Initially three of West Sands referred children’s cases were forwarded to USCIS as not clearly approvable. One was approved immediately when the USCIS team was in Addis. The other two were sent to Nairobi, and RFE’s were issued. The two sent to Nairobi were both abandoned children from the same region. The primary reason the U.S. Embassy determined that these cases were “not clearly approvable’, was because the police report lacked the details of the search efforts made to locate the birth parents. Both of these families chose to go to Ethiopia, to be with their children during the process, and to do what they could in country to gather evidence. They also both retained an Immigration attorney to review their cases, and provide a detailed investigation plan. Retaining an Immigration Attorney is not required, however, it did seem to ease the process as she provided the area of focus with a specific “game plan”. With both of these families in country, they were able to complete the investigation with the assistance of our Ethiopia Director and staff. The final response to USCIS was sent after about 20 days. Approvals were issued from USCIS for these children about 10 days later.

During that time, six other West Sands’ referred children were approved by the U.S. Embassy, and two additional children’s cases were forwarded to USCIS Nairobi as “not clearly approvable”. Of the two children’s cases sent to USCIS, one was abandoned, and the other was denied by his father (father whereabouts are also unknown). The abandoned child’s case was from the same area as the 2 previously referred cases.

Since there are many families in the process whose child was abandoned, here is some additional information to help you understand the process. The detailed search efforts are a new request by the U.S., that is why many of the cases submitted recently are not meeting the new requirements. The Police station for each region/area assigns one officer to handle all children and family affairs. Therefore when a child is found abandoned, that officer is “dispatched” or in charge of the investigation. All abandoned children from an area are investigated by the same officer. The police reports for the children filed now, were completed close to a year ago. The U.S. is the only country requiring these details from Ethiopia. When the police officer writes the report he/she can’t project which country the child will be placed with a year down the road, or if that child will even be approved for inter-county adoption. Rather, the officer follows their country’s requirements for completing a report/investigation. This leads to the “missing” information in the reports, as USCIS and the U.S. Embassy sees it.

As your Agency, we will submit all required documents to the U.S. Embassy when filing your I-600. We can only submit official documents prepared by Ethiopian Government agencies. We can request information from these agencies and police departments, but we can’t control the content of the reports. Many times we have to wait for the U.S. to make their requests, so that we can then present such request to the Ethiopian Court, police, etc. The U.S. initially indicated that they would accept video interviews of witnesses as evidence, and encouraged families to have them made. Now they have recently indicated that these videos would not take the place of their investigation. We are currently checking to see if the Embassy is still considering these videos as “evidence”.

This process is complicated for sure, but ultimately West Sands is confident that the children we refer are true Orphans under Ethiopian and U.S. Immigration law. To date, no cases that have been submitted to the U.S. Embassy or USCIS have been denied, and there are no reports of fraud. However, the U.S. Embassy and USCIS are still claiming that they see concerning patterns of fraud, but have not been able to prove any of it.

We will continue to keep you updated as new information becomes available. Adoption is such a leap of faith, and we honor you for strength and patience. Please continue to pray for the families and children affected by this additional delay.

Thank you!

]]> http://www.westsandsadoption.org/ws/uscis-teleconference-summary-ethiopia/feed/ 0 http://www.westsandsadoption.org/ws/national-adoption-day-celebrated-november-19th/ http://www.westsandsadoption.org/ws/national-adoption-day-celebrated-november-19th/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:52:25 +0000 Sheila http://www.westsandsadoption.org/ws/?p=1471 We celebrated National Adoption Day on November 19th, 2011 by going to the park and meeting with other families that have been touched by adoption. We were featured in our local newspaper. How did you celebrate National Adoption Day?

“This is wonderful time to celebrate families and children who have been blessed by adoption,” said Kent Parke, executive director of West Sands Adoption International. “There were over 140 people who came to celebrate with us.”

West Sands places orphaned children from China, Ethiopia and the Congo with loving families in the area. Call 435-986-1617 for more information.
SOURCE

USCIS Stakeholder Meeting on Ethiopian Adoptions – Friday, December 9, 2011, 10:00 am Eastern Time

As a follow up to the October 28, 2011, Ethiopian Stakeholder call, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the U.S. Department of State would like to invite you to attend a stakeholder call on Friday, December 9, 2011, 10:00 am Eastern Time to discuss USCIS’ November trip to the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa to adjudicate “not clearly approvable” adoption petitions.

After the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, identified a number of adoption petitions (Form I-600, Petition to Classify Orphan as Immediate Relative) that it determined were not clearly approvable (NCA), and thus, must be referred to USCIS for adjudication, USCIS dispatched a team of officers to go Addis to adjudicate the petitions. USCIS and the Department of State would like to discuss the results of the NCA Team’s trip, lessons learned, and the way forward for Ethiopian adoptions.

To Participate in the Session

Any interested parties may participate in this event by telephone. All participants must respond to this invitation. Please contact the USCIS Office of Public Engagement at public.engagement@dhs.gov by Thursday, December 8, 2011 referencing “Ethiopian Adoptions” in the subject line of your email.

Please also include your full name and the organization you represent in the body of the email.

To Join the Call

On the day of the engagement please use the information below to join the session by phone. We recommend calling in 10 minutes prior to the start of the teleconference.

Call-in Number: 1-800-779-1424

Overseas Toll Number: 1-630-395-0144

Passcode: Adoption

The Families who touched our lives:

Noah (Yameral) – The Scott Family

Yared – The Raley Family

Greer (Nathaneal) – The Sweeney family

Helen & Yared – The Stotts’ Family

Yonas & Yabsira – The Borders’ Family

Chernet, Mulunesh and Woubet – The Rowe Family

Yonas & Yoseph – The Monk Family

Woudneh learned to play the Wii.

McKay (Sude) & Addison (Lidet) – The Wells Family

  Our Kentucky Adventure began at Churchill Downs:

Utah Adventure ended at Zion National Park:

November 16, 2011

Notice: Procedure for Processing Adoption Cases

This notice provides supplemental information to the adoption notice of October 7, 2011, adding additional details on the process applicable to orphan petitions filed with a U.S. Embassy Consular Section overseas.  While the description has been tailored to answer inquiries specific to Ethiopia, the steps described in this explanation apply to all non-Hague countries.  This notice only describes the process for Forms I-600 filed with U.S. Embassy Addis Ababa.  For processing information on cases filed domestically with USCIS through the National Benefits Center (NBC), please refer to the USCIS website at www.uscis.gov.

Once adoptive parents are in possession of the final adoption decree from the Federal First Instance Court, approval letters from the Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs, the child’s birth certificate and Ethiopian passport, and all other required Form I-600 supporting documentation, they (or their authorized agent) may file Form I-600,Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative, with the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa if they have met the physical presence requirements for filing a Form I-600 petition overseas.

Upon receipt of the Form I-600 and accompanying documentation, the U.S. Embassy begins the Form I-604, Determination on Child for Adoption, orphan status investigation – the process to determine if the child meets the definition of an orphan under U.S. immigration law.  The time frame for completion of the Form I-604 determination depends on the circumstances of each case, but can take up to several weeks or months.  During this time, additional information or documentation may be requested by the U.S. Embassy for cases with insufficient or deficient supporting evidence to determine orphan status.

In certain cases it may be necessary to interview the child’s Ethiopian birth parent(s) or guardian, or the individual who found an abandoned child, to resolve errors or discrepancies discovered in the case file.  The U.S. Embassy conducts such interviews for cases in which the consular officer deems interview(s) necessary to make a determination on the child’s orphan status.  Birth relative and other interviews are often an integral part of the Form I-604 determination.

The U.S. Embassy must then determine whether the case is clearly approvable.  If a case is clearly approvable, the U.S. Embassy approves the Form I-600 petition and issues an immigrant visa.  If there are questions regarding the child’s orphan status or the information is insufficient to make a determination, federal regulation requires that the U.S. Embassy forwards the case as “not clearly approvable” to the USCIS Field Office in Nairobi, Kenya, for further processing.  When this occurs, the U.S. Embassy sends out a transfer notice to the petitioners when the case is physically forwarded to USCIS Nairobi, and provides contact information for further questions.

Upon receipt of a petition identified as “not clearly approvable,” the USCIS Nairobi Field Office notifies the parent(s) that the case has been received and issues requests for additional evidence and other notices, if necessary.  Upon review of all available evidence including any response to a Request for Evidence or Notice of Intent to Deny, USCIS issues a decision and notify the petitioners.  For details of the USCIS process, please visit USCIS’ Ethiopia Q&A page.  If the case is approved, USCIS Nairobi returns the case to the U.S. Embassy for visa processing.

Approvals Issued: 36
Requests for Evidence Issued: 9
Notices of Intent to Deny Issued: 1
Under USCIS Team Review 9
Pending Birth Relative Interview 8
Pending Physical Transfer 1

During the team’s first days in Addis, they began reviewing the cases, and established procedures necessary for completing adjudication and issuing notices. Embassy Addis is providing the resources necessary for USCIS to be able to adjudicate the not clearly approvable cases. Although the team has encountered some technological challenges, the team has been issuing decisions and notices as soon as they are able.

All cases that the team is able to approve before they depart from Addis Ababa will stay with the Consular Section in Embassy Addis Ababa, for immediate scheduling of immigrant visa processing. Families that receive an approval notice will be contacted directly by the U.S. Embassy within three business days. We strongly recommend that families wait to be contacted regarding an immigrant visa interview before making travel arrangements. Cases that require a Request for Evidence or a Notice of Intent to Deny will be sent to the USCIS Rome District Office for further processing.

Each family that received a Request for Evidence or a Notice of Intent to Deny should carefully read the instructions regarding where to send additional evidence to avoid delays in processing that could be caused by sending the evidence to the incorrect USCIS Office. USCIS has decided to utilize additional resources at the Rome District Office in the ongoing processing of some of the affected cases in an effort to ensure that they are processed to completion as quickly as possible.

In the coming weeks, USCIS and DOS will schedule another stakeholder call to provide a briefing on the team’s work in Addis Ababa, and an update on how processing will proceed going forward for any new cases identified by Embassy Addis Ababa as not clearly approvable.

Kind Regards,

Office of Public Engagement
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

USCIS officers have more authority than U.S. Embassy case workers when adjudicating I-600 applications. A USCIS officer only needs 51% certainty that the child is considered an orphan under U.S. Immigration law. For the cases that have been referred to USCIS, once an investigator reviews the case, they will either approve (60% statistic) or submit a “Request for Evidence” (RFE) (40% statistic). Less than 5% of all I-600 applications filed (for all countries) have been denied by USCIS. If the USCIS Investigator has enough evidence to review the child’s orphan status with 51% certainty, the child’s case will be approved while the team is in Addis, and we will be able schedule the adoptive families’ interview. If they need more evidence to review the case to find that 51% certainty they will submit a “RFE” (it will be mailed to the adoptive parent’s home). If that happens, the case will most likely not be resolved while the team is still in Addis. If a RFE is issued, the supporting evidence will need to be mailed to Nairobi. This is disappointing as we hoped to submit the supporting evidence to the team while they are still at the Embassy. The team of investigators from USCIS will arrive in Addis on November 7th and will remain their until the Thanksgiving holiday.

Adoptive parents should understand that this is not a situation of prevention on the Agency’s part. Our Agency has our own investigators and we research the history of each child prior to referring the child to a family. We have full certainty that all of the children we refer to our adoptive families are Orphan’s under Ethiopian and U.S. Immigration law. Because the facts of each case are so different, and the process of receiving evidence for each child varies depending upon the child’s history, the region the child is from and the information we are provided by the birth relative, there is no exact document that we can submit to the Embassy to provide them 100% certainty. This is an investigation based on the facts within the information provided on each child’s case. The Embassy’s lack of jurisdiction over investigating these cases does not imply the Agency’s lack of due diligence in providing such documents to the Embassy. We will continue to provide the U.S. Embassy and USCIS with any legally and ethically obtainable information they request for their investigation. We will not however, send our Ethiopian staff to the local police department or other Ethiopian Government agencies and imply what information needs to be in their reports, as USCIS has suggested. We will continue to work the Ethiopian police and Government staff in a respectful and ethical manner. We will not put our Ethiopian staff in unethical positions for the ease of the U.S. Embassy. Adoptive families should be prepared for more cases being sent to USCIS in Nairobi, since the U.S. Embassy does not have the full authority to review and approve many of these cases. West Sands Adoptions will stand behind our adoptive families and their child(ren) during their I-600 investigation.

Please read the following message we received from the U.S. Embassy today regarding Orphan Investigations:

Dear Adoption Agencies,

Several issues have arisen over the past few weeks that make it necessary for us to clarify some points with you regarding how we screen documents and schedule interviews with adoptive parents.

We want to stress that we will not expedite cases simply because parents are in country. We screen cases in the order in which they are received and we schedule interview appointments in the order in which the cases are cleared. We recommend that all adoptive parents wait to travel until the Embassy has confirmed a scheduled appointment. We will not fast track any case because adoptive parents chose to travel to Ethiopia without a scheduled appointment.

Our documentary requirements for cases do not change when the parents are in-country. If in the course of screening the documents we determine that we cannot clear the case because of errors or inconsistencies in the file that require further investigation, adoptive parents could find themselves spending significantly more time than expected in Ethiopia.

Families should not book return travel without a confirmed interview date. We will not expedite appointments on this basis.

Please keep the following in mind when communicating with your adoptive parents. We will be sharing the same information:

• adoption cases will be screened in the order received
• interviews will not be scheduled until a case has been screened and cleared, including any required corrections
• Embassy staff require several business days to screen a case
• corrections may require several days to weeks to complete
• investigations and/or interviews with birth or relinquishing relatives may take a significant amount of time to complete
• interview slots are normally available within one week of a case being cleared
• it takes 48 hours from the time of the interview until we are able to deliver a printed visa.

We respectfully ask you to continue informing your parents of our recommendations regarding travelling for the visa interview.

Esther Bell

Vice Consul

US Embassy

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

bellef@state.gov

We do not see any reason for families to panic or have fear over their case and should allow the U.S. to preform whatever investigation they feel is necessary to ensure the integrity of the overall process of Ethiopia Adoptions.   We understand how hard the wait is at this point in your adoption process and share your frustrations.  However, it is more difficult now for our staff to update each family on the progress of their case within the U.S. Embassy, and ask that you be patient and allow our staff to focus their work on fulfilling these requests rather than providing updates.  If any information is received we will pass it along to you, but we are unable to update each family every step of the way.  This only takes our staff away from doing what we need them to do most.  Please trust in us, and know that our staff cares about each child and every family we work with.   Thank you so much for your patience and understanding.