Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no....

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.