My little rant...

As I mentioned in my last post, there have been two provinces in Vietnam that have been targeted for unethical adoptions and certain agencies that have received the NOID's.

Well, Chloe came from one of those provinces and one of the agencies being targeted.

From those of you that followed this blog while we traveled, you know that we were delayed.

Our G&R was supposed to occur on May 14th. It didn't happen until May 28th. That's two weeks that we were delayed by the Vietnamese side. Why do you ask? I don't know exactly. I know that a lot of agencies wait for an invitation to travel from the provincial government in Vietnam. From what I understand, there usually aren't any delays if you get this. We didn't have that. We just had word that our G&R would be on this date from a government official. But it kept getting pushed back.

These delays absolutely drove us crazy. Do I think that our agency had some fault? Possibly. I think that the Vietnamese government played a huge role in it. They do things when they want to. We went to get the passports, waited all morning, and then the passport people told us to go home because they were going to a wedding. What!?!? They are going to a wedding instead of doing their job? They couldn't have told us that? That's just the way things are. There were several of those kind of delays. It was frustrating not knowing what was doing on, and so we had a lot of time to imagine all the possible things that might be going on. Were are adoptions not going to happen?

I will tell you that at times, our communication with adoppt and staff sucked. Plain and simple. We'd be waiting for the G&R and not find out until after we were supposed to leave that it wasn't happening. But does that mean that our adoptions were unethical? No. Inefficient? Yep. But I can live with that.

After we had our G&R on Monday, the 28th, we were supposed to have our first embassy appointment on Friday, June 1st. Well, Thursday night, I got a call from the facilatator telling me that me and another family would have to wait until Monday. She gave me some excuse kind of blaming the embassy, but I truly believe that it was her fault. She wasn't able to get all the translation done on time. Again, do I think that this delay was because of unethical business practices? No. I just think that our facilitator was relatively new and inexperienced and she didn't get it done and was ashamed of that. I was very upset at the time, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. We got our interview. It was in fact on Monday, June 4th. And it was pretty uneventful. The inteviewer was very friendly.

We had our second interview on Friday afternoon, June 8th. That's four business days later. It took two minutes and very uneventul. We picked up her Visa on Monday, the 11th and left Vietnam that night. So while we were in country for a full month and our G&R was delayed by two weeks, had we been schedule for a May 28th G&R, our process would only have taken two weeks start to finish. Once we got going, there were no delays.

It only took a week for the full US side of things. The next travel group was not delayed at all and got out rather quickly. The next group is the current group that has had some NOID's issued. Not all the families.

Now let me ask you this...if this agency was so obviously unethical, why did the US let all of our cases slide through?

The sad part is that as all of this was going on, I was constantly having to defend my adoption. I was constantly having to correct false rumors that were being presented as fact about my OWN adoption, then I was treated like I didn't know what I was talking about. Basically people back in the US were acting like they knew more about what was going on than what I did. It was crazy what people were saying.

So I have particular sympathy for the people going through this right now. I know how mean, nasty, and condesending people can be.

Do I have reason to believe that Chloe was obtained unethically? Not at all. Does a delayed G&R mean the agency is unethical? Not at all. Do I believe that the process was inefficient? Absolutely at times. Do I believe that the current NOID's are warrented? I don't know. It's not for me to decide. But I can tell you that before I pass judgement, I want proof/facts that they were legit. Until then, I will absolutely support the families over there.