Dear Everyone,
The President and Congress need to fix a red-tape nightmare that's affecting 80 American families who are all trying to bring their adopted kids home to the USA.
This is a link to a petition that I hope you will sign. The petition asks the government to expedite the visas for these 80 kids.
http://www.petition2congress.com/2/3608/view_all/64/ [IF THAT LINK DOESN'T WORK, JUST COPY AND PASTE IT INTO YOUR BROWSER. ]
The Petition's website administrator will immediately send the signed petition to President Obama and to your State's Senators and Congressional Representatives.
The Petition started on the morning of October 11, 2010 and is already showing up everywhere on the web in blogs, on Facebook, Twitter, etc., and within the first 24 hours, 724 people had signed the petition, resulting in 1575 signed copies sent to our political leaders by email and by hand-delivered hard copy.
PLEASE sign the petition. My daughter Amy had to leave her newly adopted little girl in the orphanage in Nepal, and I'm hoping this petition will gather so many signatures that our federal government will have to wake up and fix this nightmare. The petition will help all 80 of the adoptive parents to bring their new children home with them from Nepal.
PLEASE forward this email to every one of your email contacts, friends and family. Please post it on your Facebook pages, on Twitter, and in your blogs.
We've got to make this happen.
If you want to know more about my own particular views on this whole governmental travesty, make yourself a cup of tea and sit down for a long read. This is my personal letter to President Obama, to the Department of State's Hillary Clinton, and to the "Powers That Be:" [I wrote the following letter on October 5, 2010]:
Please let my new granddaughter come home. She's two and a half years old and has been living in an orphanage in Nepal since she was two month of age. Her new mother is my daughter, a woman of great courage and nurturing compassion.
The new obstructionist policies of the United States Department of State denying visas to newly adopted Nepalese orphans have stranded eighty American families in a limbo of heartless U.S-government abandonment.
That policy, declaring all eighty of these infants and toddlers' status as not adoptable because the children are victims of child trafficking, is so very un-American.
To be charged guilty until proven innocent, (of fraud, child trafficking, stolen and sold human merchandise), is a cruel and heartless modern rendition of the McCarthyism witch hunt of know nothing, suspect everything.
That policy, instigated and supported by the Department of State and the United States Citizenship & Immigrations Services, and the United States Department of Homeland Security, has been implemented with no thought to the impact it will have on eighty U.S. families whose adopted Nepali children have already been approved by the government of Nepal as lawfully available for adoption.
Over the years, hundreds of Nepali children have been adopted by American families, and visas were automatically and immediately issued to allow every one of those children to enter the United States.
If the Federal government of the United States of America now feels the need to close any further adoptions, surely such a policy should be implemented AFTER the eighty families who have already been matched with a child have brought those beloved children home.
These eighty newly adoptive parents have gone through two years of investigation to prove themselves worthy of adopting. Two years of repeated home studies, fingerprinting, criminal investigation, medical exams, social and psychological competency tests, establishing financial sufficiency, etc., etc. Each family has spent thousands and thousands of dollars hiring adoption agencies and adoption attorneys, both here and abroad. Nursery rooms have been furnished and decorated, families have rallied round dreams of new little lives in their midst.
The wrenching destruction of dreams, based on guilty until proven innocent, is not the stuff of American character and integrity and opting for the greater good.
That new policy requires eyewitness confirmation as substantial corroborating evidence that the child was indeed found, abandoned and alone, on the streets of Nepal.
And though every staff member of every one of these eighty kids' orphanages is ready, willing and able to confirm that the child has, since infancy, been living in the orphanage, the United States government insists that that's not enough evidence.
The orphanages can produce original signed and dated documents of orphanage admission forms, intake medical exams, and photographs of the children as tiny infants. The orphanages have the original letters going back and forth between their admissions offices and the Nepali government registering the newly admitted children.
But somehow, and suddenly, that's not enough. The U.S. government's new policy insists that the specific individuals who originally found the babies must step up and declare that indeed said baby was found abandoned. That new policy wants declarations from the police officer to whom the abandoned baby was brought. What would really satisfy the new policy is for the natural parents to declare that they deliberately abandoned the baby and that the baby is not wanted, has not been stolen, has not been sold, and that it's fine with them if the baby is placed for international adoption.
That American policy, setting a burden of proof on so high a bar as to be functionally unobtainable, is a Catch-22 in all its tortured glory. A patriarchal society, declaring unwed mothers as unmarriageable, couched in a third-world country of constantly shifting governmental authority, steeped in the cultural survival mores of keep your head down and don't get involved, is NOT going to respond to officious foreign investigators flashing their badges and demanding eyewitness statements about abandoned babies.
The DOS, UCIS, and DHS make two oppositional claims. On the one hand, they imply that the country of Nepal is small and is structured as an collection of familial communities where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows whatever happens to any of them. That claim allows the U.S. government to insist that eyewitnesses to child abandonment are eminently feasible and readily obtainable.
On the other hand, those same federal offices imply that Nepal is so large and made up of so many disparate municipalities hosting innumerable public and private orphanages, that Nepali natural parents who are currently hunting for their abducted children face an almost insurmountable hurdle. That claim allows our federal offices to insist that the eighty children, who have already been languishing in Nepali orphanages for years, must continue to remain in the orphanages until they reach their teens so that their natural parents can have a chance of finding them.
And the truth no doubt, lies somewhere in the middle of these two conflicting points of view. But, years of political history have taught us that it takes at least two people to construct a conspiracy, yet a secret can only be kept a secret if fewer than two people know it. Is every single staff member, in every single orphanage that's holding one of those eighty kids, all part of a secret conspiracy, and all committed to secrets and lies about the orphan' origins and history? Is that a reasonable postulate? Reasonable enough to resign eighty Nepali children to lifelong misery and poverty, living retarded lives of desperation? Reasonable enough to destroy the hopes and dreams of American would-be parents?
I say to the Departments of State, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, and Homeland Security: You are personified by actual human beings wielding the governmental power of your titled offices. Those titles are but names for offices, naught but rooms filled with desks, phones, computers and the material trappings of modern technology. It's not the Department office that makes the decisions that so enhance or destroy our lives. Some one person, some aggregate collection of persons, sitting somewhere in those offices, made that fateful August 6, 2010 policy decision that has so cruelly truncated eighty families' dreams.
And so now, what to do? Egos restrict conscience. How can face-saving mechanisms be put in place to allow reversal of bad policy decisions? How can the person, or persons, responsible for that devastating policy somehow manage to reverse that policy without sacrificing self-image, or losing colleagues' esteem, and without jeopardizing his/her own position in the governmental hierarchy?
No one is going to reverse that policy if it means losing their job, or their chances for reappointment when the duration of the diplomatic post runs out.
I have no answers. I can only hope that some supervisor, some government official higher up the chain, can and will override this travesty and reverse that policy.
Hillary Clinton?? Barak Obama???
Essentially, visas for all the Nepali children already matched with those eighty prospective adoptive parents should immediately be issued without any further delay, procedures, investigation or hurdles.
All Nepal orphans that were matched with American families and flew home to the United States BEFORE the devastating new policy of two months ago, all got their visas without a hitch. No problems. The prospective parents flew to Nepal, signed the documents and took the kids home to the States within a week or two.
There is nothing new or different about the eighty cases that are left in the pipeline.
Why single them out for this particular nightmare?????????????
You want to close down Nepali adoptions? Fine; but do it AFTER the matched families are home safe and sound with their new children.
There are still plenty of American families who will suffer disappointment. Those are the prospective adoptive parents still in the initial stages of the adoption procedures. Only a few months or so into the two-year process of home studies, investigations and exams, they have not yet been matched with a child. Their disappointment will be real but not the heartrending devastation felt by families who have already been matched.
To be matched means you've already gotten a photograph of the child, been told the child's name, and the delights of the child's personality have been shared. Many of the eighty matched parents have already flown to Nepal, met the babies and spent days and weeks and months bonding and loving and adoring their new children. Just waiting for the visas to be issued, so they can take their kids home.
And now our own precious government, our United States of America, is murdering our expectations. How can this be?????????
Please reverse this horrible new policy. Now. Not soon. Now. The babies are losing their precious window of language acquisition, socialization accommodation, self-image foundational structures, interpersonal communication motivation, and all the basic markers that allow for a whole, well-rounded person to develop.
Some of the prospective adoptive parents have had to fly home, leaving their precious new children behind. You cannot imagine the pain of knowing that you're causing this little dear child to know abandonment so keenly. Especially agonizing for the toddlers as they're old enough to wonder, where has Mama/Papa gone? What have I done?
I lost my own natural father to a heart attack when he was 34 and I was but seven years old. Abandonment is a tearful, lifelong misery, no matter its cause.
Some of the American families are opting to remain in Nepal with their new children for two years so as to qualify for visas under the relevant immigration laws. Two years of physical custody outside of the United States, and the adopted child will be granted a visa. That's a feasible option if one's finances and family obligations will allow. But mighty few of the eighty families can manage that. They've got other kids at home, or elderly dependent parents, or established professional practices, or invested business ownerships. Farms need tending, universities need faculty, hospitals need their physicians.
The eighty families represent every region of the United States. We are upstanding, tax-paying citizens. We vote, we labor, and we raise our children to be productive Americans.
But that awful August 6th policy is a threat to our livelihood, to our individual right to pursue happiness and build a better America through building American families.
We need our government to rescue these eighty families. We need rescuing, so that we can rescue the sweet little innocents.
Ms. Clinton; President Obama, please fix this.
http://www.petition2congress.com/2/...milies-in-adoption-pipeline-waiting-to-bring/ [IF THAT LINK DOESN'T WORK, JUST COPY AND PASTE IT INTO YOUR BROWSER. ]
The President and Congress need to fix a red-tape nightmare that's affecting 80 American families who are all trying to bring their adopted kids home to the USA.
This is a link to a petition that I hope you will sign. The petition asks the government to expedite the visas for these 80 kids.
http://www.petition2congress.com/2/3608/view_all/64/ [IF THAT LINK DOESN'T WORK, JUST COPY AND PASTE IT INTO YOUR BROWSER. ]
The Petition's website administrator will immediately send the signed petition to President Obama and to your State's Senators and Congressional Representatives.
The Petition started on the morning of October 11, 2010 and is already showing up everywhere on the web in blogs, on Facebook, Twitter, etc., and within the first 24 hours, 724 people had signed the petition, resulting in 1575 signed copies sent to our political leaders by email and by hand-delivered hard copy.
PLEASE sign the petition. My daughter Amy had to leave her newly adopted little girl in the orphanage in Nepal, and I'm hoping this petition will gather so many signatures that our federal government will have to wake up and fix this nightmare. The petition will help all 80 of the adoptive parents to bring their new children home with them from Nepal.
PLEASE forward this email to every one of your email contacts, friends and family. Please post it on your Facebook pages, on Twitter, and in your blogs.
We've got to make this happen.
If you want to know more about my own particular views on this whole governmental travesty, make yourself a cup of tea and sit down for a long read. This is my personal letter to President Obama, to the Department of State's Hillary Clinton, and to the "Powers That Be:" [I wrote the following letter on October 5, 2010]:
Please let my new granddaughter come home. She's two and a half years old and has been living in an orphanage in Nepal since she was two month of age. Her new mother is my daughter, a woman of great courage and nurturing compassion.
The new obstructionist policies of the United States Department of State denying visas to newly adopted Nepalese orphans have stranded eighty American families in a limbo of heartless U.S-government abandonment.
That policy, declaring all eighty of these infants and toddlers' status as not adoptable because the children are victims of child trafficking, is so very un-American.
To be charged guilty until proven innocent, (of fraud, child trafficking, stolen and sold human merchandise), is a cruel and heartless modern rendition of the McCarthyism witch hunt of know nothing, suspect everything.
That policy, instigated and supported by the Department of State and the United States Citizenship & Immigrations Services, and the United States Department of Homeland Security, has been implemented with no thought to the impact it will have on eighty U.S. families whose adopted Nepali children have already been approved by the government of Nepal as lawfully available for adoption.
Over the years, hundreds of Nepali children have been adopted by American families, and visas were automatically and immediately issued to allow every one of those children to enter the United States.
If the Federal government of the United States of America now feels the need to close any further adoptions, surely such a policy should be implemented AFTER the eighty families who have already been matched with a child have brought those beloved children home.
These eighty newly adoptive parents have gone through two years of investigation to prove themselves worthy of adopting. Two years of repeated home studies, fingerprinting, criminal investigation, medical exams, social and psychological competency tests, establishing financial sufficiency, etc., etc. Each family has spent thousands and thousands of dollars hiring adoption agencies and adoption attorneys, both here and abroad. Nursery rooms have been furnished and decorated, families have rallied round dreams of new little lives in their midst.
The wrenching destruction of dreams, based on guilty until proven innocent, is not the stuff of American character and integrity and opting for the greater good.
That new policy requires eyewitness confirmation as substantial corroborating evidence that the child was indeed found, abandoned and alone, on the streets of Nepal.
And though every staff member of every one of these eighty kids' orphanages is ready, willing and able to confirm that the child has, since infancy, been living in the orphanage, the United States government insists that that's not enough evidence.
The orphanages can produce original signed and dated documents of orphanage admission forms, intake medical exams, and photographs of the children as tiny infants. The orphanages have the original letters going back and forth between their admissions offices and the Nepali government registering the newly admitted children.
But somehow, and suddenly, that's not enough. The U.S. government's new policy insists that the specific individuals who originally found the babies must step up and declare that indeed said baby was found abandoned. That new policy wants declarations from the police officer to whom the abandoned baby was brought. What would really satisfy the new policy is for the natural parents to declare that they deliberately abandoned the baby and that the baby is not wanted, has not been stolen, has not been sold, and that it's fine with them if the baby is placed for international adoption.
That American policy, setting a burden of proof on so high a bar as to be functionally unobtainable, is a Catch-22 in all its tortured glory. A patriarchal society, declaring unwed mothers as unmarriageable, couched in a third-world country of constantly shifting governmental authority, steeped in the cultural survival mores of keep your head down and don't get involved, is NOT going to respond to officious foreign investigators flashing their badges and demanding eyewitness statements about abandoned babies.
The DOS, UCIS, and DHS make two oppositional claims. On the one hand, they imply that the country of Nepal is small and is structured as an collection of familial communities where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows whatever happens to any of them. That claim allows the U.S. government to insist that eyewitnesses to child abandonment are eminently feasible and readily obtainable.
On the other hand, those same federal offices imply that Nepal is so large and made up of so many disparate municipalities hosting innumerable public and private orphanages, that Nepali natural parents who are currently hunting for their abducted children face an almost insurmountable hurdle. That claim allows our federal offices to insist that the eighty children, who have already been languishing in Nepali orphanages for years, must continue to remain in the orphanages until they reach their teens so that their natural parents can have a chance of finding them.
And the truth no doubt, lies somewhere in the middle of these two conflicting points of view. But, years of political history have taught us that it takes at least two people to construct a conspiracy, yet a secret can only be kept a secret if fewer than two people know it. Is every single staff member, in every single orphanage that's holding one of those eighty kids, all part of a secret conspiracy, and all committed to secrets and lies about the orphan' origins and history? Is that a reasonable postulate? Reasonable enough to resign eighty Nepali children to lifelong misery and poverty, living retarded lives of desperation? Reasonable enough to destroy the hopes and dreams of American would-be parents?
I say to the Departments of State, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, and Homeland Security: You are personified by actual human beings wielding the governmental power of your titled offices. Those titles are but names for offices, naught but rooms filled with desks, phones, computers and the material trappings of modern technology. It's not the Department office that makes the decisions that so enhance or destroy our lives. Some one person, some aggregate collection of persons, sitting somewhere in those offices, made that fateful August 6, 2010 policy decision that has so cruelly truncated eighty families' dreams.
And so now, what to do? Egos restrict conscience. How can face-saving mechanisms be put in place to allow reversal of bad policy decisions? How can the person, or persons, responsible for that devastating policy somehow manage to reverse that policy without sacrificing self-image, or losing colleagues' esteem, and without jeopardizing his/her own position in the governmental hierarchy?
No one is going to reverse that policy if it means losing their job, or their chances for reappointment when the duration of the diplomatic post runs out.
I have no answers. I can only hope that some supervisor, some government official higher up the chain, can and will override this travesty and reverse that policy.
Hillary Clinton?? Barak Obama???
Essentially, visas for all the Nepali children already matched with those eighty prospective adoptive parents should immediately be issued without any further delay, procedures, investigation or hurdles.
All Nepal orphans that were matched with American families and flew home to the United States BEFORE the devastating new policy of two months ago, all got their visas without a hitch. No problems. The prospective parents flew to Nepal, signed the documents and took the kids home to the States within a week or two.
There is nothing new or different about the eighty cases that are left in the pipeline.
Why single them out for this particular nightmare?????????????
You want to close down Nepali adoptions? Fine; but do it AFTER the matched families are home safe and sound with their new children.
There are still plenty of American families who will suffer disappointment. Those are the prospective adoptive parents still in the initial stages of the adoption procedures. Only a few months or so into the two-year process of home studies, investigations and exams, they have not yet been matched with a child. Their disappointment will be real but not the heartrending devastation felt by families who have already been matched.
To be matched means you've already gotten a photograph of the child, been told the child's name, and the delights of the child's personality have been shared. Many of the eighty matched parents have already flown to Nepal, met the babies and spent days and weeks and months bonding and loving and adoring their new children. Just waiting for the visas to be issued, so they can take their kids home.
And now our own precious government, our United States of America, is murdering our expectations. How can this be?????????
Please reverse this horrible new policy. Now. Not soon. Now. The babies are losing their precious window of language acquisition, socialization accommodation, self-image foundational structures, interpersonal communication motivation, and all the basic markers that allow for a whole, well-rounded person to develop.
Some of the prospective adoptive parents have had to fly home, leaving their precious new children behind. You cannot imagine the pain of knowing that you're causing this little dear child to know abandonment so keenly. Especially agonizing for the toddlers as they're old enough to wonder, where has Mama/Papa gone? What have I done?
I lost my own natural father to a heart attack when he was 34 and I was but seven years old. Abandonment is a tearful, lifelong misery, no matter its cause.
Some of the American families are opting to remain in Nepal with their new children for two years so as to qualify for visas under the relevant immigration laws. Two years of physical custody outside of the United States, and the adopted child will be granted a visa. That's a feasible option if one's finances and family obligations will allow. But mighty few of the eighty families can manage that. They've got other kids at home, or elderly dependent parents, or established professional practices, or invested business ownerships. Farms need tending, universities need faculty, hospitals need their physicians.
The eighty families represent every region of the United States. We are upstanding, tax-paying citizens. We vote, we labor, and we raise our children to be productive Americans.
But that awful August 6th policy is a threat to our livelihood, to our individual right to pursue happiness and build a better America through building American families.
We need our government to rescue these eighty families. We need rescuing, so that we can rescue the sweet little innocents.
Ms. Clinton; President Obama, please fix this.
http://www.petition2congress.com/2/...milies-in-adoption-pipeline-waiting-to-bring/ [IF THAT LINK DOESN'T WORK, JUST COPY AND PASTE IT INTO YOUR BROWSER. ]
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