After much anticipation....counting down the days since October....and just wishing the new year would be here so the EP quota would reset we got NO NEWS in the first week of 2012.
It was a long week..... the longest since we started the process 16 months ago. Time just seemed to stand still. They say a watched pot doesn't boil - and my poor pot didn't even get warm this week.
I spent every moment connected. I checked my e-mail 30 times an hour - maybe more. I chatted online and on the phone with my fellow waiting moms morning, noon, and night trying to see if we could crack the secret code to EP's and figure out when we might be submitted and better yet when our babies would be coming home. I used the little bit of information we have from friends past adoptions to chart the days of the week of prior submissions to see if there was a pattern - Nope, in 2011 submissions came on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday too. I even went back thru the adoption bulletin board and looked up when people started posting that they were submitted throughout the year vs when the actual submittal was. Yes, I am that Adoptive MaMa who is on the brink of insanity and just wants to bring her boy home. Anyway, about 80% of the time it was the same day. Once, people were submitted and notified two days later and another time a batch was submitted and families were not notified for almost two weeks. How great would it be to learn we were already submitted and that much closer to approval?!?! One can dream, right?!!
I want to thank every single person who sent good wishes, who prayed, who stopped to think of us and offer support during this week and through this journey. We are blessed. We never imagined that the process would lengthen and so many things would change. We never thought James would not be home yet. The support we have recieved has been so great and we are thankful everyday.
I am so thankful to my family and friends who have been part of this journey from the very begining. You have watched James grow up over the last 9 months, with us, through pictures and updates. You have supported us from our first announcement that we had applied to the program and continue to support us daily. James is going to be as lucky as we are to have you all in our life.
I'm also thankful for those MaMa's who already brought their babies home...and are very busy at home loving on their littles.... for the messages that flood into my inbox and onto my facebook wall ..... offering encouragement because they know how hard it is ....because they have walked in my shoes.
I'm thankful for my old friends... friends from high school, college, old jobs, etc.... who continually show up to let us know that they are thinking of us and praying. Some I have not seen in years, but they show up via the internet to let us know they want James to come home too.
And of course my waiting buddies . How would I get through this process without you guys? Who would I chat with that would be so excited about charting timelines late at night? Who would encourage me, support me, and understand just how I am feeling at the very same moment in time. You ladies always get it. I am so grateful that we have each other to lean on. It is amazing, not only did I gain a son through adoption, but some pretty amazing friends as well.
So, its Friday and we wont get any news over the weekend.... Monday is a new week and hopefully it brings great news.
In the meantime, I borrowed this information from a AP friends blog (http://forthesechildrenihaveprayed.wordpress.com/) which is an awesome resource for all things Korean Adoption.
This explains exactly what we are waiting for (EP)
On the Korean side of the equation, emigration permits (EP) are one of the biggest issues. It is my understanding that South Korea issues two types of travel permits:
■One is permission to travel, similar to a US passport that allows someone to enter and leave the country.
■The other is is permission to emigrate to another country or to permanently leave South Korea for the purpose of settling in another country like the US. In order for someone to emigrate from South Korea to another country, the person needs to obtain an emigration permit in order to get a travel certificate. This process also applies for children emigrating for purposes of adoption. The emigration permit (EP) isn’t the actual travel permit itself, but rather the approval for the travel permit.
In the case of adoption, just as we in the USA limit the number of legal immigrates every year, South Korea limits the number of EP’s issued for the purpose of international adoption. Each agency in Korea has a number and, in theory, that number decreases every year. The Korean government has restricted the number of EPs for international adoption (i.e. set a quota) and has the stated goal of reducing the number of international adoptions each year. By doing so the Korean government has hoped to put more focus on domestic adoptions.
The quota is at the Korean agency level (Eastern, Holt Korea, SWS, KSS), and the number of EPs each agency receives varies by agency and is at least in part a function of their size with larger agencies getting more since they have more babies. Domestic adoption rates may also play a role in how EPs are distributed at the Korean agency level. The EP quota overall has been reduced each year by the ministry. This has caused an EP shortage in recent years and a subsequent delay in travel for some families.
The EP approval isn’t the actual travel permit itself but rather the permission to process the application for the “travel certificate” (note: a travel certificate is similar to our passport). In order for the child to get the “travel certificate”, the child needs to have EP approval first. Once a child’s EP has been issued, it typically doesn’t take long to get the travel certificate.
Getting back to the quota…Each Korean agency has the right and responsibility for managing their own allotment or quota. Last year (2010) according to the US embassy website, all of the Korean agencies ran out of EPs, some earlier than others.
Because the EP quota gets further reduced while the number of children coming into care and getting placed for IA does not proportionately decrease, the problem tends to grow year over year, resulting in a backlog that grows with the impacted agencies running out of EPs earlier and earlier. Unfortunately as the quota declines, it becomes very hard for an agency to catch up because the number of children coming into care for the new year doesn’t necessarily go down. Not only does an agency have the previous year’s backlog to clear through but they have the new children to get through the EP approval process as well. Over the years different agencies have run into the quota problem earlier than other agencies. Though all the agencies have been impacted lately, Eastern has been probably hardest hit in recent years.
Here’s a made-up example to help illustrate the problem:
Year 1 for a given agency….
■Agency is granted 100 EPs
■Agency has 110 babies come into care
■Agency decides to refer all 110 babies
■Agency uses up all EPs by November; only 100 get EP, 10 babies have to wait until Year 2
Year 2 for the same agency…
■Agency starts off with a backlog of 10 babies needing EP
■Agency is granted 90 EPs (reduction of 10% from the previous year’s quota of 100)
■Agency has 110 babies come into care (assuming no change in the number of children coming into care)
■Agency decides to refer all 110 babies
■Agency now has a 110 babies from the current year plus 10 babies from year 1 needing EP or 120 total babies; agency only has 90 EPs
■Agency uses up all EPs by October; only 90 of the 120 babies get EP; 30 babies have to wait until Year 3
Year 3 for the same agency…
■Agency starts off with a backlog of 30 babies needing EP
■Agency is granted 81 EPs (reduction of 10% from the previous year’s quota of 90)
■etc…
How many times a month are children submitted for EP?
It honestly depends. Each agency in Korean handles things different. It also varies based on the time of the year. For the last couple of years, Holt Children’s Services Inc. (HCS, aka Holt Korea) has submitted more batches in January and into February as they try to clear through some of the backlog from the prior year. After that, the pattern for HCS has been EP submissions about once a month. However, that’s not a hard and fast rule. In June 2011 there was a pause in submissions and no batches were submitted or approved in June for Holt. Other things like audits have also impacted EP submission timelines too. The other thing to consider is the quota; once a given Korean agency reaches their annual quota, unless things change and the ministry grants more EPs, the agency won’t have another EP batch submitted until the next calendar year.
Here is an example from early 2011 for HCS families that illustrates the EP submission pattern. This is based on the EP batches that people on a Korea adoption web forum I participate in have indicated they were a part of are and it may be incomplete (i.e. use for illustrative purposes only):
■EP Sub 1/04/11 EP App 1/14/11, 1/17/11
■EP Sub 1/11/11 EP App 1/20/11
■EP Sub 1/19/11 EP App 2/10/11, 2/11/11
■EP Sub 1/31/11 EP App 3/08/11
■EP Sub 2/18/11 EP App 3/25/11
■EP Sub 3/18/11 EP App 4/12/11
■EP Sub 4/06/11 EP App 4/28/11
■EP Sub 4/26/11 EP App 5/24/11
■EP Sub 5/20/11 – no EPs submitted or approved in June 2011
How do they decide which children are submitted for EP?
The decision as to which children to submit for EP in which batch is that of the Korean agency (e.g. Holt Children’s Services Inc [HCS], aka Holt Korea). It is my understanding that for HCS under normal circumstances, general acceptance date plays a large role in determining when a child is submitted for EP, but it is not the only factor that is considered. That means that EP submission is never purely chronological based on acceptance date. There are other factors such as the length of time a child has been in care, foster family situations, health issues, referral date (e.g. in certain situations there may be a large gap between referral and acceptance such as for a sibling call which may get factored in), etc that are also considered. As agencies get closer to hitting the quota, the factors that influence which child gets submitted when may get weighted differently.
I tend not to look at it as a bunch of families waiting orderly “in line” based on acceptance date for their children to be submitted for EP where mitigating factors bump one family up and another family down. It is more complex than that and not so linear. I’ve always looked at it as a pool of children who all need to come home. They have a certain number of EPs spots they are going to submit at a given time. They review all the factors collectively and individually and select the children to be submitted in that batch based on the factors at play.
In the end, with limited EP slots, it can’t be easy to try and prioritize. Yes, it ends up being largely chronological (or close to it) based on acceptance date as acceptance date is a major consideration; but since acceptance date is not the only consideration, ultimately it is not entirely linear or exactly chronological. I would imagine that coming up with the list for EP submissions probably weighs heavily on the people making the decisions as they know how much everyone wants their babies home as soon as possible.
For those caught in the wait, my heart goes out to you. I personally know how difficult this is as we were caught up in the quota situation while waiting for our youngest to come home. Please know that the Korean agencies are all tirelessly advocating on behalf of the children. They LOVE the children and want to see the children come home to their families as soon as quickly as possible!
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1 comments:
Praying Monday brings great news! *hug*
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