Adoptive families caught in federal bureaucracy

The United States and
Vietnam are feuding over a 2005 agreement dealing with adoptions.

SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON — As far as Steve and Julie Carroll can tell, their adopted daughter is thriving for now.

Just a month shy of her first birthday, little Madelyn Grace is in good hands with a Vietnamese family that is caring for her while the Carrolls battle the U.S. government for permission to bring her to her new home in Southern California.

The couple and 25 other American families are caught in the middle of a protracted squabble between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments — one that has been not only emotionally wrenching for them, but one they fear could also take a toll on the children they have chosen.

“The only consistent thing our child has had in her life since she has been born is a pink blanket that we have given to her,” Julie Carroll said. “What is this going to do to her development?”

The Carrolls’ run-in with the dual bureaucracies began in September, when they went to Vietnam and adopted two baby girls.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved a visa request for only one of the girls, whom the couple has named Lillian Rose.

The other child, Madelyn Grace, or Maddy Grace, as the Carrolls call her, has been in foster care in Vietnam since October while the couple fights for the right to bring her to the United States.

Initially, Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, told the Carrolls that a visa for Maddy Grace would be denied.

But late last month, the federal agency reversed itself and concluded that the case met the necessary criteria for a visa. The State Department, however, has yet to issue the document.

“Everything we know says the State Department is frankly using these babies as a tool in a battle that has nothing to do with these families or the children themselves,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who has pledged to intervene on the families’ behalf.

“This is, to me, inexplicable,” she said.

Beginning last October and November, there was a noticeable increase in the number of families who had been informed by the U.S. government that they would be denied visas for children adopted from Vietnam, according to Boxer’s office.

The spike in such notices comes as the United States is quarreling with the Vietnamese government over the renewal of a 2005 agreement that authorizes adoptions between the two countries.

The agreement is set to expire Sept. 1. U.S. authorities, citing the need to protect children and families in the adoption process from being exploited, have served notice to the Vietnamese government and prospective parents that the pact is unlikely to be renewed in its current form.

Boxer and attorneys representing the families suspect that the State Department may be holding up the visas to convince the Vietnamese government that the current system is flawed.

State Department spokesman Rob McInturff said the agency is just doing its job.

McInturff said he could not comment directly on the Carrolls’ case because of confidentiality concerns.

But in general, he said, the State Department is scrutinizing adoptions in Vietnam more closely than in the past because investigators have uncovered evidence of fraud in some cases and have raised doubts about whether some of the children involved are actually eligible for adoption.

“We’re fully aware that this additional period of review of adoption cases has been difficult for a lot of the families,” McInturff said. But, “if these children are not eligible for adoption in the first place, it doesn’t serve the interests of anybody to push the process forward illegally.”