Such is the life of someone who is researching adoption law.
Ok, first let me share the good news. Apparently it only takes 30 days to receive USCIS approval. Yea! We were anticipating 2 months, based on Cydil's blog, but the time period has been cut down. Of course, this assumes we will be approved. No guarantees on that. I haven't heard from my mother in law, so that tells me she has not received our homestudy yet. That's ok.
And, my mom received our paperwork so she can now submit our CA paperwork to the China consulate in Sacramento. That's good news, particularly if our USCIS approval will take less time.
And now, I will begin to vent....
I generally try to stay fairly anonymous on this blog so I don't generally provide exact locations, but in this case I will share with you the city we are considering a move to. Toronto, Canada. Why do I share this delicious piece of personal information? Because, apparently Ontario, Canada (where Toronto is) has possibly the most restrictive adoptive laws in the entire world. It all began when I was skimming a list-serv I am a member of called "adoptionforamericansabroad" on Yahoo Groups. Somebody had made a comment that moving to Ontario required them the "just" change to a Canadian adoption agency. I have since contacted my agency, several social workers in Ontario and an adoption agency in Toronto. All of my first responses seemed to indicate that, yes, if we moved to Toronto we would not be able to continue with our US adoption agency. How could this be possible, I wondered, since we were logged in with China with our first adoption agency? Would we just have to withdraw and start again? Referrals come through the agency, so switching agencies would, I thought, put us back at the end of the line.
But, the good news. Today, within 30 minutes of each other, I received 2 messages. One from the Canadian agency I had contacted. I had responded to his first message emphasizing that we were not planning on becoming Canadian citizens and that Canada was a temporary move (although we could not say whether or not we would be there when the adoption was finalized, maybe, maybe not). The best line in his entire e-mail was "You should have no problem finding a social worker here who can prepare a homestudy to the specifications your US agency requires!" Yippeee! Then, I checked an other e-mail address and I got a message from someone who told me that she was currently in Canada, and currently in the process of an adoption and that Canada had NO INTEREST in her adoption! So, all she needed to do was find a social worker willing to come from the US to do the HS update.
Of course, due to USCIS requirements, we will have to do a homestudy update before 18 months are up. But, if we can just get an update and not have to start again this move will be possible.
Oh yeah, more bad news. Not for us, but for some friends who have finally finalized the adoption of their 10 month old baby girl from Ethiopia. They live in the same country as we do, so she and I have enjoyed swapping adoption stories. We recently had a really nice baby shower for her! They are in the US for a summer vacation and I assume timed to process her citizenship and passport paperwork. They just got notice that their little girl's passport application was rejected! She arrived in the US on a IR-3 visa, which based on all the info my agency gives me, means that she should have received citizenship upon arrival on US SOIL. I'm awaiting an update on this, but apparently US Immigration says that one of the parents must prove 2 year residency in the USA. Of course, they cannot since they have lived here for several years. I have contacted my agency about this because if an IR-3 visa requires 2 year US residency, this could be a huge problem for us as well.
Seems the problem with adoption law around the world is that they are very fluid and subject to interpretation and change. I suppose I should be used to that by now, such is life in the Arab world.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Moving forward...
In an amazingly short 2 weeks, the NY China consulate authenticated my husband's birth certificate. They threatened one month, so, yea! One batch done! 2 more to go.
Looks like our CA documents are still in the mail to my mom. So, once she gets those she'll submit to the Northern California China Consulate. This is silly. Apparently the Southern California Secretary of State office does not do mail requests, so if you send in for authentications via mail (we had to mail our stuff somewhere, so why not straight there rather than to my mom who would then have to walk it in), you have to send them to Sacramento. BUT, then if you want to take them to the Chinese Consulate that is not far away in Los Angeles, no luck. You have to send them to the consulate in the area they were authenticated. Ugh.
Our homestudy appears to be completed so now our agency and our homestudy provider have to somehow work out the details of the agency writing a letter to go with the HS. Not sure how it works exactly. To be honest, I don't care as long as they do it and it's what is required. Once that's done we can finally submit our I800A form. It's ready and waiting at my in-laws' house.
Ok, new glitch. We've taken the past year to get our paperwork completed. That is not counting the almost-year prior that we looked into this and figured out how to do it while living overseas. Our paperwork started arriving back in January, so that's the month when our suff starts to expire (all paperwork must be less than 1 year old upon submission to China). At this point, we're expecting to be 100% done in about 2 months. I keep re-reading Cydil's blog that says she got her USCIS approval in less than 2 months and I'm encouraged. So, as soon as we get USCIS approval, we'll be ready about 2 weeks after that. So, here's the glitch. We're thinking about moving. If we move, we possibly have to then conform to the laws of the place we move to. (thank you Hague treaty, it was hard enough doing this while living in a non-Hague country). We might have to start all over. The thought of this makes me ill.
So, here's the moral dilemna of it all. Whenever you move you have to submit a homestudy update. Fair enough. They want to make sure that you haven't moved from a place suitable for children to a rat-infested studio apartment. But, when we do a homestudy update, we will have to find someone who is approved to do one in that particular area. Although a homestudy update should be merely a formality, if we move to a place that has higher standards than we have completed, we will first need to reach those standards. Some places, in fact, are extremely picky about your agency. And although we have already paid our agency for the adoption, we might be required to find a new agency. Ouch! And here comes the moral dilemma. What are the chances we will be living in this new location by the time the adoption is complete? Hard to say at this point. But, what if we move and redo everything and then move to an other place where we have to redo it back to the original? We're talking thousands and thousands of dollars here not to mention all the stress and aggravation of needing to redo everything. So, would it terrible if we "ignored" our move until we knew whether or not we would be there when the adoption was complete? There is no guarantee how long the waiting period will take. Hey, our girls could be in Jr. High before they have a new little sister. Ok, I exaggerate, but really, some people (random blogs, I need to stay off these kind of things) are even estimating the wait time as long as 7 years! Seriously, this is China. Although the process if perdictable, the time period is not. There are so many factors involved. When we started this process we were told that when we moved "all we would need to do was find a qualified homestudy providor to do a homestudy update". Easy, easy. Hey, we found someone to come to the middle east, didn't we? Finding one in a western country shouldn't be hard at all! Wrong.
It never occured to me that adoption laws would be a factor in deciding whether or not to take a job offer. Ok, technically the job offer has not arrived so it's technically not an issue yet. But it could be soon.
Looks like our CA documents are still in the mail to my mom. So, once she gets those she'll submit to the Northern California China Consulate. This is silly. Apparently the Southern California Secretary of State office does not do mail requests, so if you send in for authentications via mail (we had to mail our stuff somewhere, so why not straight there rather than to my mom who would then have to walk it in), you have to send them to Sacramento. BUT, then if you want to take them to the Chinese Consulate that is not far away in Los Angeles, no luck. You have to send them to the consulate in the area they were authenticated. Ugh.
Our homestudy appears to be completed so now our agency and our homestudy provider have to somehow work out the details of the agency writing a letter to go with the HS. Not sure how it works exactly. To be honest, I don't care as long as they do it and it's what is required. Once that's done we can finally submit our I800A form. It's ready and waiting at my in-laws' house.
Ok, new glitch. We've taken the past year to get our paperwork completed. That is not counting the almost-year prior that we looked into this and figured out how to do it while living overseas. Our paperwork started arriving back in January, so that's the month when our suff starts to expire (all paperwork must be less than 1 year old upon submission to China). At this point, we're expecting to be 100% done in about 2 months. I keep re-reading Cydil's blog that says she got her USCIS approval in less than 2 months and I'm encouraged. So, as soon as we get USCIS approval, we'll be ready about 2 weeks after that. So, here's the glitch. We're thinking about moving. If we move, we possibly have to then conform to the laws of the place we move to. (thank you Hague treaty, it was hard enough doing this while living in a non-Hague country). We might have to start all over. The thought of this makes me ill.
So, here's the moral dilemna of it all. Whenever you move you have to submit a homestudy update. Fair enough. They want to make sure that you haven't moved from a place suitable for children to a rat-infested studio apartment. But, when we do a homestudy update, we will have to find someone who is approved to do one in that particular area. Although a homestudy update should be merely a formality, if we move to a place that has higher standards than we have completed, we will first need to reach those standards. Some places, in fact, are extremely picky about your agency. And although we have already paid our agency for the adoption, we might be required to find a new agency. Ouch! And here comes the moral dilemma. What are the chances we will be living in this new location by the time the adoption is complete? Hard to say at this point. But, what if we move and redo everything and then move to an other place where we have to redo it back to the original? We're talking thousands and thousands of dollars here not to mention all the stress and aggravation of needing to redo everything. So, would it terrible if we "ignored" our move until we knew whether or not we would be there when the adoption was complete? There is no guarantee how long the waiting period will take. Hey, our girls could be in Jr. High before they have a new little sister. Ok, I exaggerate, but really, some people (random blogs, I need to stay off these kind of things) are even estimating the wait time as long as 7 years! Seriously, this is China. Although the process if perdictable, the time period is not. There are so many factors involved. When we started this process we were told that when we moved "all we would need to do was find a qualified homestudy providor to do a homestudy update". Easy, easy. Hey, we found someone to come to the middle east, didn't we? Finding one in a western country shouldn't be hard at all! Wrong.
It never occured to me that adoption laws would be a factor in deciding whether or not to take a job offer. Ok, technically the job offer has not arrived so it's technically not an issue yet. But it could be soon.
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