China Adoption Forecast Forums - All Discussions

Sample complaint letter

Michael — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:58:15 +0000

Here's a sample complaint letter, written by one of our users. (see this thread). Obviously everyone has to deal with their agency in their own way, but this might be a good start:

Sample Complaint Letter

China's Shrinking Adoption Program - 2006 stats

Michael — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 10:14:45 +0000

The stats for 2006 are now available, and they're not looking good. Here's some stats for the U.S.:

U.S. adoptions from China
2004	2005	2006
7,044	7,906	6,520

And for Canada:

Canadian adoptions from China
2004	2005	2006
1,001	973	608

What this means is that China adopted out about 20% fewer children to Canada and the U.S. in 2006 than it did in 2005. The slowdown isn't just due to increased demand, it's also due to decreased supply. China not only has not increased the number of children referred to meet the demand, they've actually reduced it.

As I've said elsewhere, I believe this is due to Chinese internal politics. An analogous situation in the U.S.A. is immigration. The delay to receive permission to immigrate to the U.S. from some countries is as long as 22 years. This is simply due to a quota on the number of immigrations from those countries. This delay could be eliminated at any time by simply lifting the quota - it would take only a few months to process the 22 year backlog. However, because immigration is a sensitive issue in the U.S., there is currently no prospect of that happening. China's situation is much the same. Adoption is a sensitive issue. China does not want to be perceived as a baby exporter, and all of the articles that have been written about adoption from China are not helping the situation. Apparently they are dealing with this perception by reducing their quotas for international adoption. This has nothing to do with the number of children who need homes in China, nothing to do with how fast the CCAA can process dossiers, and everything to do with political considerations.

If the quota reductions continue - and the numbers so far in 2007 are not promising - and the number of dossiers submitted to China continues at the same high level, wait times will go extremely high. I cannot stress this enough: if you have not already submitted your dossier to China, please choose a different route to adopt. You will thank me later, when you have a child in only a year or two vs. a five-year wait or longer for China. If you have only recently submitted your dossier, I think you should also consider switching. Domestic, private, or international adoption from another country are all likely to be much faster than continuing with China.

New CCAA Rules

Michael — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 13:58:09 +0000

This is a summary of the new rules the CCAA has promulgated for adopters that are logged-in at the CCAA after May 1, 2007:

-- Applicants must be a male and a female couple who have been married for at least two years. If either of the applicants has been previously married, they must be married for a period of at least five years. Singles won't be permitted to adopt. It's unclear if common-law marriages, in the jurisdictions where they exist, will be permitted.
-- Both applicants must have reached the age of 30 and be under the age of 50 at the time that their file is submitted to the CCAA. The age limit increases to 55 if adopting a child with special needs.
-- At least one of the applicants must be employed. The family income must be at least US$10,000 for each member in the family (including the child to be adopted). Net family assets must be at least US$80,000.
-- Both applicants must have at least high school education (or vocational skills training of an applicable level).
-- There must be less than 5 children under the age of 18 years in the family, and the youngest child must be at least one year old.
-- Both applicants must be physically and mentally healthy and not have (among other things) any of the following conditions:
---- Mental illness or mental handicap
---- Diseases that affect life expectancy or require long-term treatment (cancer, lupus, epilepsy, etc.)
---- Infectious diseases or AIDS
---- Severe loss of hearing or sight
---- Loss of use of a major body limb
---- Organ transplants within the past 10 years
---- Medication for mental disorders with the past 2 years (depression, mania, anxiety, etc.)
-- Both applicants must have a BMI less than 40. (For a 5'10" person, that's a weight of about 280 lbs.)
-- Both applicants must not have a criminal record, nor can they have been involved in any incidents of domestic violence, child abuse, or alcohol abuse. If the criminal record is over 10 years old, exceptions may be possible if the criminal record relates to matters of "slight severity".
-- Both applicants must have a good understanding of adoption issues, including the potential risks of inter-country adoption.

README: Guide for new users

Michael — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:25:44 +0000

Comment guidelines: Be civil. If you wouldn't say it to someone's face, don't say it here. If something makes you upset, take a deep breath and walk around the block before replying. We reserve the right to delete comments and ban users if it becomes necessary.

The "Start a new discussion" link at left lets you make new posts. If you specify someone's username when you post your question, it will be a private message, a "whisper", which goes only to that other user. Otherwise it's visible to everyone.

Guatemala ratifies Hague treaty

Michael — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:30:11 +0000

Guatemala has ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, which sets standards for international adoptions, and hopefully reduces corruption in the process. Adoptions in process before Dec 31, 2007 will go forward under the current rules.

Here's a news article about the ratification.

Ethiopian Adoptions

Michael — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:21:43 +0000

The NYT has an article about international adoptions from Ethiopia being increasingly popular.

Stolen babies incident in China

Michael — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:36:50 +0000

Reuters is reporting that Chinese police have found a stolen car with five kidnapped babies inside. Probably these babies weren't intended for international adoption but rather for sale inside China, but it's a reminder of the scope of China's internal disruption caused by the one-child policies.

How do you know the cutoff date?

chinamom — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:53:49 +0000

I was wondering: this months and last you are the first to put the cutoff-date on your website (when calculating backlog). It is not yet on the CCAA site or on RQ. Are you making an educated guess or do you have insite information that the others don't have?

Waiting Times

Lynda — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:20:54 +0000

Does the Adoption Forecast take into account numbers of couples dropping out? We have to decide this week whether to renew our application. Our lid date is Jan07 and 2015 is untenable because of our ages. My head says we should not renew our application, but for peace of mind I need to check that the forecast takes into account possible large numbers of couples dropping out.

Haiti Disaster

jaclyn2 — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:15:20 +0000

I feel terrible about the suffering going on in Haiti. I really hope our State Department can get their act together and get the children out of there soon and united with their adoptive parents.

I saw on the news a couple was watching a video of their 2 children who were stuck in Haiti. They have adopted them and had already visited them in the past and they were just waiting on paperwork before the could return to Haiti and bring them home.

The couple said they waited 22 months. The news report stated there are 50,000 orphans waiting for families. WTF? Families AND CHILDREN wait 22 months when there are 50,000 children waiting for homes. The news also said the population was 6 or 9(I forgot which one) million people in Haiti.

China has 1 billion people with 300,000 million living in poverty. I can only imagine how many orphans are waiting there as they keep families waiting 4 years in a line that continues to grow. This is insane. AND if that many Chinese families are doing domestic adoptions then they need to just stop accepting new applications for the nsn program. I do not believe this is about the children, I believe it is about the money, signing people up and having families constantly renew paperwork spending 4-5x more than they would have if the process was truly about the children.

Length of wait

June — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:37:09 +0000

Just a quick comment for now as a new user and to hammer home the nature of the wait for a child from China. I have a log in date of early October 2006 and am still waiting for my child. Current forecasts suggest that it will still take another 27 months for my referral to come up. I would urge anyone further back in the process to abandon it and for those considering China as a route to adoption to look elsewhere.
June

adoption calculator

540stewart — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 03:34:15 +0000

I noticed that the calculator has not been updated since the last, July 4, 2011 referrals ... is that because those did not change things in the long run or has it just not been done yet?

Please Update Referral Calendar

Droc — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:41:29 +0000

Hi. You have not updated the referral in two months and a half. I guess there have been a couple of referral batches since then. Would you please update the table? Or, if you can't, is there any other site where we can check this info? Thanks

Odds of decreased wait with new regs...

luvtheworldskids — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 00:09:51 +0000

New regs came down from the CCAA "officially" in May of this year however most agencies I checked with weren't taking applications from anyone who did not meet the new requirements as of January 1, 2007. My agency says that applications are way down since the new regs -- any chance that that would either
A. shorten the wait once we get past older LIDs
or
B. level out the increase at some point.

It would stand to reason that the decreased number of apps. is likely to catch up in some fashion with the LID to referrral timelines. Thoughts?

Consider ending it...

lilypad — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 05:55:12 +0000

we did! It was a very difficult decision until I found this website and had evidence to what I already knew...the whole thing just didn't seem right. My husband was the first to really have issue with it. Then I just had a gut feeling it wasn't right. We moved on from that decision. After a few months of recovery, we just had to listen to what our friends were telling us: why not go through the county? So we did. We have been blessed with the coolest, sweetest, most awesome kid in the world! She was placed with us 3 months after the home study, and finalized 6 months later. We have all evolved tremendously from a year ago, when we first met. It scares me to think that I would have wallowed down the China Avenue. Perhaps, we got lucky. But I think there are a whole lot of people like me that can take on the challenge that a county kid presents. I do not intend to offend, but to offer hope! I went from feeling deflated, to feeling like God looked down right on me and said I was ready.

PLEASE UPDATE CALENDAR!!!!!

James01 — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:30:46 +0000

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! You guys have been incredibly accurate, we wait with baited breathe everytime there is another referral group!

New Referrals 11/28/11

jlemke122097 — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:26:38 +0000

Since new referrals started coming in yesterday for those with LID up to 08/07/06.....it would be great if this website was updated to reflect that. :) Thank You!

I think a lawsuit needs to be filed.

sucker-punched — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:15:00 +0000

Hello. Unfortunately, I discovered this site too late, and now I'm one of the many people waiting interminably for a referral. When we started the process in 2008, we were told that it was a "2 year wait". This time gradually increased to 3 years, and now our adoption agency is stating 3-4 years. Of course, none of that is based in fact; since our LID is March of 09, it will be more like 8-10 years before we get a referral. This is outright fraud, and there is no excuse for it. Look at the facts: (1)The agencies absolutely know that the wait time is much longer than they claim, yet they continue to accept new applications, and assert that the wait time is 3-4 years. (2) At my agency, families only see the LID times *after* they have sent their paperwork to China - thus ensuring that families are already heavily invested in time and money before they see the real referral times. This is straightforward and clear-cut - agencies are lying (either by outright stating an incorrect wait time, and/or through omitting important information) to clients. The clients pay them money on the basis of their false claims. Why has there been no great outcry?

getting married

raquelj — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 01:39:10 +0000

Hi there,
I have a question for the commmunity regarding adopting as a single woman and then getting married. My homestudy is complete (after 2 updates) and I locked into the China SN program in Aug 2011. I started this adoption journey in August 2010 with Russia but was so sick and tired of waiting and spending the ridiculous amounts of money to only get referrals for children with fetal alcohol syndrome. I was told China SN program would be much quicker and that the program had just re-opened for single women in 3/2011. I was really excited about this news! WELLLLL, in the meantime, I have met a really wonderful gentleman who knows of my intent to adopt and is very supportive of the whole thing. We have been dating a year now and plan to marry but he understands that we can't marry until the adoption is finalized. With that said (here is my question), are there any ramifications or negative effects (legally or otherwise) that I will face if I marry immediately after the adoption? Will any agency from China or the US come after me because they'll think I lied about my status as a single woman? My boyfriend does not live with me and there is no mention of cohabitation in my homestudy. We do not plan on living together until our marriage is official. Do I have to wait a certain amount of time after the adoption is finalized in order to marry? I don't want China to get mad at me and then make it difficult for any future single women to adopt from there.....

Get out

kampfiii — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:18:24 +0000

MY advice to anyone with an LID of 2007 or later is to get out. We adopted domestically and the whole process--from application to child-in-arms-- took about a year.

LID To Referral calculator correct?

decaveny@gmail.com — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:18:46 +0000

Greetings,

The body copy of the page states that prospective parents getting LID's soon or lately (its 02/01/2010) can expect to wait 10+ years for a referral. When I entered our LID of 04/07/2007 it returned a date in 2017. Is that true that we can expect to wait another 7 years? I'm good at math I can understand the processing days per month figure but where is all this data coming from? How is 2.8 days of dossiers a month calculated? Please advise and thanks so much.

-Doug.

Selling Children

Wiating4ever — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:57:19 +0000

I have a friend who is of substantial financial means who was reffered to our agency by myself and my wife. Their LID date was 6 months after ours. They brought thier little girl home 2 1/2 years ago, and we are still waiting to be matched. You cant tell me that our agency did not sell a child to the highest bidder. does anyone else have similar story.

to compound the issue think about this. Did you even wonder how you can see an update that says teh average wait time was 2 years for this group? It is because if you have 4 familes 3 of whihc waited for 4 years, and 1 of whihc waited for 6 months, the average wait time is only 3 years.

Stop looking at the stats and look at the facts.

New Day Foster Home in Beijing/ My YouTube Video

ZoeesDad — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:08:07 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5L9ndF-RFQ

Hi Everyone --

I have just returned from an extraordinary visit to the NewDay Foster Home in China. They rescue orphans who need life-saving surgery. They work with the orphanages, but do what they cannot.

They are heroic. Talk about compassion in action! And to be there changed me -- in ways I am just beginning to understand.

While I was there I shot much video. I have made a Christmas youtube video to honor them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5L9ndF-RFQ

They do not ask for money. They are supported, however by Chinese and Americans who want to help.

Warm holiday greetings to everyone and to all of our children,

John Drimmer

A Half a Decade

jaclyn2 — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:32:02 +0000

The next group of referrals will include folks with a May '06 lid date. This is 54 months of waiting after LID. Most people take on average 6 months to put together a dossier. Some of course are quicker and can do it in 2-3 months others take longer like 9-10 months, but the average is about 6 months. That means for many it has now taken 5 years from start to finish. A half a decade, and growing.

Life is short.

Anxiously awaiting forecast update

Laura — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:25:22 +0000

I noticed that the forecast has not been updated since 8/16/10, will it be updated anytime soon? I really appreciate being able to use this site to get a more realistic projection of our wait time. Thanks!

does preapproval for a WC make things move faster from LID to TA?

jody — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:14:40 +0000

we have already been matched with a child in china from the special needs list. we were matched last july but had to do all of our paperwork, homestudy, dossier, etc... our dossier was logged in on march 17th. we are still curious about how much longer this process should take. what should we expect the wait to be from our LID to our TA considering we already have our referral and have accepted this child? does anyone have an answer to this? thanks!

Number of LIDs per month?

hsed — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:52:10 +0000

Does anyone know how many LID dates were logged in each month from 2006 on?
Why were there like 9 LID dates for March 2006, each date taking approximately
1 month of real time to process while in previous years there were only 1 or 2 LID's
per month so that you could get through an entire months LIDs in 1 month. Does
anyone have access to how we find out the full list of LIDs for April 2006 until the
present? Wouldn't that be a better indicator of how really backlogged they really are?

Where do you get the data for your calculator?

annen — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:11:55 +0000

Hello.

This is my first post. What is your source for the data that you plug into the forecast calculator? Do you get figures from the CCAA web site for the total number of dossier's processed per month and use that?

We are most likely going to switch to SN, especially after your calculator says we may get a referral in 2015 (our LID is in 2007), but it would be nice to know where the data is coming from.

Thanks,

annen

Ontario agency fee increase

themoomans — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:44:14 +0000

Our Ontario Agency CB drop a $1200.00 annual admistration fee on us out of the blue
Just looking for feedback from anyone with CB on how they feel about this & the general stability of the CB agency
I am very touble by the whole thing

Travel after referral

deedees — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:49:44 +0000

We have received referral... yahoo! ... had given up and were actually evaluating other options. I have a couple of documents and photos... eager and ready, I am ready to run across the ocean to get him (it's a boy!) Frankly, I am tired of my agency, I believe that MY (not their) insane organizational skills have kept us rolling, with updates occurring in a timely manner. They do not make routine or regular conatct and their website does not divulge significant information. Alas, here is the question:

What happens next?

We are waiting for the paperwork to be translated. Then what? I do not know. I know we must accept or decline, that is not even an issue.
How long before China sends Travel Approval? Is that dependent on how quickly my agency responds to CCAA? They are quite vague about that timeline.
Who sets up the consulate meeting?
And what about VISAs? What should I be doing here?
How much money will be needed once there?
What should I plan to bring?
When can I anticipate arriving in China to hold our son?

I did ask a few of these questions, but was told that they would give me more info once it got closer. I find that unacceptable. I was also told to refer to the paperwork that we got over 4 years ago... as if there have been no changes!

If you could help me, I would GREATLY appreciate it. Thank you!