And then there was no news...

Haven't heard of any travel approvals being received in recent days, probably due to the national holiday that was celebrated in China earlier this week (known as the Duanwu Festival in China, often referred to as the "Dragon Boat Festival").  So if that's the reason for the slowdown in travel approvals, it shouldn't last long.  Hopefully those just ahead of us in line will start receiving theirs later this week or early next. 

A few people have asked whether there's anything that could be done to speed up the process.  The short answer is, "No."  Other than rare exceptions for urgent medical problems, every adoption in China follows essentially the same timeline.  Ours has been much faster than the non-special needs program (which now has a wait time of more than 5 years), but only because we received a quicker match.  We've done the same basic paperwork, which has worked its way through the same bureaucratic labyrinth as that of every other family who is adopting from China.  The process is governed by Chinese and U.S. laws, as well as the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption.  It is tedious almost by design, because corruption has been the downfall of many international adoption programs over the years. 

I've seen a few disturbing articles recently accusing Chinese family planning officials of engaging in illegal practices related to the placing of children for international adoption.  These accusations stem from incidents that allegedly occurred several years ago.  They have not been connected in any way to Ellie's province (which actually is relatively new to the IA process), nor have they apparently involved any children with special needs (of which there are many in China, in fact constituting the majority of children living in orphanages and the majority of Chinese children currently being adopted by Americans).  Unfortunately, there is no perfect human endeavor under the sun, and whenever money is involved it has the potential of bringing out the worst in people.

Adoptive parents do pay fees for the privilege of adopting a child, which causes some people to assume that the process is automatically corrupt - but social workers, agency employees, translators, government bureaucrats and travel guides don't work for free.  Neither did I when I was teaching - does that make me some sort of evil opportunist taking advantage of the ignorance of young children?  Is it wrong for a doctor to accept fees for taking care of sick people?  Or a lawyer to be reimbursed by the state for representing an indigent client?  We all have jobs to do, some of them in the helping professions - but other than the work that we do for our families, most of us expect to get paid.  Many of the fees for Ellie's adoption have gone to government entities to cover the cost of processing of our paperwork.  Should other taxpayers foot the bill instead?  Our agency has received payment for doing our home study (which is mandatory for any adoption, domestic or international, but the requirements vary and the social worker spends many hours gathering information and writing her report), and for reviewing and translating our dossier.  Very specialized work, to say the least.  The largest single expense will be the trip to China, much of which goes to the airlines and hotels.  A "child-rearing fee" is collected at the provincial level, which is personally my least favorite aspect of the fee structure - but there is an appreciable difference between orphanages in China that participate in international adoption and those that do not, in terms of the care the children receive and the resources the staff has to do their jobs.  Can we be certain that every dime of the child-rearing fee is used to care for the children who remain institutionalized?  No - but we do know that the process of matching children from orphanages is handled at the national level in China, so there is a record of how many children from each orphanage have been adopted abroad and therefore how much money each orphanage should have received.  The fee itself is standard throughout China.  Chinese parents who adopt domestically pay a fee as well.

What's interesting is that most orphanages in China don't even participate in international adoption - so if it's supposedly so financially lucrative due to widespread corruption, why don't they?  And why has China decreased the number of referrals in the non-special needs program and not adjusted the fees all that much, even though there is a line of dossiers stretching back several years?  If they're only in it to make money, well, they're certainly not doing a very effective job.

We chose the China program in part because it's been a relatively stable program over the years, and because it has an orderly, centralized process for placing children for adoption.  So through the labyrinth we chug along, and we are happy to do it.