Please Help - Adoption Petition

Dear Friends,

As you know, Nathan and I are waiting for a referral of a little girl from China. Though we began this journey over two years ago, we have officially been waiting for 20 months. Now, our adoption is in jepoardy, thanks in large part to the USCIS misinterpretation on the legislation passed in regards to the International Adoption portion of the Hague Treaty. Below is an excerpt from a petition I am asking you to sign which gives further explanation. In addition, I have included links to the petition site and the website for the Joint Council on International Adoptive Services - the thinktank/policy setter for International Adoption. This is a personal plea to help us continue on our adoptin journey to bring home a sister for Noah - whose patience for a little sister is beginning to wear thin!

I assure you this is quite serious. Every International Adoption agency in this country is encouraging their clients to get on board and sign this petition and call thier legislators. The past year has seen many changes in International Adoption. Ultimately these things are happening to protect the children, however, it is endangering families like ours who are very qualified to adopt, have jumped through the many hurtles required and have been patiently waiting for a referral. As it stands right now, if we received a referral tomorrow, we have all of our documents in order, could accept the referral and leave in 8 weeks to get our child. With the new rules, if we receive our referral tomorrow, we would have to wait months and months for our new paperwork to be processed. At best, our child would continue to languish in an orphanage while our paperwork is processed by the USCIS. At worst, we would lose our referral entirely. Please help us move this forward so that we can continue to be "paper ready" when our referral comes.

Adoption For All Petition

JCICS

"Recently, the rules and regulations in the United States of America regarding international adoption have changed. Congress passed The Hague into law. When this was done, Congress explicitly stated that families who are in the process of adopting a child internationally and who have been in process prior to April 1, 2008, are considered "transition cases." As such, these families are, by law, grandfathered into the adoption rules and regulations that existed PRIOR TO April 1, 2008 until their adoptions are completed, and these families DO NOT have to re-file under the new Hague guidelines. However, the Department of State and the US Department of Homeland Security's CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services, aka USCIS) bureau are blatantly ignoring this law and forcing all transitional families to abide by the new regulations. This not only contravenes the law as written, but also creates undue hardship for the thousands of US families affected, and will likely cause the disruption of the adoption.

Thousands of US families have been waiting in excess of 2 to 3 years for their adoptions from China and other countries to be completed. Now these families are being forced by the National Benefits Council (NBC) and USCIS to re-file under Hague, when clearly Congress wanted them to be grandfathered under the I600A rules they were subject to when they began their adoption process. Under the new rules these families will have to pay additional dollars, in some cases running into the thousands in fees to US adoption and homestudy agencies. Having already spent in excess of $10,000, many cannot afford these additional fees. In the next 2 to 3 years >10,000 US families will need to go through the I600A renewal process, which is a quick process, with approval time running from about 6 weeks to 2 months....


The US Congress passed the new rules for USA adopters into law; however, in their wisdom, they had the foresight to see that the adoption process (particularly in China) has been moving extremely slowly, and so the US Congress particularly provided in the law that "transition cases" (those in the adoption process prior to April 1, 2008) can continue their adoption under the rules that were in effect at the time they began the process and UNTIL THEIR ADOPTION IS CONCLUDED."

Please help us with this pending crisi by signing the petition and forwarding this to anyone who might help.

With many thanks,

Nathan and Dana