A few weeks ago I requested that everyone sign a petition to get the government of Ethiopia to change their mind about some decisions that were made. The government made a decision to reduce the number of adoptions they process per day from about 40-50 down to 5. The US government adoption website is telling people who have submitted paperwork but have not yet received a referral of a child (which is us) that they could experience delays of up to a year or more. I was devastated to hear this! If you’re curious, here’s where you can read all about it: http://adoption.state.gov/country_information/alerts_notices.php read the alert from 3/9 and the notice from 3/16.
So, Aaron and I were sad (to say the least), we’ve been trying to get people to sign the petition, but haven’t seen any good news coming from the US government website of the Joint Council of Adoption. We’d pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that this wasn’t happening ANY time soon. It’s been rough.
Then… Yesterday I get a phone call from Jocelyn (our local social worker who did our home study). She asks me: “Since there is so much going on in Ethiopia, would you be willing to adopt domestically? We do not have enough families in IL who are willing to adopt children of a different race, and have an abundance of kids who need homes.” I was surprised, and thought, well if Adoption Avenues would allow us to discontinue the program and we could get some of what we’ve invested in the program back then maybe… but we couldn’t afford to do lose what we’ve invested and then turn around and pay the same amount for a domestic adoption.
So… I called Radu. Radu and I haven’t had much contact since all of this happened in Ethiopia. I tried to call, but couldn’t get through when I first heard word. I emailed and asked how this would affect our adoption and he responded by saying “You know that I will let you know, when we know FOR SURE what is going on.” So I call him yesterday and explained what Jocelyn had told me. I asked what my options were. He told me that if we backed out now we would lose everything we had invested. He asked why we would be tempted to do this. I told him because of the delays. So he went into explaining that this would NOT delay our referral (he’s expecting that next month). And that IF it delayed anything, it would delay the time between our first trip out: to go through the court process and our second trip out: when we can legally take her home. I’m confused. Why does the US government explain it differently? And if Radu is right does that mean families will be delayed up to a year or more between when they legally adopt their child in the country and when they can bring their child home? HOW SAD!!! Why would they keep a child who has been legally adopted by a family in the orphanage system for an additional year?!?! Is Radu right? Will we receive our referral next month? Will we still be going to Ethiopia this summer to meet our child and go through court? Will we have to leave our child there after that? How long will we have to wait to bring her home?
