16 “Pipeline” families caught in dispute

In the fall of 2009, Angela Manuszak first met the little boy she hoped to call her own at a prison-turned-orphanage in rural, southern Vietnam. “That’s your mommy, his caregiver told 2-year-old Thomas, commanding him to sit on Angela’s lap. By the end of the visit, Thomas was ready to go home to his new family in Washington Twp.

He’s still waiting. So is his adoptive family ”” Angela and her husband, Terry, and the three siblings they adopted from Taiwan in September. And so are 15 other so-called “pipeline families, all of them caught in what Angela calls a “nightmare of bureaucracy brought about because of changing regulations designed to prevent human trafficking in international adoptions.

While they wait, the Manuszaks say Thomas’ health has deteriorated. “They’re putting process before the life of a child, Terry Manuszak said. “It’s unconscionable.

The Manuszaks and the other pipeline families are in legal limbo because  their adoptions were approved shortly before the U.S. began enforcing stricter guidelines as part of the Hague Adoption Convention. Adoptions between the two countries, which peaked with 828 in 2007, have halted as Vietnam contemplates signing onto the Convention guidelines which, among other things, require participating countries to have a central authority that investigates cases to ensure that children aren’t being trafficked.

Previously, the rules and seriousness about the issue varied depending on the country.

State Department officials say they are “working diligently to raise these cases with Vietnamese adoption officials at every opportunity. The families’ plight drew national attention last week when freshman Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, blocked President Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Vietnam over the issue.

The Manuszaks’ attorney, Lynda Zengerle, said the pipeline families support that maneuver, not as a personal attack on nominee David Shear, but in an attempt to bring the issue to the forefront. “We hope it makes a difference, Zengerle said. “I think the State Department understands the gravity of the situation, but they don’t know how to undo the mess. They’ve backed themselves into a really uncomfortable corner. We’re trying to draw a road map that could save face for everyone, but get these kids home.

Zengerle said it has long ago been settled that these are not trafficked children. “Their parents have renounced them not once but three times, she said. “Nobody is coming for these children, but because of some diplomatic glitch we’re going to let them rot in an orphanage. They are basically starving. It’s not fair, it’s not right, it’s not the way we do things in the United States….

Advocates for the families believe they should be grandfathered in under the guidelines that existed at the time the adoptions were approved. “There’s no reason this can’t be done, Zengerle said. “Vietnam hasn’t signed the Hague Convention yet.