The Filipino Adoption Process

Boring Alert! Boring Alert! This post is aimed at Americans contemplating adopting from the PI or who are in the process of adopting from the PI.

Now that we're just about at the end of our international adoption journey, we thought it'd be interesting to describe our thoughts about the process of adopting from the Philippines from the United States. I don't have my files in front of me, so I'm not sure if all of this is totally correct, but it should be close to accurate.

In a nutshell, Americans who plan on adopting from the Philippines should expect a really loooonnngggg wait. We started filling out our application over two and half years ago. The home study and application process is very paper intensive. The PI requires medical checkups from the parents and all the children in the home, letters from the children's teachers, income verification, three letters of referral, a letter from the Church, criminal background checks, a letter from a psycho-therapist explaining that we're mentally healthy, autobiographical essays, a lengthy home-study report, etc. You are also asked to fill out a long checklist to indicate if you are willing or unwilling to accept certain characteristics in your adopted child. For example, you are asked if you are willing to accept a child who was the product of rape or incest, whether you are willing to accept a child with a serious medical condition, whether you are willing to accept a sibling group, etc. There are certain factors that could speed up your process and there are certain factors that could delay your process. For example, if you are willing to accept an older child, a sibling group, or a child with medical problems, the wait will be shorter. We, however, only wanted a healthy girl (or 2) between the ages of 0-36 months. When we turned in our dossier, our agency told us to expect an 18-24 month wait just for a match. Surprisingly, we got matched with Camille after just 16 months. I think the fact that we are both full-blooded Filipino helped, but I'm just speculating.

One factor that significantly delayed our process was the change in the Hague rules. Almost a year ago, the international rules of adoption were changed (I suppose to protect against fraud, child trafficking, etc., and to ensure uniformity among participating countries). Our agency advised us not to fill out our application to the Department of Homeland Security (the I-600A Petition) until after our referral because the new Hague rules might change everything. In retrospect, we should have filed our I-600A application much earlier since the "old" forms were still being processed even after the rule changes. The new form, entitled, I-800A, takes long to process (approximately 3 months, if there are no problems). After that is approved, you have to submit an I-800 application, which is much faster to process, but can't be submitted until after you received certain legal documents about your soon-to-be adopted child. It seems silly to me that this process is broken up into two parts: I-800A and I-800. In my opinion, both applications should be submitted simultaneously and reviewed just once.

Processing of the I-800 is fast (a few days or weeks). At this point, however, every day seems like a months since you really, really want to pick up your child. After the I-800 is approved, it gets forwarded to the National Visa Center, which is basically a middle man to the U.S. Embassy in Manila. Once the file is with the U.S. Embassy, you're almost at the end. However, this is where the process gets really really really frustrating. It's frustrating because there really is no timeline or deadline on which to rely. The U.S. Embassy will send something called a "packet 3" to ICAB, which gives ICAB the authority to schedule the child's medical exam and visa interview. The time it takes for the US Embassy to send that packet 3 is any one's guess. We've read that it could takes days or weeks. In our case, it took about a month -- a long, frustrating month. The reason it's so frustrating is because you have no idea if the file is being worked on or if it's sitting on the bottom of some government worker's desk collecting dust. Totally in the dark. At least with the I-800A application, you can call and speak with the person assigned to your case to find out the status of the petition. Getting through to ICAB is also a bit difficult, so we were often left guessing whether or not our file was being processed by ICAB or whether it was sitting in the wrong "to do" box.

Assuming there are no problems with the medical exam or the visa interview, the U.S. Embassy will issue the child's visa and then give ICAB permission to authorize travel. That can take a few days, but seriously, at this point, you want to pull your hair out because you want to travel so badly. I think ICAB should make a much better effort of communicating with the adopting parents about the status of the application/file. I don't think ICAB appreciates how difficult it is to simply "drop everything" and travel to the other side of the world. Our travel plans affected not only us, but also my work, our kids, my parents (who were going to halt their lives to babysit during our trip), my sister-in-law (whose kids are babysat by my mother-in-law who accompanied us on our trip), etc, etc, etc. On top of all that, we needed to purchase tickets and book hotel rooms on the spur of the moment. I don't think ICAB appreciates all that goes into the travel plans, and more open communication would tremendously help to reduce the stress of adopting parents.

Of course, now that we have Camille in our arms, the frustrations seem to fade. However, we truly pray for all you loving families who are awaiting an approval, a referral, or simply "the call" authorizing travel to the PI.

On a positive note, however, I believe adopting from the PI is much cheaper than adopting from other countries. From what I understand, it costs upwards of $30-$40 grand to adopt from some other Asian countries. Perhaps because our adoption agency is a non-profit agency, we paid much less than that (maybe half, not including travel).

Soooooo .... if you're thinking of adopting from this beautiful country, just remember that it's a very long process. The rules are in place, so there isn't too much guesswork. It's just long. But in the end, you'll have a child. And isn't that what it's all about?
Here, Camile says, "But Daddy, look at my cute face. Wasn't I worth the wait?" Answer: YES!!!