My thoughts on the State Dept info

Before anyone gets upset with me for having opinions - I'm just making some logical conclusions and then (later) some wild guesses. I do not claim to have any knowledge other than what I have shared with ya'll, so my opinions and guesses are just what I can come up with based on this information combined with what we already knew. The first thing I get out of this is that the State Department figured out what we already knew. The agencies don't know much of anything. Each agency seems to think something different is going on. I find it telling that he gave three reasons he heard from agencies for the slowdown, and one of those reasons was that the CCAA is doing it on purpose. Our agencies may be telling us this is not the case, but apparently more than a few of them do think this may be the case. We also now have confirmation that the CCAA is being stricter about some health issues but that they aren't being very uniform about it. That's kinda scary. Again, one of the draws to China for many families is the cut and dried approach, if you fit into "these" guidelines then you will get a baby, no need to wonder if you will or not. Some people are finding out that is not the case after all. Very scary, actually. As for the Olympics - when it was first announced that the Olympics would go to Beijing everyone just pretty much assumed that adoptions would stop (or come to a near stop) during that time period. No one said "I wonder if...", everyone said "well, you know this means..." But now people are starting to second guess that. It is still my belief that adoptions will slow down in a big way for the period leading up to the Olympics. It is my hope that the current slowdown is not gearing down for that to happen. I find the talk about orphanage directors being scared to send paperwork in quite alarming. I hope the CCAA is addressing these concerns. I remember a rumor that some big meeting with all of the orphanage directors was coming up soon - anyone remember when that was supposed to be? Might it have been before the director headed to the US? Maybe it was the first part of April. I wonder if Brian Stuy will be able to find out any info on what took place at the meeting. And then the last thing to keep in mind on this part of the email is the statement from the agency that their numbers are "down by two-thirds from this same time in 2005". I'll look at that a bit closer later on. As for the reply from the CCAA, I think we can learn more by what they didn't answer than what they did answer. As I pointed out before, they don't feel that the CCAA is slowing down adoptions in order to help to balance out the "boy glut". They did not say they don't feel that they are slowing down in preperation for the Olympics, or that they aren't slowing down as a result of the Hunan issues. And, it was stated clearly that the official was going to ask the CCAA about the discrimination issues, and yet that isn't talked about at all in the reply. Likewise, the discussions about health issues not being treated the same isn't talked about in the reply. The consulate official does say that they aren't personally seeing a decrease in the number of handicapped or mixed race couples, but they do not say what the CCAA had to say about it. And lastly - Visa issuances for the period from October 1st through March 31st are down by 9%. I would be willing to bet that the numbers from October 1st through December 31st weren't down all that much, but the numbers from January through March were down by a lot more than 9%. Remember, the agency said their numbers were down by 2/3. That probably means they are about 30% less than the were last year for the same period. But what it sounded like she was saying was that they are at 66% less than last year. But that sounds a bit excessive. Of course, it is taking three and four months to get through a single LID month, so I suppose it's possible. The important thing for me to realize is that on one level, it doesn't matter why it has slowed down. It has, and there is nothing we can do about it. However, and this is why I'm here... if we can find out why it is slowing down more and more each month, then we can better understand whether it might speed back up again.

• If the slowdown is to gear everything down before the Olympics then it isn't likely it will pick back up.
• If the slowdown is because of too many parent dossiers then there wouldn't be less babies being adopted, so I don't believe that is the cause of the slowdown (as I've stated before)
• If the slowdown is because of less baby dossiers then we need to know WHY there are less baby dossiers before we can make a determination on the future.
• If the slowdown is because of the Hunan issues then we can assume things will pick back up at some point. Maybe in the next couple of months. Maybe next month, depending on how the meeting went (if it has already taken place).

I could go on and on, but I'll stop there. Wanna hear my WAG? I'm thinking that perhaps they were planning to slow down just a little for the Olympics, get it to 10 months and hold it there a while. And then they got slammed with the Hunan issue, and the orphanage directors started not sending as much paperwork in. When the ramp up to the trial started many orphanages stopped sending in paperwork until they saw how the trial worked out, and then when they saw how it worked out they decided to continue not sending very much at all. And who can blame them, if they unknowingly signed off on a baby that was later found to have been swapped with another orphanage (or worse) then they could lose their job or even go to jail. So, we have ended up with five days worth of referrals going out in a month's time because orphanage directors are afraid to sign of on the paperwork for the baby. And that on top of the half-months slow down that the CCAA had started in anticipation of the Olympics has really gotten them into a jam. If that is the case, then I would assume they would do something to make the orphanage directors feel better about sending paperwork in, and that we should start seeing half months again until we hit the year mark and then whole months again. The only thing that doesn't fit into this scenario is the part where they are denying one couple of a health reason and letting someone else adopt with the same health reason. I have an incredibly pessimistic theory, too. But I don't want to see it in print. I like this one. It fits with most of the data, and gives us hope at the same time.