Nepal and Ethiopia -- State Dept. notices this week

GulfCoaster

For those who are interested in IA...

This week, the State Department issued an adoption alert for Nepal, and an adoption notice for Ethiopia.  Links for those interested are below.  For Nepal, the State Department's advice is to strongly consider switching countries if you're not already matched with a child.  For Ethiopia, it is an advisory that visa processing is experiencing delays due to the longer investigations now being required to verify orphan status -- and recommendations of who to contact to report fraud or misconduct by an agency or its staff. 

https://adoption.state.gov/news/nepal.html

https://adoption.state.gov/news/ethiopia.html

a penny saved

We received a notice from our agency a week ago letting us know that we may hear things about longer processing times for visas, but that we would not be affected because it only pertains to cases where the children are coming from one specific orphanage.  Unless things have changed (and I hope not!) then this should only affect those who are adopting from Gelgela.  Here is a letter our agency passed on to us about this situation:

Dear adoption agencies,

Recently, the U.S. Embassy has implemented several changes to the adoption visa process, including conducting significant additional review of each case and field investigations. In light of our findings, and recent serious allegations and news reports involving Ethiopian adoptions, we will require additional time to process each case from any agency in which the child was processed through Gelgela orphanage.

Effective immediately, the Embassy will require 8 weeks' processing time for each adoption visa case in which the child was processed through Gelgela orphanage. This means that families will not receive an immigrant visa appointment until 8 weeks after the complete case file is submitted to the Embassy. We will not accept incomplete case files in these cases under any circumstances. It is the agency's responsibility to plan family travel accordingly. Cases that have already been submitted will continue to be processed as previously scheduled.

For cases already scheduled (for which the Embassy already has the case file), those parents should expect potentially lengthy delays in the processing of cases involving children from Gelgela orphanage.

Sincerely,

Adoption Unit
U.S. Embassy
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
 

GulfCoaster

Thanks for the additional info to supplement the State Dept notices.  Is Gelgela the orphanage used by Christian World Adoptions (since they're the most recent agency to be in the news for alleged improprieties)?

TeraandJosh

Ditto on it being just the one orphanage.

As a side note - there has been several cases where court cases have been pushed back. The Ethiopian Government is doing spot checks and inspections on agencies, transition homes, and orphanges. Just a heads up to those who may experience a push back on court dates . . . . Seems like court cases at our agency are back on track with people passing court again - so that's great news!