Paperwork problems in adoption of two Vietnamese orphans bring heartache
A nursery awaits its second occupant
By Rachel McGrath
Correspondent, Ventura County Star
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
While 6-month-old Lillian Rose sleeps snuggled up to adoptive mother, Julie, 7-month-old Madelyn Grace is still a world away in Vietnam.
Although the Carrolls are the legal parents of both babies under Vietnamese law, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, denied Madelyn a visa to enter this country.
After four weeks of living with both baby girls in Vietnam, the Carrolls were forced to leave Madelyn behind.
…
U.S. officials would not comment on the Carrolls’ case specifically but say an increasing number of irregularities are appearing in orphan petitions and visa applications in Vietnam. They urge people to get visas first before traveling to pick up adopted children.Madelyn has been placed in foster care in Vietnam along with another baby girl adopted by a Seaside, Calif., family but also denied a U.S. visa.
Sharon Rummery, the California spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said she could not comment on the case. … Rummery said the United States has a moral obligation to make sure a child being adopted is truly an orphan because of death, abandonment or the relinquishment of parental rights.
“Adoptive parents must conform to U.S. law in order to bring the child home, and that means the child must qualify as an orphan,” she said. “That means we must be able to establish through paperwork that the child is an orphan.”
The Carrolls have hired an experienced international adoption attorney, Irene Steffas, based in Georgia, to handle their appeal against the U.S. government’s Notice of Intent to Deny admission. They refuse to think about what might happen if their appeal is denied.
“We sat in the office in the embassy in Hanoi and we said if you can show us that she was a victim of baby buying or if her birth parents are looking for her, we will personally hand her back,” Julie said. “We are people of integrity, and we would never participate in anything like that.”
5 Responses
What this article failed to include was that the new process for advance processing of the I-600A BEFORE families travel to adopt their children was NOT in place until weeks AFTER we returned home. The independent investigation of our case has been completed and there is NO evidence that our daughter does not meet the criteria for orphan status by USCIS. We are now awaiting the submission of our official response from our attorney to USCIS and hope for a successful resolution to our case.
Julie Carroll
Julie, many of us are thinking of you and hoping this resolves.
Julie, I do hope your Madelyn would be in your arm soon. I just correct you that new process of I-600 (not I-600A) has been started to apply in VN since Nov. 2007.
Why was the agency not mentioned in the article except to say that they were ethical and reputable? I’m getting tired of agencies hiding in the shadows of all this. Every article that I have read about these issues never mentions an agency by name. Am I the only one who finds this a little fishy?
I believe that the reason agency names are not mention is too protect the families who are trying to get there children home. The last thing they need is to have the name of their agency being blasted all over the internet. Corrupt agencies need to be stopped, but in cases where everything was done legally (as in this one) you do not want to give any reason to believe that your agency is corrupt.