If you aren’t from the Vietnam adoption world, here is what we are referring to:

“Vietnam to end US adoption Scheme”

I’m going to attempt to encapsulate the madness of what’s happening in our adoption journey, what lead us to where we are now, and the state of the international adoption world. I’m not sure that is entirely possible, but I’ll give it a shot. I’ll try to take you on a semi-linear time line of events. Warning, this is a chunky post!

The state of Vietnam

Let’s start with the quantifiable stuff. These bullet points apply to our adoption agency as of this writing:

• Roughly^[1] 4 babies have returned to the US with their adoptive parents since July 2007
• Roughly^[1] 6 referrals have been given out since October 2007
  • Of those 6 referrals, 4 are in limbo and currently being investigated. It seems probable that those referrals will be denied by the US Government and the adoptive parents will need to appeal and fight for their children
• Kate and I would have about 60 families in front of us in line for a child. Ahem … 60 families. As you read above, the rate of babies coming home per month has been ZERO since last summer
• When we started this process less than a year ago, the estimated referral time was 1 to 3 months. It is now estimated at a year and a half — and that assumes 4 referrals per month which isn’t even close to reality. Not even in the ballpark

Those numbers, along with some other factors, caused Kate and I to look outside our current agency to other adoption agencies. Now most Vietnam agencies, given the current status of Vietnam adoption (more on that below), were not accepting new clients. Kate and I did find one agency that sounded promising. First off, they were still accepting new clients. Secondly, they had a pretty good track record with referrals in recent months (as is our understanding). The big thing that sold us was that if we moved to this new agency we would be somewhere around number 30 in line. Even if things remained slow with Vietnam adoption, we would cut the line of clients in front of us by half. With that, Kate and I decided to leave our current agency. There were many reasons factoring in to this decision, which I won’t go into here (perhaps another post in the future), but they all added up to one thing: the wait time to receive our child was too great to stay with our original plan.

So here we are without an agency. An adoption “free agent” as it were. Unfortunately we couldn’t move to our newfound agency just yet. Their fee structure was different and they required most of the money upfront, whereas our now old agency had the fees spread out. As many of you know, we’re not talking about $300 bucks here, we’re talking 5 digit numbers. This brings us to waiting on two things:

1. Trying to figure out where we’re going to get the money for this new agency
2. Amazingly, we are still waiting on our I-171H to come back from the US government. We’re at roughly day 90 of what was supposed to be a 30 day process

That brings us up to speed with the state of our adoption agency. Things start to get really interesting when we look at Vietnam adoptions in general.

Interesting thing #1)

The US suspected a few of the Vietnam adoptions as being potentially corrupt. This means perhaps the babies were sold/purchased, or they are not “true orphans”, or some other bad reason. Rather than raise this concern using a little something called “tact”, the US did what it does best in foreign policy: piss everyone off. With guns blazing and a big cowboy hat, the US stormed in wielding accusations all over the place and using it’s standard “my way or the highway” school of diplomacy. How did the ancient communist nation of Vietnam react? Take a wild guess.

So now we have two nations angry at each other, exhibiting standard 3rd-grade playground behavior and all the while the orphan children and adoptive families are caught in the middle. Kate and I feel both nations are displaying bad behavior, but it’s obvious to us that the US “started it”, is the far more aggressive of the two, and should bear the brunt of the blame. Again, this is a terribly condensed version of the story. Check out “Bring Our Children Home” for more information on the subject.

Interesting thing #2)

It’s been said that since the US is being such a pain in the butt, Vietnam is favoring adoptions from other countries. In other words, if a family from France, Spain, and America is on the list to adopt, Vietnam will choose the non-American family first because the process is so much easier. I don’t blame them. Tell me, does the following sound familiar?

• The US government is making things more difficult than they need to be
• The US government is acting in their own interest and not that of their citizens
• The US government is stomping on other countries’ toes
• Foreign countries prefer working with countries other than the US

Sounds like business as usual.

Interesting thing #3)

Hey, let’s make this even more complicated shall we?! The original adoption agreement signed by the US and Vietnam, simply called the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), is set to expire this September. With the afore mentioned childish behavior, Kate and I feel there is a good chance adoption will close between the two nations. Even if the close isn’t permanent, it’s a close nonetheless. Factor in that Kate and I haven’t gotten our dossier to Vietnam yet (because of waiting on our I-171H as mentioned above) and it looks like we wouldn’t get in the system in time if there is a close come September. Oh, and did I mention that the new adoption agency we were looking to join ceased taking new clients?

Pulling out of Vietnam

Well now! There’s “being hopeful” and then there’s just “ignoring the truth”. Kate and I decided that it was not smart to think that we could proceed with Vietnam given where we are at in the game. Things are so uncertain with the MOU, plus the referrals that have gone through have been fraught with problems, and we haven’t even received our I-171H yet. Perhaps most damning piece of data is that referrals just aren’t happening. Point blank: babies are not coming home to the US^[2]. So we made the very, very difficult decision to not proceed with our adoption in Vietnam.

Pulling out of International

So let’s look at other countries for international adoption. They’re all experiencing similar issues. One journalist has said “… international adoption … is in crisis” and I agree with her. China — hands down the number one destination for US international adoptions — is so full that their wait time is at 4 years! Apply today, get your child in 2012! In addition to that, China implemented stricter rules as to who can or can not adopt from them. The rules are things like: age of the adoptive parents, number of previous marriages, etc. This has excluded a large number of adoptive parents that would have gone to China.

So what does this mean? It means that other adoptive families are skipping or leaving China and moving to all of the other countries. These other countries are now being flooded with requests. They just can’t keep up. Their wait times have also increased drastically, or even worse, they’re so swamped that they’ve closed their international adoption program completely. I’m talking closing the door, goodbye, no babies for you, move along.

Guatemala, the number 2 destination for US adoptions, has closed^[3]. Number 2 … they closed! Kazakhstan, the number 6 destination closed their program out of nowhere. One day they’re open, the next day they’re not. [Good news everyone! A post to JCICS dated Mar. 25th, 2008 says Kazakhstan is open again. Yikes, what a scare.] And as I mentioned before, Vietnam, a now hugely popular destination, is in peril as well. This is happening all over the place. And of course, it’s not like people in these countries have decided to stop having sex because of the state of international adoption. “Gee baby, I’m totally in the mood and everything … but let’s not get it on because we don’t want to add the the already burdened orphanage system.” Oh no, babies are still being born and filling the orphanages. It’s truly a disaster. It saddens the soul.

Where does this leave us?

It’s been very confusing. We felt we had a strong connection to Vietnam. We thought that’s where our child was. It was a matter of fact for us. I’m sure we sold ourselves on those feelings after we committed to that country, but we felt them all the same. This was an extremely painful decision for us. Kate and I have been together for 14 years now. We’ve talked about children off and on for at least ten of those years. Every time we talked about our child, it was always an Asian girl. This was because during the last decade China was the de-facto location for international adoption, and we all know about China and girls. So imagine thinking about your future child in one particular way for a decade, and then learning that may not happen.

How can one attach to an idea of a child so intensely? I present the following example. Imagine that you are adopting and you receive the very first photograph of the child that is promised to you. This is only a photograph. A small 4×6 inch image of something you’ve never seen before. But can you imagine the feelings of attachment and love that would stem from that photograph? Certainly we all can understand that. Now imagine that instead of a 4×6 piece of paper, the image is in your head. It’s animated and in the full vivid color and texture of the mind’s eye. These movies costar you and your wife at your child’s side. Now imagine seeing that image for over a decade. What do you think the level of attachment to that little Asian girl would be now? To put it lightly, the attachment is intense. Now that the Asian girl will not happen for us, I feel intense loss. I imagine I’m feeling something far less then a death of a child, but possibly stronger than a miscarriage. This has been rough.

Positive note

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Kate and I do have the best possible news we could possibly announce in the realm of adoption: we are now, right now, making actual real progress in the adoption of our child! However, the road we are on is completely different, and not what we planned at all. That will be part two of the two part saga which my lovely wife will post very soon.

Footnotes

1. ^ Referral and Homecoming numbers: These numbers are “rough” and may or may not be 100% accurate. Cut me some slack though. It doesn’t really matter if I’m off by as much as 100% because the point is still illustrated.
2. ^ Babies not coming home: There may be some children coming home. I do not have the skill set to verify that fact. But how many? 2? 10? Heck … 20 children? A far cry from the hundreds (thousands?) that should be coming home.
3. ^ Guatemala closure: According to this article at The News & Observer which states “Guatemala, another top sender, recently closed adoptions after allegations that babies were sold or stolen.”.

We arrived early, which was good because we got through pretty quickly. As directed in our official appointment letters, we arrived with our letters and picture ID in hand, with no cell phones or recording devices, yes, this was the only thing they insisted we not bring. The building is kind of sketchy looking, as Joel said, “if the lights were out I’d think it was abandoned.”

A very nice security guard checked our credentials, handed us yet another short form to fill out, and sent us into the main lobby; a faded, pale blue room decorated with 20 year-old, government issue photos of purple mountains majesty, and other various all-American imagery, florescent lights, and rows and rows of hard, gray, plastic chairs. Everyone there looked very somber. We filled out our form and gave it all back to the nice security guard, who made a few extra marks and sent us into a line at the back of the pale blue room. When we got to the front of the line, another nice, cordial gentleman stamped our forms and gave us a number, and sent us into another, smaller, pale blue room, similarly adorned, to wait for our number to be called. Our numbers were called very quickly and we were again helped by very nice gentlemen. My prints took longer than Joel’s, they kept finding blank spots where the prints didn’t pick up on the computer. When we finished up with that, we were sent on our way. Simple as that.

Overall it was a quick and painless process. The first so far! So, now we wait again, hopefully for no more than a month, for our final document to come home to us. This will mean that our dossier is complete and we are in line for our little one. Whew!

The appointment is Jan. 2nd. What better way to shake off the New Year hangover and start the year on a good foot by being fingerprinted by Homeland Security? But when it’s for a good cause, USCIS can capture my biometrics any time

The next step is to get our last piece of paperwork for our dossier (the packet of papers about us that goes to the Vietnamese government). This is called the I-171H, and it is up to the Oregon State government to get it back to us (ugh). Then our dossier goes on a couple of trips to various government agencies before being sent to Vietnam for translation and finally to the Vietnamese government for final approval. Then we get a number that will make us officially paper pregnant, which means we are waiting to be matched with a baby.

These are the photos of the house that we sent in our dossier, look how clean it is!

It feels very good to get this scheduled. I said to our social worker at the agency ‘It feels like we’re making “real” progress now.’

We’ve got roughly three weeks until the home study. Our plan is:

1. Get as much (hopefully all) of the dossier paperwork completed so our social worker can take it with her afterwards.
2. Clean the house. Three weeks should just be enough I’m joking, right? Right?!

Joel sent the last of our agency paperwork in on Friday! Woo Hoo! Our criminal background check came back exactly two weeks from when we sent it in, and just worked out to land on the same week as we got our medicals. They looked good, no mistakes that we could see.

Getting our medicals was a bit of an adventure for both of us. It’s a long story, but in the end we both got what we needed and hopefully the agency will be happy with it!

Joel dropped the paperwork in the mail Friday and the next step is to have our social worker look them over and schedule our home study!

What I don’t like is the format and user interface of Yahoo Groups in general. It’s like a giant mailing list mated with an ugly, hard to use Web site.

User management

Your default posting name is your “Yahoo! ID”. News-flash: this means everyone will know you as the first part of your Yahoo email address … which probably isn’t your main email address anyway. You probably only have a yahoo email address in the first place so you can use things like yahoo groups. This means most people are known by catchy monikers such as “34bearzfan56pdx@”.

Ah, but you can change the email address you use to receive email digests so it’s not your yahoo email address. Why does this matter? Well because yahoo groups displays the first part of your email address up to the at (@) sign for all of your posts. This is because it’s sort of a mailing list. But I feel most people use the Web interface exclusively.

Finding all posts by a specific user is not intuitive either. You have one way to find posts by a user. Click on the miniscule “Advanced” link by the search box. There you can search by user. But shouldn’t this be available when I click on a username from a post? You know, from the user’s profile page? Yahoo, what the heck are you doing?

Messages

It’s funny, the message handling is the most frustrating part of the entire experience, but I have the least to say about it because it’s so obvious in it’s suckyness. Yahoo groups are trying to be a forum … but it’s also a mailing list. The issue is that it’s failing at both.

Conclusion

Personally, I feel most yahoo groups would be better served with a good and proper forum. And I’ll say it again: the content of the adoption yahoo group is just awesome. I only wish I could access the wonderful things they’re talking about with less frustration.

Ok, I’m done. Sometimes you just gotta’ vent!

Things have been pretty quiet since the garage sale and we haven’t had much to put up on the blog. But here’s just a quick update as to where we are in the process. We have almost completed the first round of paperwork. Our last letter of reference is on it’s way to the agency, our employment letters are done, we’ve finished all of our book reports and questions, we got our passports and other vital records. We’re waiting for my first check for this school year to come so I can fill out our financial report with the proper information, our criminal background, and our medicals. These should all be complete by October 12th. Once that happens, we can start the home study process, woo hoo! We are getting closer everyday.

Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive. We’ll keep you posted as things progress!