Why the Wait?

That's a really good question, without any kid of definitive answer. There are lots of theories and contributing factors, but it is all speculation.

The referral of children from China is now at a crawl.

1/ It is possible that fewer babies are being abandoned because there is an emerging middle class who can now afford to pay the fines to have 2 children.

2/ Domestic adoption is now allowed and encouraged (although since 2001), even to families who already have a biological child.

3/ Many familes are blaming the Olympics, saying that China does not want to be known as the country that exports its children. In 1980, as Korea was hosting the Olympics, Bryant Gumble did an expose' on Korea's main export, their children. Korea was thought to 'lose face' over this and shut down their international program shortly afterwards. They eventually re-opened it as well. Many feel that China is trying to avoid the same kind of negative press, or 'losing face.' Others feel China does not need adoptive families over there now because they have all of the pre-Olympic work to fill their hotel rooms. I'm not so sure we will see a speed up after the Olympics.

4/ There was also such an increase in dossiers sent over there from
2005 to 2007 that China couldn't handle the numbers. Their International Adoption program was the 'world model' for its efficiency and healthy babies. Instead of putting in quotas on how many dossiers to accept, they put in new rules drastically restricting what kind of parents they would accept. We filed before the new rules went into effect, and would have met the new requirements anyway, but that is neither here nor there. The drop in dossiers sent happened after we sent ours so that won't help us with the wait.

5/ The Hague: This is an international agreement designed to protect orphan children. However, many people are not happy with the way this agreement reads, as it lists International Adoption only slightly more favorable than spending an entire life in an orphanage. With an estimated 143
million orphans worldwide this policy is absolutely criminal. With the Hague comes a tremendous increase in paperwork, an increase that many orphanage directors in rural China do not have time to complete. So, there are less 'paper ready' babies available.

6/ Special Needs Children vs. Non Special Needs: China may have an unpublished quota of total babies referred each year, with a dramatic increase in special needs and a decline in non special needs children. People can move from one line to the other. So, theoretically, I can have people in line behind me, switch to special needs and get a baby years before I will.

So, where does that leave us? We have exactly 14 months of people ahead of us. Our paperwork went to China in February 07, and it took them a month to 'log us in.' That is when the clock started ticking for us, 3/19/07. When we started the paperwork, China typically referred a month of people waiting during each month, so that the line moved along steadily. At the time in July 06, when we started, they were beginning to see a slowdown, but nobody really thought anything about it. Wait times were increasing from 6 to 9 months. Now, each month the wait increases. Right now, people from January 06 are waiting between 26 to 30 or 31 months. China went from processing an average of 30 days of people a month to 6 days, and decreasing, with some months only giving out referrals for 2 days. It's like getting on a huge line and having 2/3 or 3/4 of the cashiers close their registers.

So, since our paperwork was logged in, people from October 05 through January 25, 2006 got their referrals. We are coming up on sixteen months of waiting and the line hasn't even moved a full 4 months. So, we keep waiting. There really isn't anything else. Either we wait or we don't.