Part I of US Embassy Mess

Warning! Do not read this if you don't want to hear what I have to say and don't want to help...

The following series of posts are probably going to be a mix of facts, my own opinions, theories of some who have years of experience working with intercountry adoptions, and some venting as well. I am writing this to keep my friends and family updated on what exactly is happening in our government, in our adoption process, and to let you know where you can help. Here's a reminder of who we are fighting for:

When we first signed on with our agency to adopt a child from Ethiopia we had no idea we would end up where we are today. Glad I didn't know! We joined our adoption agency in early September of 2010. There is a certain amount of paperwork necessary for prospective adoptive parents like us to complete so that the USCIS, Immigration Services in the US could determine if we were an appropriate family to adopt and raise a child from Ethiopia. We steadily worked on all of the paperwork and tasks to complete this process and finally submitted our dossier (the big collection of the above documents sent to Ethiopia) in the winter of 2010. We were given approval to adopt a child from Ethiopia.

On January 18th, 2011 we were made aware of Evelyn. She was 3 1/2 months old and all of her paperwork was completed so she was what you might call "ready to be adopted". The director of our agency was leaving for Ethiopia to find out what was going on with all the trouble adoptive families were having with our US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I didn't know much at the time, but I knew that at the same stage we are having trouble now, these parents were having difficulty too. So, our director wanted to wait on sending us Evelyn's official referral until she found out exactly what was going on. We now know that the USE (US Embassy in Ethiopia-these are US citizens working in ET via our tax money) was requesting additional documents for case files in order to grant visas for their children to come home. This was a change and no one in the USE office would tell the adoption agencies about those changes. Here is one of the earlier pictures we have of Evelyn and this is our agency's director loving on her.

When our director returned she told us the sad news that they would not be able to give us Evelyn's official referral until they were able to get her paperwork re-done and get all the additional documents that the USE was now wanting. We now know those documents were additional police reports (previous police reports were already completed). As you can imagine this was offensive to the police in Ethiopia, but they were willing to do this again. The problem was there are orphanages all over the country of Ethiopia and our daughter's birth region is a 17 hour drive from the capital city. We had to wait 4-5 months for all of these new documents to be completed. These new police reports appeared to suffice  the USE for the time being. We finally got the word that our daughter's paperwork was complete again and was officially referred to us in May!

We received the good news of the Ethiopian courts granting us a court date for July 27th. So, we packed our bags and went on the trip of our lives. Thanks for all of your kind and supportive comments either on the trip blogs or facebook.

Our agency began collecting all of the necessary documents together to submit our daughter's case file to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in order for us to obtain her visa. She is now legally ours and we could go to Ethiopia and be with her anytime we wanted to travel, but we could not bring her home or take her out of ET until our US Embassy granted her a VISA.

We were so excited! Several weeks later we were told that the USE was beginning to become fickle again on what they were accepting and requesting in documents.  Adoption agencies in Ethiopia are never told ahead of time what the USE expects to see in a file. Our agency has a checklist that the USE gave them and everything on that checklist was in our daughter's file including the second round of police reports. We were informed that the USE would only accept case files on certain days at certain times and upon initial review could reject a file "at the window". If a file was rejected at the window the USE would not tell any agency what was missing in that file and the agency would not be able to return with any new documents (scurrying to figure out what was missing) until the following week, same time. If a file was accepted at the window the USE could still ask for more documents, but they could be turned in at any time.

Three files (ours and our two friend's that we met while in Ethiopia) were presented at the window on 9/20/11. Only one of the files was accepted at the window. Two of our files, mine and another family, were rejected because MOWA (Ministry of Women's Affairs-Ethiopian governmental branch) had given an approval letter and the cover page of that document stated "Orphan". Apparently the USE wanted the cover page to state "Abandonment" or "Relinquishment" or "Parents Deceased", etc whatever was the reason for the child being an orphan.

I will stop the current flow of thought here to write how we feel about sharing the personal information of our daughter's past with anyone. We will not be telling anyone, including close friends or family, why our daughter is an orphan. She will know and we will be telling her the story of her life from the very beginning, but it is up to her to share her story with others. It could make anyone feel vulnerable that others know such deep and personal information and you were not the one who made that choice to share that information. I hope you all can respect us on this. I will tell you that I have asked others in the past, out of curiosity, about their children's adoption birth history, so I know there is absolutely no ill intent. And if you forget or you read this after you ask, please don't think a thing about it. I just have a standard phrase, "We aren't sharing those details with anyone except our daughter."

Our agency asked MOWA to please change the word "Orphan" to the correct terminology and they so kindly obliged. Our case file was officially accepted on 9/29/11 at the window of the USE. We waited anxiously to hear the good news of a positive case file review and for travel dates for her visa interview which would come directly to us via email. All we need to bring our daughter home at this point IS A VISA! Our bags were packed including 3 huge bags loaded with donations from wonderful friends and family. Thank you!

The one file that was accepted at the window on 9/20 was reviewed and they requested a new document, one that the USE had just recently started requesting. They wanted the police to run an ad in the child's birth region searching for any existing birth family and then write a report stating they had done so. So, our agency, being the BEST AGENCY IN THE WORLD decided to do this on our two cases as well, just in case the USE asked for this when our files were accepted. So, our ad was already run, police wrote the report and our agency had it ready in case the USE asked for it. Our agency had gone over our daughter's case file with a fine tooth comb and was so confident that we would get good news.

We received a dreaded email on Oct 11 from the USE stating they regretted to inform us that there was not sufficient documentation that a search was done to locate any other birth family and that they would be sending our file to USCIS Nairobi, Kenya and that we should expect a 1-2 month time frame for Nairobi to receive our daughter's case file and then they will do their own investigation. What?!?!?!?  Remember, the government of Ethiopia and our agency had already investigated our daughter's case, deemed her an orphan, and given legal custody to us.

Our agency was immediately contacted and they began to work quickly. Our in-country representative, an Ethiopian citizen who is an attorney working for our agency, went quickly to the USE and said, "Look, you didn't ask for this and never told us you wanted this ad run, but we did it anyway." The person at the window told him they would not accept it BECAUSE THEY DID NOT FORMALLY ASK FOR IT. He pleaded with them and they finally spoke with the Vice Consul, USE Ethiopia, Esther Bell, who accepted that police report. They told our in-country rep. that they will let them know their decision the next day via email.

Dreaded news again. Our daughter's file was still going to be sent to Nairobi. We mourned. Then we got our fight on. More to follow in the next blog post.