On NOIDs

For those who don’t know, an NOID stands for “Notice of Intent to Deny and they are given by the US Embassy when there is a decision to deny a newly adopted child their US-entry Visa, essentially creating a situation where the parents can not leave Vietnam with their newly adopted (in the eyes of Vietnam) child. The solutions are to either relinquish the child or live in-country for 2 years at which time the visa would be issued.

Everyone fears the NOID. There is a lot of talk on the various Vietnam adoption lists, right now, about NOIDs. This is because at least one family has been issued an NOID and possibly several others. People have talked openly about how horrible it is to be issued an NOID and expressed their sympathy to the family or families overseas who are stuck there. People have shared their own past experiences and how, in the past, the Embassy has overreacted and issued NOIDs where they weren’t truly warranted. Essentially people have portrayed the NOID as if it is a Bad Thing and the Embassy is a Bad Entity for issuing such a thing. I even read somewhere where someone said that NOIDs are bad for children!

Here’s the thing people: NOIDs are issued for one thing: suspected child trafficking. If the USCIS determines that your child is not an orphan by US standards, something went wrong in a big way. I don’t care who you are or how long you have wanted a baby or how long you have waited to adopt or how much money you have paid or how much you love your new baby. Child trafficking is wrong. NOIDs are not wrong. Child trafficking is wrong. Corruption is wrong. Agencies who support or engage in child trafficking are wrong. Agencies who aren’t really sure but turn the other cheek are wrong. Parents who don’t ask the tough questions or sign on knowing what they risk are wrong. Parents who don’t do their research up front and use this as a justification for sticking around, later, when they later find out they made bad choices are wrong. These situations are not ok. They are not good. And any process that is set up to prevent these situations is A-OK in my book.

Was the Embassy issuing NOIDs where they weren’t warranted before the close-down? Probably but there was so much corruption, who decides when and where an NOID is warranted and when and where it is overkill in a situation like that? Corruption breeds distrust. Distrust breeds overreaction. So the program shut down and many processes and changes and procedures and an entire governmental body was established in order to make adoptions more ethical in Vietnam. This is valiant but where there is adoption, there is money to be made and where there is money to be made, there are corrupt people who will take advantage of the vulnerable. Those are the poor and needy (birth parents) and the desperate (PAPs). Processes are in place to make that less likely. But it is still an almost inevitability that people will attempt to act in a corrupt and unethical way. We have already seen it! We know what Decree 68 says about the processes under which a child can be released as an orphan and we know the approximate length of time it takes to investigate these children’s histories and work through the many stages of government red tape put in place specifically to weed out corruption. When an agency refers extremely young babies, it is possible* that they are skipping steps. When an agency sends families traveling within weeks of referral, it is probable that they are skipping steps. Why are they skipping these steps? Is it *probably* because the agency has “connections and wants to get their families home (and their pockets filled with cash) all the more quickly? Or is it *possible*, in some circumstances, because the baby was taken by illegitimate means and a full investigation might reveal that? I don’t know. You don’t know. Guess who else doesn’t know? The Embassy! So an ethical Embassy in favor of keeping an ethical program in Vietnam is doing its job to to investigate whether or not a child is being trafficked or corruption is at play. They may never be able to prove it but they – and you and I – can see a mile away when an agency is acting outside the bounds of “typical.

When a person signs on with an agency knowing that they will receive a very young infant and travel very quickly then they are making a decision to possibly face an NOID in their future. And let’s say that in real person terms: they are making a decision to support possible child trafficking. That doesn’t sound so pretty does it? But that’s the bottom line here. We can pretend that we PAPs are the victims. We can pretend that the Embassy is evil. We can even have the audacity to blame our agencies but if you are reading this now, you certainly have the technological ability to find your way to the various information and support groups that discuss ethics in Vietnam adoptions. Bottom line is it is each of our individual responsibilities to make sure that we are making choices that do not support practices that can even be construed as unethical or corrupt. The choice is ours. If we don’t support unethical agencies, they won’t be in business and NOIDs will be a thing of the past. I believe no one wants that as much as the Embassy.

But until it does, I’m thankful for the NOID. I hope agencies and PAPs will heed its warning and will take a step back and remember that there is a lot at stake for those who choose to cut corners and skip ahead in line.