Our Documents are in D.C.

Hi all,
Just a quick update. After going to Harrisburg last Friday to get 11 documents "authenticated" (thanks Cathryn, Xavier, and Karl for making the trip with me), all the documents are in Washington D.C. We hired a courier to hand deliver the documents to the Vietnam Embassy, because it will cut time off the process. The courier found that we missed an authentication step with the copy of our marriage license, so he will DHL the license back to the Virgin Islands to have it signed there, then get the license signed at the U.S. State Department. Then, all the documents, including the fully authenticated marriage license, can be submitted to the Vietnam Embassy in Washington D.C. Authentication by the Vietnam Embassy will take 2-3 weeks. Then the documents will be returned to our agency and they will FINALLY be submitted to Vietnam. My next update will be to say the documents have truly been submitted!

Finally, It Arrived!

Hi all,
After checking the mail day after day, the I-797 Immigration Form (i.e. the document from Homeland Security giving us the thumbs up to adopt) finally arrived yesterday. We got about 8 documents notarized today and now we are onto the next step...Monday we will fax the whole package to the agency and they will review the documents for accuracy. If everything is acceptable, the agency will send us a letter. Then, it is off to Harrisburg to have the documents authenticated by the state of PA. After that, the Vietnam Embassy in D.C., then the documents go back to our agency, and, finally, the agency will send everything to Vietnam.

We recently received an update on the status of adoptions from Vietnam through our agency and here it is (we are 1 of the 9 families working on their applications)...

· 10 families on the waiting list
· 9 families working on their applications, home studies, or dossiers
· 11 families waiting for referrals
· 4 families waiting for travel
· 4 families who have come home with their children

We can't wait to move up to the "waiting for referral" category!

Pics for the Dossier...

Hi there,
Per several requests, I have posted the house pictures we will submit with our dossier. Our place has never looked better! Not sure how long the flowers will last, since I have a black thumb, but at least they lasted long enough to take the picture. Thanks MG for the suggestion to take a wider shot!

Home Study, Fingerprinting, and Forms, Oh My...

Hi all,
We have come up for air after two very busy weeks! Yes, I am done with school, but more importantly we made it through the home study visit! It certainly wasn't what I expected- 3.5 hours of intensely personal questions from a case worker that we just met was no fun at all! First we were interviewed together, then separately, and at the end she took a fairly quick look around our house. Basically, she wanted to make sure we know what we are getting into. I think because we have no kids, there were plenty of tough questions for her to ask...how much time I will take off, what will we do if there is an attachment problem or physical problem, how will we incorporate Vietnamese culture into the child's life, who will do what around the house, what do we see ourselves doing with the kid, who will be our support system, etc. etc. Also, in Vietnam they are very interested in family, so we had to provide full names, jobs, and home city/states for all our closest relatives! Our case worker was absolutely thrilled that we only have one step sister and one brother between us, because that definitely made her home study report easier to write!

Today we went to the immigration office downtown to get fingerprinted for the FBI background check. We waited about 2 hours and it was relatively painless. It was easy to spot the couples that were adopting...they were the only folks that were happy to be there! Afterwards we had lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant in the Chinatown area...and discovered about 10 other Vietnamese restaurants we can try sometime in the future.

What is next? Well, we need to complete the dossier. These are the steps...

Step 1-gather all the documents, which are of course totally different than the application documents we submitted to the agency! Documents include...

• Passport size pictures
• More pictures of our house and of us
• A letter from our local police saying we don't have a record or outstanding warrants
• A letter from the immigration office stating we passed the FBI background check
• A certified (by Washington D.C.) marriage certificate
• An adoption application form (in English and Vietnamese)
• Commitment to send updates (in English and Vietnamese)
• Medical certificates
• Income certificates
• Power of Attorney for our agency, who will handle things for us in Vietnam
• Home Study Report
• Letter of Endorsement from our agency

Step 2-have the documents notarized

Step 3-have the documents approved by the state of Pennsylvania

Step 4-have the documents approved by the Vietnam Embassy in Washington D.C.

Step 5-submit the documents to our agency, who will submit them to the Department of International Adoption in Hanoi.

Step 6-wait for up to 12-14 months!

Well, that is all for now. I will let you know where we are in the process as we move along. I hope we can submit the complete dossier by mid-June.

Update and PSB Newsletter

Hi all,
Sorry I have not posted recently. I am finishing up nursing school (May 6th is my last day), work is getting busy, and I started figuring out the dossier instructions, which took a lot more time than I had anticipated.

We submitted something called an I-600A form. Basically, it is a preliminary application through the department of immigration (yes, we do not have a child yet, but we are already starting the immigration process). Really, I think it is all just an excuse for the Department of Homeland Security to get over $600 from us! What will they do for that money? Well, first we were "invited" to downtown Philly to get figerprinted. Then, they will do an FBI background check on us. After our home study visit (which has been moved up from May 11th to May 8th), a copy of our home study visit report will be sent to the immigration department. They will evaluate us based on the FBI background check and the home study visit report from PSB. Then, if we are approved, they will send us something called an "Immigration Form I-171 or I-797" to include in our dossier to Vietnam. Confused yet? You should be! And this is only one step of many for the dossier! Once we get through the remaining steps, I will relay the rest of the process.

If you are interested, there was a very good update in the PSB newsletter this month. Here is the link (scroll down to the Vietnam section):
http://www.psbi.org/site/PageServer?pagename=WH_Newsletter_HTML_April07

Hope all is well. I think the next time I write will be after the home study visit.

The application will be submitted tomorrow!

Hi everyone,

We are submitting our application to the agency tomorrow. Our coordinator said that we might have set a record for shortest time for submission! I am bet we are also unique in that the outside photo was our limiting factor for the application! This past weekend, we installed a patio out front so that we could get a decent pic. Here is the before...
And the after...

What is next? Well, we are tentatively scheduled for our home visit on May 11th. Our adoption coordinator will visit us for 3-4 hours. She will interview us separately, and then together. Then she will make sure we have room in our house for the child (which we barely do)! In addition to the home visit, we need to complete the preliminary immigration form and go to the Philadelphia immigration office to have our fingerprints taken. Also, we need to start working on the dossier. What is a dossier you ask? Well, I have a binder with all the instructions and forms, and it defines the dossier as the "official application to the Department of International Adoption (DIA) in Vietnam for the adoption of a child." Basically, a dossier is a collection of paperwork that is very similar to the application we will submit to the agency tomorrow, but it will be submitted to Vietnam.

Well, that is all for now! Hope all is well with everyone!

Adoption ethics...

Hi all,
We belong to the Pearl S. Buck (PSB) Vietnam adoption Yahoo newsgroup (for prospective and current adoptive parents working with the PSB agency). Today we received some interesting information from the head coordinator for Vietnam adoptions. The information was very dense and somewhat confusing, so I will try to summarize it below.

• Bad news first: Our agency is currently placing children from two orphanages in Ho Chi Minh City (one orphanage is called Thi Nghe and the other is called Picasso). There is much competition with various agencies in these orphanages. Some of the agencies are using questionable tactics, so the placement for our agency, PSB, has been slower than expected. Specifically, other agencies are giving donations to the hospitals in order to have abandoned children “earmarked” for their agency. PSB is not willing to give donations directly to hospitals for adoption, because in their view it could lead to hospital staff convincing people to give up their babies. So, while we would like the process to speed up, we are happy that PSB is so ethical and we support this decision.
• Good news: Despite the above problems, the Ho Chi Minh City agencies and the Department of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs have assured PSB more referrals by June 30th.
• Good news: PSB announced they will also be placing children from the coastal province of Khanh Hoa (from three orphanages, one in Nha Trang and two in surrounding communities). The deal should go through any day now, and the good news is that PSB is the only agency working in Khanh Hoa right now (no competition for the moment).
• Good news: There was a meeting between U.S. and Vietnam adoption officials at the Embassy in Hanoi last week. They addressed the problem that some agencies seem to be getting more placements of children than others, presumably because of the tactics they are using. Currently, each Province in Vietnam handles the adoptions, and there is no centralized oversight. The decision has been made to have a central Vietnam organization (the Department of International Adoptions) handle all "referrals" of children. It may take a while for this new system to be put in place, but it is a step in the right direction (i.e. this will lead to a more even distribution of placments accross agencies).

Well, that is all for now. I added some links to some interesting websites to the right. I will add more links as I discover them.