Hope for I-600 Families Awaiting a Referral

A hopeful update from our agency:

March 23, 2016

Dear Haiti waiting families,

I am just following up with everyone after all the conference calls last week. And after myself and a couple other agencies working in Haiti were able to help put a letter together to send to DOS. It appears that DOS has changed what they had previously stated in regards to what is prior contact in the I-800 cases, they are no longer including agencies that have relationships with orphanages as prior contact. 

So for those of you that have filed the I-800A, we can still send dossier’s to Haiti and alert the orphanages we work with about each family and what age/gender the family wishes to adopt. The crèche can submit files of particular children to IBESR and make a “suggestion” that the child go to a particular family, but IBESR is solely responsible for making the matches. The agency cannot be given any prior information on the children that are being “suggested” to IBESR on their behalf, and the adoptive family are never to be given information on a child before IBESR issues the official match.

Also a little heads up on the I-600 cases, just to clarify, all I-600 families must receive an official referral/match by April 1. But as of today, you can get the referral match all the way up to April 1 and will be able to file the I-600 in Haiti up to April 29. We have also heard that the orphanage rep can file the I-600 for the family, but then the family will have to go to the embassy for their interview when they come to Haiti for their two week socialization trip. 

I am thrilled that we have gotten 7 referrals in the last few days and praying more will come before the end of the month.