Haiti Update - August 5, 2007

Kaliko Beach Club:
We are spending the weekend at the Kaliko Beach Club. I do not have the right software to upload photos that I have taken, but you can see the place on its website:
www.kalikobeachclub.com

I am staying here with Josh, Teddy, Tamarah and some "new" friends who are adopting also. Their names are Rebekka, Mike and Kerwin. They have posted some photos onto their blog:
http://haakehome.blogspot.com

We are staying in a bungalow right next to the beach. It was so nice to sleep in air conditioning.

I am leaving today and the kids and Rebekka and family are staying for another day. Tamarah has her visa appointment tomorrow morning (Monday) at 7 a.m., so I have to go back to Port au Prince this afternoon.

U.S. Consulate News:
I spoke with Mr. Duffy on Friday. He told me the reason for the "changes". He said that a few years ago, things were very dangerous and a lot of U.S. Personnel were pulled because of safety concerns. Because they did not want to slow down or stop adoptions, they made necessary chanages where the U.S. Immigration Office in downtown PAP took over the orphan investigations. That office is mainly staffed by Haitian employees.

Now that things are calm in PAP, the U.S. Consulate is taking back the responsibility for the orphan investigations as it is supposed to be.

They are working hard to get a system established. Though they have established a "new" system, there are also lots of exceptions to the system.

As posted earlier, if the I-600 was applied for in the U.S., the Consulate will conduct the orphan investigation. If the I-600 was applied for in Haiti, then the Immigration Office will conduct the orphan investigation.

It is important that adoptive families call ahead of time to find out exactly who has their adoption file... U.S. Consulate (Mr. Duffy's Office) or the U.S. Immigration Office in downtown PAP? Make sure that they have located the file and all its contents before coming to get your child's visa.

Ministry of Interior:
I spent enough time waiting in the MOI office last week to read a 500-page novel! Yes, there is a LOT of waiting involved in getting the necessary adoptive-family-interview done. I spent over 6 hours waiting to do two interviews on Friday. The office is HOT, there is no air-conditioning and there is one person conducting the interview, Mr. Guerdy.

On Friday, I sat in front of his desk while I waited for the entire six hours.

He has to look for the files that the O-reps are asking for. When he comes back with the files, it goes "first-come-first-served". Unfortunately, I was the fourth person to have come in that morning, thus the long wait time. He does about 5 interviews per O-rep. However, these interviews are constantly disrupted with phones ringing or people coming to talk to him.

He has a two page form that has to be filled out. The information of the child must be looked up in the original adoption related documents, even if the O-rep has the information on a piece of paper already. The same goes for the adoptive family information, it gets looked up on the adoption decree, except for some of the adoptive family information that is provided by the O-rep.

Mr. Guerdy fills out the two-page form and then tells the O-rep if there is anything wrong with the adoption related papers. It seems that they are finding more and more things "wrong" that are not really wrong (at least in my opinion). For example, they are requesting to speak with the family representative for a full orphan that has been adopted. Now that person has to be found...how long will that take? 2-4 weeks maybe?

They are requesting different types of notarization of birth and death certificates. One is called a "half-page" and another type is a "full-page" that comes from Archives. Many of the documents have the half-page certification for the document. To get a full-page certification takes several weeks.

Archives is ten times worse than the DMV office, the line to speak with a clerk is several hours long! In 100+ degrees heat inside of the building.

To get a full-page certification, the book where the initial birth or death certificate was documented has to be found. If the document was issued in one of the villages, outside of PAP, the process can take months! The books are sent to the PAP Archives' office once per year. Nothing is computerized and somebody has to go and look through the archives to find the particular book. Once the book is found, the entry has to be found...and then a full page is typed up on an antiquated typewriter to certify that the document is real.

Once that is obtained, it has to be legalized at the Parquet and at the Foreign Affairs Office.

Okay ... so assume that there is nothing "wrong" with the file and it content. The interview has taken place. Now what?

Next, one of the two elderly gentlemen in Mr. Guerdy's office take the paper that he filled out and re-write it in nice penmanship (nothing is typed - everything is hand written). They also cut out the adoptive parents' and the adopted child's photo and glue it onto the form.

Once that is done, the nicely written paper/form is attached to the dossier file envelope and then it goes for final signature. I believe that the Director of Political Affairs signs the final letter that everything is okay with the file and that the passport can be issued.

Once that letter is signed, then the file is hand carried by an MOI employee to Immigration. It took six weeks for my daughter's file to reach Immigration after the interview had taken place.

My honest opinion is that there should be another person besides Mr. Guerdy who does the interviews. I might just suggest that.

I have to say that he worked non-stop on Friday. He was in the office at 8:30 a.m., came back with files at around 9:30 a.m. and did the interviews non-stop until he was finished with my two interviews at 3:00 p.m. By that time, both he and I had basically melted from the heat. Add to that, the electricity kept going off leaving all of us in a dark office several times during the day.

Several orphanage reps got interviews done on Friday. GLA and NLL got the most interviews done, the rest were from French adoptions.