Please Pray for US Families Now Stuck in Nepal

Two of our friends from synagogue are among the 80 or so “pipeline” families, all of whom had been in the process of adopting orphans from Nepal, when the US government changed policy and left them in limbo, forbidding them to come back home with their newly adopted children.

As the friend of one such family explained, these Nepalese adoptions had been “already pre-approved by the State Department pending Embassy investigation. However, at this time, it doesn’t appear that this investigation is any more than paper pushing from one bureau to another. It seems very cruel to approve these families and then leave them abandoned in a foreign and unstable country with no options except to stay 22 months to obtain an Immediate Family visa.”

Here’s the email our friends Teresa and Mark sent out to all of us last week, which I got permission to share with you:

Namaste!

I would like to give you a briefing on our latest adventures and blessing received.

We are writing you from Asia-Pacific, from the country of Nepal, in the city of Kathmandu, where the promise of G-d to our family (given last summer) that our tents will be enlarged and that He will give us a child has become a reality. Mark and I have lived an incredible journey of faith for the last 9 months where we have experienced Hashem’s intervention in every step of the process. He has green-lighted all doors to the tremendous obstacles and barriers that were clearly impossible to overcome by human means. We would love to give testimony of this when we come back.

Mark and I are the proud parents of baby Trishna (pronounced TREESNA), a beautiful 3-year old baby girl. We first received her picture while in Spain on August 4th the day of my father’s funeral. Mark arrived in Nepal at the end of August and I joined him later from Rome. Trishna bonded with us from the first day and has been living with us in Nepal for about one month. The adoption is complete (signed the final adoption decree in early October).

The US DOS and US embassy is however denying visas to adopted children from Nepal since August, through new policies, and this has created a parents’ refugee crisis in Nepal. There are about 80 US families stranded with their legally adopted children in the same situation with us, unable to go home. Mark has been in unpaid leave since August and is risking his job.

All the evidences that parents usually provide with their visa applications including birth certificates, policy records declaring orphan status, and newspaper advertisement of the children according to Nepali laws are no longer sufficient. USCIS is making unreasonable demands of the adoptive parents for evidences of abandonment which are impossible to confirm, which include finding the birth mother of their children. (These orphan children were abandoned when they were only few months old and have been living in orphanages all their life, 2-3 years, with no one to claim them.) It is confirmed by high-level sources that this was just a political move to put pressure on Nepal.

“The Nepal situation is unimaginable… In the end, the actions taken harm not only American families but… orphan children in need of permanent families.” We trust Hashem will open the doors.

I am sending you the link to a petition to Congress asking USCIS to grant visas to legally adopted children of these 80 US families. So far more than 17,000 letters and e-mails have been received, but more signatures are needed. Mark and I could use your help.

http://www.petition2congress.com/2/3608/expedite-visas-80-families-in-adoption-pipeline-waiting-to-bring/

Missing you all and hoping to be home soon.

Thanks a lot, Teresa, Mark, and Trishna

Jenni, another of the new mothers, even started a blog to tell her story. In her introductory post, she confirms how desperately these adoptions are needed:

On the ground in Kathmandu it was so obvious that these children needed homes… Nepal is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world and these kids don’t have any kind of future. Without a family or an education there is no hope for them to do much of anything with their lives except pick up trash. It’s sad and bleak and would break your heart if you were here. The poverty is shocking…

(I highly recommend you read her story. It will wrench your heart.)

Most of the “pipeline” cases which have been reviewed the US authorities have refused to approve and have sent to India for further investigation and further delays. I understand that a few recent cases have been approved, but that there’s nothing different about those cases that would justify approving them while leaving all the others in limbo, making it seem like a political move of some sort. (But maybe we just need a lot more political moves of that sort.) All of these cases are substantively similar; if any one of them is that clearly approvable, most or all of them should be as well.

The US Department of State has even resorted to rationalizing its torment of these families, under the guise of fighting human trafficking. But as is pointed out in another important petition, there is not even a hint of human trafficking in these “pipeline” cases. The human trafficking concerns are real, and they are serious, but they apply to a completely different set of circumstances. Moves like that by the State Department make it seem even more like they’re in a political battle with the Nepali government, and these families are getting caught in the middle.

So please remember these families in your thoughts and prayers. Many of them really can’t afford to take an extended leave in Nepal, and are risking jobs and livelihoods, all to preserve family bonds.

-TimK