The Big Barlow Blog

I emailed our specialist the yesterday as i hadn't heard anything for a while. No news is good news but no news is also to quiet. Anyway this is what she said when i asked about delays or what was happening. the good news is we will hopefully have some more pics in a week or two. We have also met a couple in Phoenix that are adopting from Ethiopia using our same agency. They had their court date on March 13th and passed. They haven't been notified as to when they will travel but we'll maybe be able to gauge our travel based on them. This will be their second adoption from Ethiopia. So 5 weeks after April 3 puts it around the first part of May.

Right now everything is looking good for you April 3rd court date. We have been receiving social reports about a week before the court date so hopefully next week we will receive your social report for the boys and you will have lots of new pictures to look at. J
Right now we continue to see families travel about 5 weeks after court approval. It’s been taking about 2 weeks to receive the birth certificate and about 3 weeks to travel. After court approval the court decree and birth certificate are being issued and received, there is a final medical exam of the children at the Embassy, Embassy appointment is set, and the passports are obtained.
Although we are still currently seeing 5 weeks from court approval to travel there is the possibility this timeline could change with new TB testing requirement that the U.S. Embassy will be putting into effect. We just recently learned of this new requirement and at this time we do not know if or how this will affect your case. The TB testing will be a requirement for the final medical exam for the embassy appointment, and can only be done by the panel pediatrician, IOM clinic. We have not been advised how this will all play out yet. We expect to have a bit more clarity over how this is going to be completed over the next couple of weeks or so...we just need to see how the embassy is going to implement this and then we will hopefully be able to better answer questions. We know that the Embassy doesn’t want children to wait any longer then they have to so hopefully the process will have a minimal affect on timing.
Also, we have learned that the Embassy is now going to assign agencies two dates a month to process children through for visas. However, the Embassy has stated if agencies need more then two days a month to process children through they will add additional dates when needed. So at this time, we do not believe this change will affect the process or timeline.