Ethiopia Adoption: US State Department Stakeholder Call 12/9/11

Ethiopia: USCIS Stakeholder Meeting on Ethiopian Adoptions

December 7, 2011

From US Citizenship and Immigration Services:

USCIS Stakeholder Meeting on Ethiopian Adoptions
As a follow up to the October 28, 2011, Ethiopian Stakeholder call, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the U.S. Department of State would like to invite you to attend a stakeholder call on Friday, December 9, 2011 to discuss USCIS’ November trip to the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa to adjudicate “not clearly approvable” adoption petitions.
After the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, identified a number of adoption petitions (Form I-600, Petition to Classify Orphan as Immediate Relative) that it determined were not clearly approvable (NCA), and thus, must be referred to USCIS for adjudication, USCIS dispatched a team of officers to go Addis to adjudicate the petitions. USCIS and the Department of State would like to discuss the results of the NCA Team’s trip, lessons learned, and the way forward for Ethiopian adoptions.
To Participate in the Session
Any interested parties may participate in this event by telephone. All participants must respond to this invitation. Please contact the USCIS Office of Public Engagement at public.engagement@dhs.gov by Thursday, December 8, 2011 referencing “Ethiopian Adoptions” in the subject line of your email.
Please also include your full name and the organization you represent in the body of the email.

To Join the Call
On the day of the engagement please use the information below to join the session by phone. We recommend calling in 10 minutes prior to the start of the teleconference.
Call-in Number: 1-800-779-1424
Overseas Toll Number: 1-630-395-0144
Passcode: Adoption
We look forward to engaging with you!

US State Department Publishes the 2011 Annual Report on Intercountry Adoption

The US State Department recently published its Fiscal Year 2011 Annual Report on Intercountry Adoption.  This five page report is worth a look.  It contains a number of useful charts and tables. In addition to listing all the countries from which children were adopted and then brought to the US, this report also contains charts showing how long it takes to complete an adoption from each country and also what the median costs are (by country) for completing an adoption.  You can see this report by clicking on:  http://adoption.state.gov/content/pdf/fy2011_annual_report.pdf.