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We are going PINK- we are adopting a little girl from Ethiopia. We'll be sharing our journey to adopt our daughter!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Agency conference Call

This week the USCIS held a conference call on the findings from a joint trip of USCIS and Department of State officials to Ethiopia in January 2011. A hand out from this meeting can be found through the following link here. Our adoption agency held a conference call yesterday to go over the status of adoptions in Ethiopia and the findings of the USCIS and DOS visit.

It was a long call here are the highlights:
  • The Ethiopian government, judges and MOWCYA are all committed to international adoptions.
  • The infrastructure is not there for the number of international adoptions taking place. They are doing the best they can. They are committed to ethical adoptions.
  • MOWCYA is not stating the number of letters it is writing each day, but it appears to be processing a good number per day.
  • Our agency is hearing conflicting reports on whether or not the number of MOWCYA letters will be impacted for families whose court dates were issued after that date.  They should know more in the next few weeks.
  • The court is being more meticulous with the documentation needed to complete an adoption. In some cases judges have asked for additional documentation. While this can be frustrating to adoptive parents AWAA supports this as the judges are trying to make sure all adoptions are ethical. 
  • USCIS and the Department of State has reviewed the process and adoption program. They did some baseline analysis based on 4000 cases. They were looking for abnormalities. Generally, they did not find fraud but some paperwork was not 100% complete. The process may need some refinement and they are working with the Ethiopian government.
  • The Department of State sees some weakness in the processes. They have proposed a voluntary option (this is not in place now and no dates were given) which would allow the Embassy to do it's investigation after the referral but prior to the family's court date. This may slow the issuance of a court date but could make the court to Embassy visit faster.
Overall, the call was positive and AWAA stated over and over the Ethiopian is not closing the international adoption program.

If you were on the call and I missed something major- please feel free to comment.\
Thanks!

4 comments:

MarksMomma said...

Thank you for this good summary. Do you mind me copying your notes onto our adoption blog? I'll properly cite you as the source.

The Davidsons said...

I haven't been able to listen to the call yet. Thanks for sharing your notes!

Mari said...

Hi, my husband and I are begining to explore adoption and came across your blog. Thanks for providing details. It is very helpful.

Phil said...

USCIS Service Center and the National Benefit Center Locations: Each Service Center location accepts and processes certain USCIS forms and immigration cases. For example, the Nebraska Service Center generally processes the N-400 form application for people who are applying for U.S. citizenship. If you are you applying for a Green Card the service center will vary depending on the circumstances of how you are filing to obtain your Green Card.