State Dept. Posts New Vietnam “Fact Sheet”

The State Department has posted a new “Fact Sheet” for Vietnam, dated June 2008.

While much of the information is a re-wording of previous announcements, there is some new information here, including the following:

Over the course of 28 months (January 2006 to April 2008), 1403 orphans adopted from Vietnam were issued visas to the United States. According to Vietnamese officials, several thousand adoption cases are currently pending.

Although it is only a first step to improve the process, overall, the new procedure appears to be working well. In the first four months of Orphan First processing, 287 I-600 petitions have been pre-approved. This is equal to the number of I-600 approvals for the same time period last year. During the first six months of FY 2008 (October 2007 to March 2008), 449 adoption visas cases were approved, compared to 353 for the same period in FY 2007.

Unfortunately, our field investigations continue to reveal some incidents of serious adoption irregularities, including forged or altered documentation, women paid or coerced to release their children, and children offered for adoption without the knowledge or consent of their birth parents. We are aware of four children who have been returned to their birth parents once these circumstances were discovered.

The U.S. Government believes that Vietnam’s accession to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions and Vietnam’s commitment to meeting Hague obligations offers the clearest and best-tested path to transparent and ethical adoptions in Vietnam.