International Adoption is scary.

There are families in Vietnam right now who are dealing with the fact that the USCIS has denied their children entry Visas back into the United States with their new parents. This is the same USCIS who APPROVED the applications to adopt, APPROVED travel to Vietnam to proceed with the adoption, and now are not letting the babies back into the country. It is a long and twisted journey for those families, and my heart breaks for them. There is no indication that anything is awry with our own adoption, but it's impossible not to feel their stress from across the world.

These babies have been adopted in Vietnam; according to VN law, the are officially the children of US citizen parents. The parents are in a horrible position now. They have begun to bond with these children. Their adoptions were COMPLETED a few weeks ago in VN, and they've been getting to know their new babies while waiting on the US to do who-knows-what. If the babies don't have Visas and the parents do, do they do the unthinkable and leave VN WITHOUT their babies???????? I can't even imagine the grief. Well, yes I can. I can imagine it very well, and wouldn't wish that kind of pain on anyone.

Most of the families have been in VN for about two weeks so far. They've been told by the US Embassy to wait another two weeks. At least. For what? For more paperwork to be processed, to wait on an appeal to get approval from their government that they may come home with their own children. Meanwhile they wrestle with the fact that this tiny baby, their baby, a member of their own family, whom they have loved since the minute they made the decision to go to the other side of the world to find them, may not leave with them. They will, in all likelihood return to foster care, or an orphanage to live out an uncertain fate. And they will one day find out that they were adopted by a wonderful family who lives in the US. They will learn that they have birth parents who abandoned them by choice, and adoptive parents who couldn't take them home because their government wouldn't let them.

So they wait...and wonder....and cry....and pray...and hold their babies tight for as long as they can bear it. And some have to make the unthinkable choice to leave without them. It's tragic. Senseless. Heartbreaking.