Bureacracy

Some or all of you may have discovered a carefully worded email today from your agency about Embassy investigations going on in the DRC.  Ours read:

Dear Clients in our Democratic Republic of Congo program,

The US Embassy Deputy Chief of Missions, in honor of a team from Washington led by the chief of the Office of children's issues on Intercountry adoptions, held a meeting with adoption professionals in DRC a few days ago. 

From this meeting it was shared that for the year 2012 - 200 Congolese children were adopted to families in the USA. This is up from a little over 10 children in 2010.  For the team, this increase raises a number of questions. They said their mission is to garner an  understanding on how the adoption process works in the DRC.

As part of these discussions they stated that to avoid any issues of fraud, the Embassy will have to be more thorough in their investigations; which they suspect are on the rise.  As a result, we heard yesterday that adoptive families should anticipate a 3 to 6 month lag time from the I-600 submission until the visa is issued.  We are still waiting on the official notification of the embassy.

Additionally, the United States just passed what is referred to as the “universal law”.  This law now requires anyone providing international adoption services to be Hague Accredited (even in non-Hague convention countries).  It is believed that the passage of the universal law will also help lessen the risk of adoption fraud.

While this is extremely frustrating as it will mean the children will have to remain in the orphanages longer, we all want to see adoptions completed properly.

We are hopeful that these more thorough investigations will show little or no fraud and that we can see the length of time taken to complete the investigations reduced in the near future.  In the meantime, we do want to support every effort to eliminate any/all adoption fraud.

This totally and utterly stinks!!  I have a few other choice words that I think would be more appropriate, but I will hold myself back!!  I get it, but it doesn't mean that I have to like it!!  And why aren't these things being investigated prior to the I600 being approved!?!?  Some families have already waited 12+ months to bring their child home.  It just doesn't seem fair. . . . . .

I know the road of adoption is difficult.  I GET IT!  But, like I said earlier, it doesn't mean that I have to like it.