ANOTHER UPDATE DAY......

Woohoo it's UPDATE FRIDAY....and it is a GOOD one!!! The news below is so encouraging to us. It has been a long road to get this far and I can feel the final outcome on the horizon. Only a little more work and a lot more patience and we should be headed to Vietnam to bring Derek HOME!!!!

Here's the update....


1) The move to the new orphanage location was completed on January 2nd. The new location is quieter and more convenient, and most importantly, provide more spaces for increasing the capacity of the orphanage. There is a relinquished baby girl accepted into the orphanage already since moving into new location, but will require another 6 weeks of waiting to become eligible as referral to families. The new location is still in the same district, hence the move will not affect the documents already in process. Commonwealth is fully supporting the orphanage financially, and the local government is committed to referring more orphaned children to be accepted into the orphanage.

2) The DOJ has formally asked the orphanage director to submit the child dossiers. The orphanage director has been cooperative in the past two months, and has been working diligently on fixing the child dossiers. As mentioned in last update, it was reported that all child dossiers has been corrected, and simply owing the signature of the former population committee director. There seemed to be another round of reluctance from this man to rectify the documents. PC and DOLISA officials are doing their best to convince the man to backdate the documents. Their plan B is to have the new population committee director to sign those documents, to be used alongside with an explanation letter signed by senior PC officials.

3) CAI also intends to consult the USCIS in Ho Chi Minh City on the child dossier documents, because of the special circumstances of the errors made by the orphanage director previously. Copies of child dossier documents would be available to adoptive parents once approved by DOJ in DN and given the green light by the USCIS. The documents will be needed for filing the I-600 petition with the USCIS in HCMC. Although much progress is made, it is still early to come up with an estimated timeframe for these steps to be completed. We should know better in the next month.