An independent voice for ethical adoption
USCIS Conference Call on Haitian Adoptions ~ February 3, 2009
This afternoon, Ethica participated on a conference call hosted by USCIS regarding the status of adoptions from Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Some general announcements for prospective adoptive parents, adoptive parents, and adoption service providers:
- If you have not done so, please email the details of your situation and case to haitianadoptions@dhs.gov. If you have done this in the last 2-3 days, you will hear from them shortly. If you have done this longer than 2-3 days ago, and you have not heard from USCIS as a follow-up, please email them again.
- That said, please do not ask the same question more than once in a short period of time, because the extra emails clog the box and make it difficult for the staff to be able to weed through new cases and process them expeditiously from the cases that they’ve already received.
- Likewise, please do not ask neighbors/colleagues/others to engage in a letter-writing campaign on your behalf. USCIS, USDOS, and others are working as quickly as possible to process *all* of the cases before them. When there are multiple letters coming into the email box regarding one case, it slows things down for ALL of the cases.
- USCIS is working 7 days a week to process requests; they ask for your understanding and patience as they try to serve the children in Haiti as quickly as possible.
- Information that may be necessary to process cases as quickly as possible:
- All previous names the adoptive parent have used. If an adoptive parent had a maiden name, for instance, please provide that information when relaying case information; this has led to confusion and subsequent delays in some cases because officers did not know that two individuals with different names were the same person.
- Please let USCIS know if you have fingerprints on file, even if those fingerprints are expired. Please see below for more information.
- If you are an adoptive parent and did not hear about this call directly from DHS, please email haitianadoptions@dhs.gov with your contact information to be included on future calls for adoptive parents.
- The statistics:
- So far, 750 children have been approved for humanitarian parole
- Nearly 600 children have arrived in the U.S.
- There are over 1000 total cases presented for humanitarian parole, including the 750 cases already approved.
Regarding the process between the governments of Haiti and the United States:
- To reiterate earlier updates, the children in the queue to come to the U.S. now on humanitarian parole are children who had been matched with American families prior to the earthquake. There are no *new* adoptions taking place now.
- The Haitian government and the U.S. government are both in agreement, and have been working quite well together at this point. They both fully support the efforts to bring Haitian children who are eligible for humanitarian parole to the U.S. as quickly as possible, despite news reports to the contrary.
- The process, at this point, is that the U.S. government presents the names and biographical information of the children to depart from Haiti to the Haitian Prime Minister, who then approves their departure. Since the U.S. government and the Haitian government have established this procedure, the response time from the Haitian government has been rapid.
- The Haitian government has demonstrated an extraordinary amount of trust in the U.S. government, and for that we should be extremely appreciative. This understanding and trust is immensely benefiting the children of Haiti. If individuals feel moved to express gratitude to the Haitian government, the Haitian Embassy in Washington DC would likely be able to deliver messages of thanks to the government of Haiti on your behalf.
The process on the U.S. side:
- At this point, there are two phases of preliminary review to establish whether a child meets the criteria for humanitarian parole. There are a number of cases where a child does not appear to meet the criteria to be either Category 1 or Category 2; in those situations, the case goes before a review board before rendering an ultimate decision.
- USCIS is also verifying background checks, during which it is important for them to know all of the names that an adoptive parent has used in the past.
- Fingerprints: There are some delays surrounding adoptive parents who are in Haiti without fingerprints on file in the U.S.
- If the adoptive parent has had fingerprints taken in the U.S. before, the fingerprints can be re-run by USCIS (even if they are expired).
- It is a big challenge to get fingerprints if the parent is already in Haiti; USCIS urges parents to have fingerprints on file before leaving for Haiti.
- After the preliminary review, there remains to be a final review about the child’s eligibility for humanitarian parole in Haiti itself. They must confirm the identity of the child and procure authorization from the government of Haiti, among other steps.
- There are some orphanages who have been to the Embassy more than once, without final adjudication. These cases are not lost, and it will not speed up the process of an adoptive parent comes to Port-au-Prince. USCIS is in direct, personal contact with the directors of orphanages in Haiti, and they are trying to do everything they can to process these cases as quickly as possible.
- For parents in Haiti now, they can show up to the Embassy as a “walk-in”, but they may be told to come back another day for final processing. This is because the waiting room fills up quickly each day, and they can only process so many adoptions per day due to space constraints.
- If you are adopting a child from Haiti and you are a U.S. citizen, but not a U.S. resident, you must let USCIS know immediately, because humanitarian parole does not provide children with the travel documents they need to enter any other country than the U.S. You should send your information to haitianadoptions@dhs.gov.
From the CDC:
- Remember that children entering the U.S. on humanitarian parole have not been screened in a medical exam. Please get a medical evaluation for your child as quickly as possible. The CDC has published an updated set of guidelines for you to bring with you to your pediatrician; these guidelines offer some guidance in determining the appropriate screening for a child coming from Haiti.
- Some parents may have trouble adding their child to their health insurance; this should not be a factor in delaying the medical evaluation. Children arriving on humanitarian parole are eligible for assistance through the Office of Refugee Resettlement; this office has a number of providers available to complete the evaluation.
- This medical screening is very important for children and their families.
The process of leaving Haiti and arriving in the U.S.:
- The airport in Port-au-Prince is still closed, and there are no commercial flights.
- Children who leave Haiti are arriving in the U.S. via military or relief planes that have brought supplies into Haiti.
- Because there are no commercial flights, it is difficult to anticipate when children will leave Haiti. Currently, all children arriving in the U.S. must arrive through Miami, where the Department of Health and Human Services has established a central point of processing. When children are granted permission to leave Haiti, the next step is locating a plane that is leaving Haiti for Miami, and the Department of State has been able to get children on these planes fairly quickly. In one instance, children were delayed by a day because the planes leaving Haiti were not going to Miami.
- So far, 14,000 American citizens and their families have been evacuated on these planes. However, it is far from a predictable system, which is why there is very little lead time for adoptive parents to know when their child is arriving in Miami.
- In Miami, the airport is set up to allow children places play, walk around, sleep, and get food. Parents should come to Miami to meet their child when they get the call that their child is in the air.
- Depending on the time of day that the processing is complete, some adoptive parents may be instructed to pick up their children the next day; this is for the benefit of both the children and their parents. Parents who are waiting for their children in Miami can complete the packet of information to become sponsors during their wait, and this has expedited the process of arrival for the children.
To establish citizenship for children entering on humanitarian parole:
- There are two possible routes parents may take:
- File an I-600 and a 485
- File an I-130 and a 485
- There are benefits and consequences to each of these paths. USCIS is working on a document to explain both options.
- Please do not take any steps to finalize your child’s adoption until this document is available, as finalizing the adoption may complicate the process of procuring citizenship for your child down the road.
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