents. While most states take a few weeks, the Michigan office is posting that it would take four and a half months to receive this particular document. And we understand this from experience when we had to obtain a similar document prior to submitting our adoption application – it took four months. I guess there are a lot of people who want to come to Detroit! Go figure!
Since we don’t want our daughter to have to wait in her orphanage an additional 4-5 months for us, and we certainly don’t want to wait that long to meet her, we are choosing a bit of a riskier, yet traditional route - to file this petition in Hanoi, where it “generally” takes only 3 weeks to receive approval. While we will be going to Vietnam without complete assurance that everything will go smoothly, most of these situations turn out positive despite a few potential bumps in the road. We understand that this is the nature of adoption! We really believe everything will go fine – our anxiety level has just been raised a few notches, that’s all.
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2 comments:
My husband and I are in Hanoi now waiting for our application approval. They are investigating the maternity ward in Nam Dinh with ours. This was a bit of a shock for us to say the least. Did you hear they were investigating the Nam Dinh province?
What were told is that a significant US Embassy investigation within multiple provinces that may disrupt 10 or more adoptions for American families currently in Hanoi with multiple agencies. Although the Embassy is not answering many questions about the reasons for the investigation, they seem to be targeting abandonment cases and have looked at both Thai Nguyen and Phu Tho (these are provinces are agency works with), among other provinces.
Good luck to you!
Karen
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