From the Consulate

Perhaps we will get more information out of the JCICS conference than I had originally thought. I have a letter that has originated from the US Consulate. It is long, and I do not feel comfortable posting it in it's entirety anyway. So, here is my synopsis: The US Consulate official spoke with several agencies, compiled their notes, and then spoke with the CCAA. I am going to call the Consular Official the CO, for lack of a better way to refer to him (or her). The CO has spoken with a dozen contacts in the adoption community over the state of Chinese adoptions. He talks about how there is a consensus and a growing concern that the CCAA is taking longer and longer to turn around application dossiers. He couldn't get agreement on why this is - some attributed it to 1) a bureaucratic issue 2) more dossiers from PAPs 3) conscious effort by the CCAA to purposefully make the wait longer. Next he talked about the unspoken change in guidelines - some agencies are having people turned down for 1) history of drug or alcohol abuse 2) physical handicaps 3) multiple divorces 4) being overweight. Other agencies are not having this problem. One agency spoke of the CCAA denying petitions for mixed race couples. Another agency spoke of someone being denied because of a history of depresseion and current use of antidepressents. The CO says that an attorney spoke to her about the newly enforced or enhanced restrictions and spoke of his concern that the criteria the CCAA is using in practice (as opposed to what may appear in Chinese law) are neither well-publicized nor uniformly applied. The CO states that this does appear to be an issue based on what he has heard from agencies. The CO says that almost everyone agreed that China is going to restrict intercountry adoptions in the time period leading up to the 2008 Olympics. Some agencies expressed their belief that the current slowdown is the beginning of an effort to make Chinese adoptions less attractive. It was pointed out that adoptions from Korea in 1988 almost stopped (not completely stopped, but slowed down a great deal). There was talk that China is concerned that intercountry adoptions could become a focal human-interest story when the world's media descend on Beijing. The CO says he was told by an agency that rural orphanages are more reluctant to send paperwork on babies whose beginnings can't be confirmed with 100% certainty. Orphanage directors are concerned they could be sacked or face jail time if paperwork gets through for a baby that is later found to have been kidnapped. This was attributed to the lack of babies' paperwork at the CCAA. There was some talk of domestic adoptions, not much that I think means much to us - stuff we already know, mostly. There is one interesting piece of information in this paragraph though. The CO says that one agency told her that their referral rates are down by two-thirds what they were at the same time in 2005. ---- The rest of this email is the response from the CCAA. I will post that information in another post.