Immigration Approval!

Yeahhh! Sam and I received our immigration approval on Jan. 22nd! I was not at home to share the exciting moment with Sam, but I was at least with friends and family! We are super excited as this was the last thing we needed in order to submit our Dossier. Well, I should say one of the last things. We need to have one more training with the director of our agency, which is scheduled for tomorrow evening. Our Dossier will be mailed this week. Once it is approved by Secretary of State’s office it will be mailed to Ethiopia. Once it is in the mail to Addis Ababa we are officially waiting!

A number of people ask…what does the timeline look like from once you are considered to be ‘waiting’? The average time to receive a referral for our two children is 4-6 months. It is then another 3-4 months before you are able to travel. The reason is after you receive and accept your referral you need to have a court date scheduled and pass court. We do not need to appear for the court date as our agency will represent us. After you pass court it takes another month our so to get an embassy date. The only caveat to this is that the courts are closed from August through October. That means that if we do not pass court before August we will have to wait until the courts re-open. That would be a real bummer but it is the reality of the situation so I am preparing myself for this to happen. So if I had to guess, I would say we would have our children home by late fall and before the end of the year.

Another question that I have received a lot lately is “Would you consider changing from Ethiopia to Haiti?” The answer is yes. Unfortunately Haitian adoptions are closed currently. You are only permitted to adopt from Haiti if you were currently in the process or if you have previously. This doesn’t seem right when there are so many orphans in need of good homes and so many families who are willing to open their homes. When there is a natural disaster, such as this, adoptions are halted because they do not have the resources to process adoptions under the Hague Treaty standards. The intent is to protect child trafficking and to ensure they are not having children adopted to only find out later that there is a living parent or relative. I get it. But come on, there has to be a better solution.

All that being said, I am still very satisfied with our decision to adopt from Ethiopia. It is terribly sad and heart wrenching what happened to Haiti, however that does not mean that there is any less of need to adopt from Ethiopia. Unfortunately, there are just more children globally who need homes and families. It is an all around sad situation. If I could just do both, I would.

On a side note, Sam’s cousin Andre was adoption from Haiti. He was adopted 20 some years ago, but still I am sure this hit close to home for him.