Please Sign Petition to Keep Adoption Open in Vietnam

Dear friends and family members,

Please help us keep adoption open in Vietnam. This petition is to try and get our Dept. of State and Immigration to write a nice letter asking the head of the Dept of Adoptions in Vietnam to allow all families that have their paperwork in by July 1, to receive a referral even after September 1st. This would include us.

Please copy the link into your browser and "sign" the petition. You'll just fill in your name and email and then click on Sign Petition. You can click or not click whether or not you want Ipetitions to contact you with anything else. (They do honor this if you don't want further contact). It takes you to a donations page, but just close the window. You can read the petition here or on the website. As always, please keep praying.

Please pray that this petition and all the letter writing to Congress will have an impact and that the Dept of State will actually write the letter. This is our best chance.

Thanks,
Shae


http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Grandfather_All_Dossiers/


The petition

AMERICANS UNITED FOR VIETNAMESE ORPHANS – GRANDFATHERING PETITION
June 2008

Dear CCAI Co-Chairs Landrieu, Coleman, Oberstar, and Brown-Waite:

Thousands of families have been in the process of adopting a child from
Vietnam for as long as 2 years. Please help them complete their
adoptions and give a child an opportunity to be raised in a family
environment. With the recent studies on the effects of
institutionalization on children, there should be no question that a
family environment is an optimal one, which every child should have the
opportunity to experience.

We implore you to use your influence to procure a letter from the Dept
of State and USCIS, addressed to Dr. Long, Director of the Vietnamese
DIA (Dept of International Adoption). On April 25th 2008, he announced
that dossiers of American families received by July 1st, 2008, and
matched with a child by September 1st, 2008, will be allowed to be
processed to completion. All dossiers not matched with a child will be
returned to adoption service providers, dashing hopes of raising a child
for the 1500-3000 American families who are in the process of adopting a
child from Vietnam.

Please ask the Dept of State and the USCIS to request that Dr. Long
allow all dossiers submitted by July 1,2008 to be “grand fathered” by
allowing these families to receive a child referral even after Sept 1.
He has indicated that he is agreeable to this request IF the Dept of
State and USCIS agencies will state that they will honor this change by
continuing to approve qualified I-600 (orphan petition) and I-234 (visa)
applications for families matched after September 1st. Vietnamese law
requires a current bilateral agreement between sending and receiving
countries; the one between Vietnam and the United States will expire on
September 1st, 2008. Dr Long has indicated that Vietnam would waive this
requirement for the remaining dossiers, if asked to do so by the Dept of
State and USCIS.

Thousands of prospective parents applied to USCIS to adopt a child from
Vietnam, believing in good faith that the US and Vietnam would continue
to work together to complete ethical adoptions.

Since November 2007, USCIS has implemented DNA testing and the Orphans
First program. These steps should help improve confidence in the
adoption process, and allow the US and Vietnam to negotiate a new MOU
with the goal of becoming a Hague country. Closing the program at this
point will leave 1500-3000 families and orphans in limbo for as long as
two years, while Vietnam makes necessary steps towards acceptance of the
Hague Convention. As the JCICS Children's Rights Campaign of June 2008
has pointed out, if adoptions stop between the US and Vietnam, so will
the backbone of humanitarian support that has helped tens of thousands
of orphans who will never have the opportunity to be raised in a family
environment.

We urge you to act upon this request without delay, by ensuring that the
Dept of State and USCIS write this letter to Dr Long. This is a very
trying time for the many families who wait month after month with little
word, and we hope that their dreams of raising an orphaned child does
not end in sadness.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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