Yes, it’s old news now (six-days old!), but I wanted to pass along this notice from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about the current status of Guatemala adoptions and adoption law. This press release is available from the USCIS website as a PDF.
USCIS Update
January 25, 2008
USCIS ANNOUNCES NEW GUATEMALAN ADOPTION LEGISLATION Intercountry Adoptions Under the Hague Convention
On Dec. 11, 2007, the Guatemalan Congress passed new adoption legislation, which is a necessary step toward meeting the Government of Guatemala’s obligations under the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. The new provisions are effective as of Dec. 31, 2007. Continue reading »
I’m passing this request on from another adoption agency. If you have a friend who has faced this problem, please point them here. Personal adoption stories are an extremely effective force for policy change.
Please help me collect stories of families who have had difficulties changing incorrect birthdates on Certificates of Citizenship.
If your child was assigned an incorrect birth date in their country of origin and you have had difficulty having it corrected on their Certificate of Citizenship, I would appreciate hearing from you. I would also appreciate hearing from you if you were successful in having it changed by CIS. I am collecting stories so that I can garnish congressional support for remedying this problem. Having stories from real families will help illustrating the magnitude of this problem. Please send your story, concerns, input to me at anne + @ + cffwi.org. I can also be reached by phone or U.S. mail at numbers below.
Anne M. Johnson, M.S.W./L.C.S.W.
Director
Children and Families First, Inc.
583 D’Onofrio Drive Ste 220
Madison, Wisconsin 53551
608-576-0498
[Update, 10/11/2008: Carolina Hope now offers a live online education course to assist families domesticate an intercountry adoption in South Carolina. More details available at the course page.]
The following information is adapted from the post-adoption support files here at Carolina Hope. Note that this information is directly applicable only to SC residents who have adopted from overseas. The information provided here should not be construed as legal advice, for which you should see a qualified attorney.
Once you are home with your child, it is important to get a State-issued birth certificate for him or her. Here in South Carolina you have a choice between doing a domestication of the adoption — which you can do without an attorney — or readoption, which requires the help of an attorney. Both domestication and readoption will give you a South Carolina-issued birth certificate.
If you came home on an IR-3 visa, your child became a U.S. citizen as soon as your plane landed in the States. So why choose readoption rather than domestication? The main reason is that readoption terminates under South Carolina law any rights of your child’s birth parents over your child. Carolina Hope has had more than one incident in which an overseas orphanage was shut down, and the orders of adoption for children from that orphanage were nullified. While this is not common, it is a very serious thing, and readopting your child here in the U.S. will strongly affirm the legality of your child’s adoption and help prevent its being called into question. Continue reading »
On January 11 the U.S. Department of State issued a warning (dated January 9) about the status of Guatemala adoptions. (As mentioned in a previous post, Carolina Hope has put its Guatemala adoption program on hold pending new standardized procedures for adoptions in Guatemala. Of course, cases registered under the old system are still being processed.)
Particularly gratifying is the DOS’s commitment (see below) to all Guatemalan adoption cases that were registered under the old law. Here is the text of the statement in full:
Warning: Adoptions Initiated on or after December 31, 2007 in Guatemala
January 9, 2008
The Department of State advises potential adoptive parents and adoption service providers not to initiate new adoptions from Guatemala because of the great uncertainties surrounding implementation of Guatemala’s new adoption law.
We do not know when the Government of Guatemala will be prepared to process cases under the new system set forth in the new Guatemalan adoption law that went into force on December 31, 2007. Continue reading »
Program: International Relations Initiative
Date: January 14, 2008
Regarding: Guatemala 5000
Dear Colleagues,
As part of our ongoing Guatemala 5000 Initiative, Joint Council has maintained dialogue with USDOS and USCIS and met with them most recently on January 7 and again on January 10, 2008. Meetings were also held with UNICEF on December 18, 2007, and on January 9, 2008. Similar dialogue was held with Guatemalan Congressional representatives and government officials along with members of the US Congress over the past three weeks.
Based on these meetings and in consultation with the Guatemala Caucus Co-chairs, the following represents Joint Council’s understandings and advocacy efforts.
Processing of Transition Cases
On January 1, 2008, PGN stopped the processing of all pending adoption cases including the acceptance of new cases, acceptance of cases with previos and the review of cases previously submitted. PGN has however continued to release those cases in which reviews/approvals had been completed as of December 31, 2007. The processing of pending adoptions will begin with the registration of those cases with the Central Authority no later than 30 business days after January 1, 2008 (approximately February 11, 2008). Continue reading »
This morning the Joint Council on International Children’s Services issued the following announcement about newly proposed adoption legislation in the Guatemalan congress. Although this legislation hasn’t passed, this is a good step in the right direction, and it’s encouraging to adoption agencies and adoptive families. More importantly, it’s good news for Guatemalan children in need of adoption.
Joint Council Update
Program: International Relations Initiative
Date: November 7, 2007
Regarding: Guatemala – New Legislation Introduced
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
As you know, Joint Council has continued to advocate for a rational and child centric transition to the Hague Convention in Guatemala. During our recent presentation with at the Adoption Ethics and Accountability Conference, we called for the completion of adoptions in-process, the implementation of the Conventions core elements, an effective implementation date of April 2008 and funding for capacity building. We have continued to work with our colleagues in Guatemala along with members of the Guatemalan Congress in developing a functional child welfare system.
We can now report that members of the Guatemalan Congress, including numerous party chiefs, have submitted Continue reading »
The Joint Council on International Children’s Services has posted copies of the letters sent by the U.S. Congress to Guatemalan President Oscar Berger and to UNICEF. If you participated in lobbying your congressmen to sign the letters, thank you. The announcement (and link) from JCICS are below.
Dear Colleagues,
Joint Council has posted copies online of the two Congressional letters which were submitted to the President of Guatemala and to UNICEF earlier this week. Over 200 Members of Congress signed each letter!
The Guatemala 5000 Initiative was successful in securing congressional support largely because of your encouragement and advocacy. Again, we thank you for all of your efforts. Have a wonderful weekend!
Best regards,
Adam Schlicht
Child Advocacy Program Manager, Joint Council
This morning, Thomas DiFilipo, President of JCICS, sent out this update of the Guatemala 5000 initiative. (I’ve previously blogged about this initiative here and here.)
Joint Council Update
Program: International Relations Initiative
Date: October 31, 2007
Regarding: U.S. Congressional Letters – 203 Signatures
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Through our collective efforts, the Guatemala 5000 Initiative has resulted in 203 Members of the United States Congress supporting the completion of all in-process adoptions via their signature on letters being sent today, October 31, 2007, to Guatemalan President Oscar Berger, UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman and UNICEF Guatemala Director Manuel Manrique. The 203 Senators and Representatives represent the largest number in the 22 year history of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption and the first time the Coalition has addressed UNICEF. Continue reading »
Today Thomas J DiFilipo of JCICS released an update on the Guatemala 5000 initiative, an effort to organize families with a stake or interest in Guatemala adoptions – or in child welfare generally – to advocate for a humane process while Guatemala transitions to a new adoption law. At present, there is no certainty Continue reading »
In a press release yesterday USCIS announced an interim rule that will govern adoptions under the Hague. The announcement, which is reproduced below (and available as a PDF here), essentially states that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has formalized the procedures that will govern international adoptions from countries that are party to the Hague Convention on Protection of Children.
The interim rule will take effect on November 5, but it won’t actually be governing any adoption cases until the U.S. becomes a party to the Hague and the treaty enters into force in the U.S. (probably sometime late winter, 2008). If you have an interest in offering input, consider reading the rule at this link and then offering input to the government. The comment period ends on December 3. Information about how to comment Continue reading »
This article was written by Laura Godwin, Director of Carolina Hope, and originally published by The Greenville News on September 11th, 1997. Since adoption law has not changed too much since then, we thought we would recirculate this thought-provoking article to encourage lawmakers to make state laws more pro-adoption.
Make adoption wonderful choice, not humiliating ordeal
By Laura Beauvais-Godwin
Recently, The Greenville News published an article and cited the number of U.S. children in foster care: more than half a million.Most children who enter foster care do so as a result of neglect, not abuse.And this neglect is often because a single mother cannot properly care for her child due to limited resources as well as alcohol and drug abuse.
Long before these children became statistics, each mother could have increased the child’s opportunities, for each mother had a choice.In fact, each woman who becomes pregnant unexpectedly has three choices: To parent her baby, abort her baby or place her baby for adoption. Each choice is mutually exclusive, each choice is essentially permanent, and each choice will have society’s blessings, except one: adoption. Continue reading »
This morning, Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition. Mr. Lomborg believes that global warming is a reality, and he believes that human activity is contributing to the problem. However, he rejects solutions like the Kyoto Protocol, because he believes these types of initiatives take the focus off more immediate global problems (AIDS, access to clean water) — problems that we can attack more efficiently and with benefit to far more people. (Hang on and keep reading. I’ll get to the adoption connection soon!)
Lomborg believes that the global community should encourage economic growth, and that we should seize on that growth to further develop technologies that would (eventually) put us in a position to produce energy with minimal carbon emissions. If I understand Lomborg’s position correctly, he thinks that Continue reading »
For those who are awaiting I-171H approval from your local USCIS office, here’s some information on what happens with that form once it leaves the desk of the adjudicating officer. Thanks to Tom DiFilipo of JCICS for preparing this information for JCICS member agencies and for allowing us to post it online.
(If you don’t know what an I-171H is, scroll down to the bottom of this post for an explanation.)
03 September 2007
Processing of all I-171H approvals is now competed through the DOS National Visa Center. Joint Council has confirmed the following procedures regarding the processing of I-171H approvals. The change in processing is designed to allow for the tracking of approvals through one central office and contact point. Processing the approvals through the NVC brings the process for ICA [intercountry adoption] in line with the processing of all other U.S.-based immigration applications. It should also be noted that this is a DOS-based program to which USCIS must comply.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Action
I-171H approval issued by local USCIS field office
The field office sends the approval to the DOS National
Visa Center (NVC) via the U.S. Postal Service
The NVC processes the approval and sends it to the
appropriate U.S. Embassy or Consulate via DHL
Two days ago I posted about an adoption interview/debate on Al Jazeera’s English network. This post is about the second half of that interview with Tom DiFilipo, President and CEO of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS), and Louise Melville, a Care and Protection Adviser for Save The Children.
You can watch the clip of the 2nd half of the interview below, and (if you’re interested) you can read my commentary below the interview. If you cannot see the interview below, you can go to the interview on YouTube.
Part 2:
(Click on the play button in the center of the box or at the bottom of the box to watch the video right here. If you click anywhere else in the box, you will be taken to YouTube’s website.)
Now for my own summary of the inteview’s key points, along with some additional comments of my own:
Anti-Adoption Language
This topic — the language used to discuss international adoption — greatly interests me, especially because Continue reading »
The English wing of the Arab news network Al Jazeera produced a piece last month about international adoption on their “Inside Story” program: “Guatemala Adoption Scandal” aired on 13 August 2007. The program featured two interviewees who went head-to-head on inter-country adoption: Tom DiFilipo, President and CEO of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS), and Louise Melville, a Care and Protection Adviser for Save The Children.
This piece came to my attention not because I’m a regular Al Jazeera watcher, but because Carolina Hope is a member of JCICS, which advocates for international children’s welfare and supports international adoption as a legitimate option for providing permanency to children in need of homes.
I’m dividing this topic into two posts because the television program is available on the internet in 2 segments (and I only have time to blog about one of those today!) You can watch the first clip below, and (if you’re interested) you can read my commentary below the interview. If you cannot see the interview below, you can go to the interview on YouTube.
Part 1:
(If you click on the main box, you will be taken to the YouTube website. If you simply click on the play button at the bottom of the box, you can watch the video right here.)
[09/07/07 update: You can now view and read about part 2 of this interview here.]
Now for my own summary of the inteview’s key points, along with some additional comments of my own:
The Role of Inter-Country Adoptions
In part 1, the interviewer asks Tom and Louise about the role of inter-country adoption in the broader spectrum of solutions available for Continue reading »
