Roadblock

The new adoption laws have really messed things up. Sorry, but it's true. See, the Hague laws went into effect; these laws which are supposed to help children. So far, it has just seemed to slow things down, if not altogether deter parents from even going through the process altogether. We were at the stage of sending in our I800 when I last posted. Well, the part I didn't understand was that this next batch of paperwork *must* go to a lockbox first. (That's right. Lockbox. And if all you can picture is Al Gore, you're not alone.) Anyways, my agency talked to NBC (not the tv station, it's the US's agency that handles all the paperwork for adoptions) to see if it were possible, considering our tenuous situation, to skip or expedite the lockbox step.

Guess what. It's not actually run by a government agency. See, it's contracted out to union workers. They're only permitted to work a certain number of hours, and no one is allowed to call them to explain why it's so critical that ours be sent through. They say that the lockbox wait is currently one to two weeks before they send your paperwork to NBC (no...they don't actually do anything with it...just hold onto it for a while.) From others reports lately though, it looks as if it's more like two to three weeks. If that is the case, we will not have time to get Kara Xiao Mei's paperwork through everything it needs to get through for us to adopt her before she ages out.

Somehow, this new process just doesn't seem like it truly has the best interests of children at heart. Seems like bureaucracy to
me.

Sorry for this rant. I've just moved from jubilant, to sad, to ticked in a very short period of time and it's all coming out here, unfortunately. I plan to call NBC tomorrow or Wednesday...just to see if maybe, just maybe, they have received our paperwork.