Got word from our adoption agency last night that the dossier was completed in Washington and on its way to Vietnam. So the big wait now begins until we get a referral. Because all of the procedures are new compared to Jessie’s adoption, we don’t know how long this will take. We’ve got our fingers crossed that it will be quick, but our adoption agency says it could be up to four months.
Hopefully, the next status update will be that we’ve got a referral!
We got an updated preliminary approval form from CIS (Citizen’s and Immigration Service) this week. It shows that we’re adopting from Vietnam and, hopefully, that will satisfy all government agencies that need to review these sorts of documents.
 Our situation has been complicated by the fact that we won’t be returning immediately to the US with Alyssa from Vietnam. Instead, we will be coming back to Turkey. This means that we won’t apply for her immigrant visa in Vietnam, but in Turkey. The good news is that the consular officer in Turkey tells that she has all of the necessary approvals to process the visa for Alyssa. The consular officer is also working with the Turkish authorities to determine what type of visa we will need to get to bring Alyssa to Turkey from Vietnam. At that point, she won’t be a US citizen and will need to get a different visa than the rest of us. The consular officer assures us this won’t be a problem. It’s really great to have such competent people working hard to help make this adoption as easy as possible.
A real quick update on our dossier. Talked with the adoption agency last night. They got the dossier back from the Vietnamese Embassy, but a couple of documents had to be re-done. They hope to have them completed today and be able to send our dossier to Vietnam.
Our dossier is complete and has been finalized, stamped, etc by the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington. The Adoption Center of Washington should be sending it to Vietnam later this week. That means the clock can start ticking on the process in Vietnam. Still no definite word on how long that will take.
I spoke with our adoption agency last night. They anticipate that Alyssa will come from the orphanage that they have been sponsoring over the past several years. Right now, there are no infant girls in the orphanage - just four small boys. But, the agency is optomistic that a girl will arrive soon. We will be the first family from the ACW to get an infant girl since Vietnam has re-opened.
Looks like the final document is in place for our dossier. We had to re-submit our medical clearance. The Vietnamese government changed the form from one that was in Vietnamese and English to one that was only in English. Seems odd, doesn’t it?
Anyway we finished the new form and fedexed it back to the Adoption Center of Washington. They’ve received the forms and also have our dossier back from the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington. So, it is ready to be sent to Vietnam! Should happen this week.
We’re also working on getting a new pre-approval letter from the US government that shows we’re living in Turkey. But, that won’t hold up the dossier so it can come later.
We put up Alyssa’s crib yesterday! This makes it seem like her arrival is very imminent although it is probably still a few months away. Jessie and Alyssa are going to share a room. A fact that Jessie is very excited about. She was also thrilled to see and try out the new crib as we can see from the picture below.
Just a follow up to say that the licensing process is complete. We received a second email from our adoption agency with a picture of their Vietnam rep getting a copy of their license from a Vietnamese government official. The email also included a process for adoption that spells out the time line for adoptions in Vietnam. It says that the time from receiving a complete dossier until a finalized adoptiong is 120 days. We don’t know exactly what that means, yet. Hopefully that is the maximum time and it can be shortened.
Great news today!! We got an email from our adoption agency saying that they had received a call telling them that the Vietnamese government had approved their license. Nothing in writing yet so they are holding this news close, but they expect to have written confirmation by early next week.
So, one of the big hurdles has been cleared. Our agency also told us that our dossier was still at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington being translated. As soon as that is complete, they will fedex it to Vietnam to be presented to the Vietnamese government. Ours should be one of the first to be submitted by a US adoption agency since Vietnam has re-opened for international adoptions.
We are obviously very excited, but many questions remain. The exact process for this adoption is not clear so we don’t really know when to expect a referral from the Vietnamese or when we’ll be able to go to Vietnam once we get the referral. We also are not sure whether we’ll have to only make one trip to Vietnam or two like we did for Jessie. But, these questions will clear up with time. Since the licensing was the one issue that had the potential to really hold things up, we’re very happy.
More to follow as soon as we get news.
I decided to create a new category called Status that would make it easy for anyone reading this blog to find out where we were in the adoption process. By reading this section, everyone will be able to get an idea of when we might be getting our second daughter, who, by the way, we are going to name Alyssa. So here is the first status report.
As I’ve said in the Paperwork posts, most of the paperwork had been completed and should be on its way to Vietnam. The only document remaining to be completed is an updated approval from the US government that shows we are now going to adopt from Vietnam and that we are now living in Turkey. See [More Paperwork] to read about this. But, fortunately, our agency didn’t hold up the entire dossier for this one document!
The real question that everyone is asking is When will you get Alyssa? That is now dependent on the Vietnamese government. As you are probably aware, international adoptions from Vietnam were closed for a couple of years and they are just now restarting. That means the Vietnamese government is setting up an entirely new process for adoptions, which includes licensing US adoption agencies. So far, no US agency has been licensed, but that is expected to happen soon — most likely in January 2006.
Once the licensing is completed, our agency can start submitting dossiers to the Vietnamese government and start the process in Vietnam. When that happens, we should be able to get a more definite timeframe for when we’ll be able to bring Alyssa home. For now, we are saying (and hoping) this will happen in the first couple months of 2006.
It looks like we’re entering the final stages of the paperwork drill. Our dossier was complete, but because we moved to Ankara, we needed to update the approval that we had from Citizens and Immigration Services (CIS), the US government agency that provides approval for visas for orphans. Also, when we got our approval we thought we would probably adopting from China. So, we needed to change our home address and the country of adoption.
That turns out to be a two step process. First, we need to change the country of adoption by submitting a form to CIS in Baltimore, the original office who gave us the permission. Amazingly, that only took about a week and we now have that paperwork updated. Now, we need to change our home address, which will be done by the regional CIS office in Athens. We’re working on that right now, but have everything lined up so it shouldn’t take too long.
Basically, we needed to have an updated home study done by a licensed social worker, which we did. We will submit that to the Athens office and we should be all set with the proper permissions from the USG to move forward with the adoption. Now we are just waiting for the Vietnamese government to finish the licensing of US adoption agencies - another whole story.