Adoption Status
El Salvador Adoption Update, January 2010- We’re about a year and a half into this adoption process and have requested siblings again. This process will take quite a bit longer than when we adopted the twins from Guatemala 3 years ago, but every once in a while I get to cross off another milestone!
Currently, we’re waiting for approval by OPA – El Salvador’s governing body responsible for approving (or not) prospective parents’ files. We’ve already been approved here in the U.S. and submitted all our paperwork to OPA in August. In October they asked for copies of our doctors’ licenses, so that means somebody actually picked up our file and flipped through it! We sent the licenses asap, but no further news since then.
1. Select an agency with a program in El Salvador and a local homestudy agency. August 2008
2. Complete the Homestudy process. September 2008-March 2009
3. Apply to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services for approval to bring adopted children into the U.S. March 2009-June 2009
4. Compile the international dossier to be sent to El Salvador. April 2009-July 2009
5. DTES (Dossier-to-El-Salvador), translated into Spanish July 2009
6. Await approval from El Salvador’s Officina para Adopciónes (OPA), the Salvadoran Office for Adoptions – giving us the right to adopt at all in that country.
7a. OPA will forward our approved file to the office of the Procuraduría General de la República (Attorney General).
7b. OPA will also forward a copy of our approved file to Instituto Salvadoreño para el Desarrollo Integral de la Niñez y la Adolescencia (ISNA), the governing body that qualifies children to be designated as true orphans and therefore legally adoptable. Based on what they then know about potential adoptive parents (us and any others who have also been approved), ISNA will submit files on children to the Procuraduría’s office with the intent that those children be matched with families who have been approved by OPA. August 2009 -
8. Reunion Conjunta (Joint Meeting). The Procuraduría and her appointed team meet to go through the pile of adoptible-child files and try to match each one to the best-suited approved-parents file. If we are matched with a child/children we will receive the referral (information about the child(ren) and a picture). We have the option to decline, but hopefully our facilitator and attorney will have been keeping close enough eyes on the process that that won’t be necessary, and we will then have our assigned children!
9. We provide a notarized, county sealed, apostilled acceptance of the referral which is returned to El Salvador.
10. Wait for the acceptance to work its way through the Procurador General’s office and then the E.S. Family Court. Receive notice of an adoption court date.
11. Fly to El Salvador to be present for the Family Court date and then the subsequent appointment at the U.S. Embassy to receive a travel visa to bring our child/ren home. (Probably a 3-week stay in-country).
12. Immigrant visa issued, book flights, return home with our new son(s) and/or daughter(s)!
13. And lest anyone think we’re “done” at that point: BEGIN LIFE WITH A NEW CHILD/ NEW CHILDREN WHO HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM HOMELAND, LANGUAGE, CULTURE, FRIENDS, CAREGIVERS, FOOD, EVERYTHING FAMILIAR AND LOVE THEM EVEN AS THEY AREN’T SURE THIS IS REALLY A GOOD THING.
14. THEN settle into the new norm – which will continually surface new meanings to #13 throughout their (and consequently our) lives – and keep the dialog open.