It All Falls Apart
When my world fell apart in April of 2016 it was hot. It was always hot in the Thai adoption authority, a place where forever families are made, but it seemed particularly hot that day. Steve and I were sitting in a room we had been in before. It was where we first walked through the steps required to adopt a Thai child, it was where Steve had taken copious notes, and where we had asked so many questions. The receptionist had turned on the tiny air conditioner in the room when we arrived, but it just wasn’t keeping up and I could feel beads of sweat running down my back. The lady across from me in the tiny hot room seemed oddly out of place although she was a woman who had been a source of both frustration and hope over the course of the last year. Today, despite the heat, she seemed cool as she ripped my heart out with a stereotypical Thai smile:
She had spent the last five minutes, telling us all about a little three year old girl with no living relatives who was living in an orphanage. This little girl (I instantly allowed myself to think of her as ours) had been waiting for adoption her whole life; she was waiting for us. We were ecstatic as Steve began to look through the paperwork. Everything looked in order minus a piece of paper called the Article 16 report (more on that later). The paperwork they gave us looked slightly different than the examples we had seen, but we were sure it was a mistake. Steve asked her about the discrepancy and when we would get the appropriate form so we could take it to the embassy. Her answer gutted me, “Madame, cannot, there’s nothing we can do…cannot…is not possible…maybe you can speak to your embassy?” They would not give us the Article 16 report, and if they wouldn’t give us that report we couldn’t take that little girl back to the United States for over 2 years. That doesn’t work for us.
It was, I thought, the cruelest twist possible in this saga which was now over a year long, and a twist that had the potential to be the coup de grace to our adoption effort. Questions raced through my mind. What did we do wrong? How did we get here? What did Steve do wrong? Why would you tell us about this little girl if you couldn’t give us the paperwork we need to take her home? …what…did…I…do…wrong?
My mind drifted to one year prior when we made a huge life decision and began the process to adopt a Thai child through a process we knew worked. We spoke to other embassy families, researched exhaustively, and attempted to steel ourselves for a process we knew would have some twists and turns, but ultimately expected success; after all, other people had successfully walked the path and taken their child home. Remember how hopeful we were? – Our Thailand Adoption Journey.
Initial Steps Towards Thai Adoption
The plan was relatively straight-forward. For those who don’t know, international adoption is regulated by a treaty known as the Hague convention. This convention sets forth rules and procedures governing how adoptive parents will be trained, how children shall be treated, and what types of fees/compensation are legal. The purpose of the treaty is to prevent the sale or mistreatment of children and stem human trafficking that goes along with unethical adoptions of all kinds. Whether it works or not is a discussion for another post…but in our case, all that matters is the fact that the convention and all of its articles provided us a road-map to complete our own international adoption from Thailand.
Here is a link from the State Department with helpful information: International Adoptions. Here is some more on Thailand specifically: Thailand Adoption Info.
In accordance with law, we found an adoption agency in the US who would provide us training and help with the paperwork needed to complete the adoption from the perspective of the United States government, specifically US Customs and immigration services (USCIS). Example: I-800 Steve met with various agencies at the embassy to ensure we were clear on procedures, including USCIS. We also personally drove to the Thai adoption authority, known as Department of Social Development and Welfare (DSDW) to ensure we completed the process in accordance with the treaty on the Thai side. From our perspective we clearly explained our plan, provided examples of required paperwork, and were assured the process could be completed. We ended both conversations feeling good, if not overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork. This was going to happen!
Using a US Agency for Foreign Adoption
Working with both entities (we shall leave the US adoption agency nameless for now) was frustrating on many levels. While we expected it to be difficult to communicate with the Thai bureaucracy, we failed to anticipate the speed, or lack thereof, from our US agency. What we should have realized at this point is that, despite specifically asking the US agency if they had helped people in similar situations, they were unaware and unprepared for the complexity of the process. …because they had never really worked with anyone in our situation. This led to mulitple instances where emails were not returned, and phone-calls went unanswered. Multple times we were put on hold for one hour plus. There is an entire blog post to be written just about that experience, but we shall leave it here. Yes, for those of you who are thinking, “you should have cut them loose and changed providers!” YOU ARE RIGHT.
We should have asked more questions, been more detailed, and ultimately not trusted so completely. We were impeded by time-zone, but should have demanded more time, face to face via video chat, and examples of all paperwork and steps required along the way. What we did do was spend hours on the phone (and more on hold) with our people in the US, we rocketed through online training and paid all required fees. It’s even possible that in our speed and desire to get everything done as soon as possible, we missed opportunities to have the kinds of conversations that would have allowed us to expose what became a critical flaw in our plan.
Article 16 Report
In 2016, before meeting with our Thai liaison at the adoption authority (DSDW) for the first time, we had consulted with other embassy families, including one specifically who was in our exact position and had recently completed their adoption. That family assured us that if we followed the instructions of the good people a DSDW, that we would be set up for a Hague approved adoption in the eyes of both nations. The process involved completing a series of requirements for both our agency in the US and the DSDW. Both sides required education, background checks, and a home study.
Some interesting points about this process: The US required us to have background checks performed on anyone who would be living in the house, including our nanny who was a citizen of Myanmar. In order to do that we had to take her down to the Thai police headquarters and use a form written in Thai and signed by someone at the embassy. Steve just signed it himself. All this for someone who had clearly never set foot in the US. Another strange requirement was an in-person 3 day training event in Bangkok that covered many of the same things our US online training had gone over. The training itself was good, including a panel of former adoptive children and families. The strange thing was that it was only offered 2 times a year. If you missed the days of training you had to wait 6 more months…no opportunity to make it up! Unfortunately for us it overlapped with our 10th anniversary trip to the Maldives. Needless to say we changed our plans, lost a bit of money, and shifted the trip to make it back in time to complete the training. These are just two examples of the labyrinth like process and the lengths we went to get through that maze.
One of the items that seemed somewhat straightforward was securing a letter known as the article 16 report. This was a piece of paper that we had confirmed with DSDW a year ago that they would provide. The purpose of this document was to provide assurance to US Customs and Immigration that DSDW had followed the Hague convention process. The report would include bio-data on our adoptive child and a statement that hague procedures were followed. It was this piece of paper that was missing when we were handed the paperwork and the one our liaison said that she was sorry could not be provided.
For the next month or so we gathered examples of other families who had been provided the Article 16 report, including copies of the actual reports. We presented those examples along with our best arguments to DSDW through multiple levels of authority and received the same answer. We also worked through our agency in the US to explore options and came up completely empty. In fact, their attitude was disturbingly close to, “I told you so”, and it was maddening. Of course, they hadn’t really told us…but we did ignore the warnings that they were not competent in this type of adoption. Ultimately, we decided to change course: New Adoption Plan
Mistakes we made in this adoption
Ignoring those little alarm bells was our first mistake. Like I mentioned before, you can’t be too exhaustive, you can’t take too much of anyone’s time, and you are not inconveniencing anyone. If there are any warning signs…or even if there are not…do everything you can and ask for help in verifying each step at the beginning. I still think we were slightly deceived, but perhaps some more due diligence on our part would have exposed further cracks in the process and ultimately revealed the flaw.
As you chase down those cracks and start to double and triple check your plan, I would encourage you to get everything in writing. We had multiple face to face conversations where we agreed to the process and confirmed that the article 16 letter would be provided, but we had never gotten that assurance in writing. We had found that the DSDW was terrible at replying to messages and never answered the phone, so we had taken to just driving up and sitting there until someone would talk to us. While this was effective in getting us through the process quickly, it made all of our conversations “off the record”.
Finally, part of the problem with the off the record conversations is we didn’t have experts on our side in the USA. You probably think I’m glossing over our issues with our provider here in the US…and you’re right. I’m doing this partly on purpose because I am worried I’ve blocked out some details, but also because when we switched to a domestic adoption they became helpful in providing our past information and making sure everything was up to date. I attribute this dichotomy to the fact that they are good at domestic adoptions and were much more confident in their communications. They’re not bad people, they were just out of their depth and didn’t want to acknowledge the lack of expertise for fear of losing a client.
Recommendations
- Use a knowledgeable agency with contacts in Thailand. At this point Holt is the one we know of and has a good reputation. (they were even able to get us the syllabus from our Thai adoption training when we needed it for our Domestic adoption despite us not being a client!)
- Take your time. This is hard…we know, but the details help with #3.
- Be detail oriented, get things in writing and walk both sides through each step.
Wrapping Up Our Thoughts About Thai Adoption
(While living in Thailand)
So as I sat there in that hot room with my heart ripped out, I couldn’t ignore the fact that while we didn’t do anything wrong…we could have done things better. We could have dealt a little more in details and a little less in faith. We could have been a little more patient, but not much because we were on a timeline. Ultimately, adopting from Thailand, whether you’re living there or not, is a long process and, like most international adoptions, the process today isn’t necessarily the process tomorrow. We, like many other families are victims of this convoluted process and incompetent interlocutors. We were rock stars when it came to completing paperwork, checking off requirements, etc. We were forces of nature when it came to getting face to face meetings with Thai adoption authorities, and we were relentless when we had questions. I am proud of what we did over there and while we could have done it a bit different, I look back on that time with no real regrets…because ultimately it led us to Evelyn.
*next time: how we got a call from the Thai Adoption Authority 2 years after we told them we were no longer seeking to adopt offering us a child! (while living in Colorado)