A partial, informal, and very rough transcript of the
Ethiopian Adoptions Stakeholders Conference Call
Briefing on Joint USCIS/State Adoption Site Visit to Ethiopia
Hosted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on April 6, 2011
Speaker panel included:
Whitney, USCIS International Operations Division
Joanna, Division Chief, USCIS International Operations Division
Laura Cox, USCIS Field Operations Division
John Wilcox, State Department – Liaison Officer Visa Services Office
Ambassador Susan Jacobs, Department of State - Special Advisor for Children’s Issues
Jill Larson, Branch Chief from Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs
Sonja, Nairobi Field Office
Abby Russ, Addis Ababa Office
Allison Dillar, Addis Ababa Office
Slide deck to accompany call.
Empty brackets [ ] indicate garbled word or phrase. Bracketed [words] have been inserted for clarity. Ellipses . . . indicate omitted word, phrase or extended discussion. Please listen to the call for complete, accurate information and context.
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JOANNA: . . . Thank you all for coming and joining us too. We welcome this opportunity to share this information. We think that this meeting will provide you with important information, and we just see this as a starting point, as a springboard for more dialogue and more cooperation with you going forward . . . the folks here have done a lot of deep thinking, and we view this opportunity to talk with you all as an opportunity to give us feedback on that deep thinking, to validate it if it’s on track or to blow it out of the water if it’s not on track, to give us really good, helpful feedback.
We support inter-country adoption as an important and meaningful tool to [protect] vulnerable individuals. We see immigration in the inter-country adoption context not only as important for family unification, which is always an important immigration tool and purpose, but in countries like Ethiopia, also important for protection of vulnerable children. We in the State Department have worked intensely and cooperatively on the review of the Ethiopian adoption program, and as I said we welcome the opportunity to have your thinking today and to share our thinking with you and get your feedback.
Programs like the Ethiopian adoption program exist and succeed based on the efforts of all of us, and we need to work as conscientiously and carefully and collaboratively as we can in our efforts to serve the families and children involved in these cases. So it is in the spirit of cooperation that we are here with you today, that we are presenting this briefing. We hope that you will find it useful and important. I don’t, I know I don’t need to say this because I’m sure you will, but we hope that you will give us your thoughts, good and bad, we want to hear them, and we welcome them. Thank you very much . . .
SUSAN: I see this as a continuation of the meeting that we had in January where we got together to talk about Ethiopia and figure out a way together that we can do adoptions better. Because we support inter-country adoption, we need to make sure that get it right in Ethiopia, and this is a chance to have a dialogue to discuss this really important issue, hear everyone’s views, and agree on a way forward that will keep adoption open and done in an honest, ethical, transparent fashion.
[A team including Ambassador Donald Booth and Abby Ross] met with the State Secretary in Addis last week to talk about adoption and assistance issues. I know that you all are very concerned about how many cases are going to be processed in Ethiopia moving forward.
What we learned last week is that the cases in the pipeline, and I’m not sure how many there are, these are cases that were presented to the court before March 8, will be processed expeditiously, and that means probably at the same rate that they had been doing before, which is somewhere between 40 and 50 cases a day. Any cases presented after that date are going to receive a lot more scrutiny, they are going to be looking more carefully at the cases.
This is because we, and every other country and NGOs working in Ethiopia have told them they’re doing a sloppy job. But, to help them improve, we, the Swedes, and other countries have offered technical assistance and support for training so they can have an infrastructure and capacity to do adoptions at a reasonable rate. We don’t want children to languish in institutions, but at the same time we want adoptions to be honest and transparent. So we are willing to offer the assistance, we, the international community working with the Ethiopians, are willing to work with them to help them have a regime that will accomplish all of those goals.
The [Ethiopia] State Secretary told the Ambassador that they would put together a plan that we can look at and figure out which parts we can fund, and which parts other countries can fund. And with that I think that we will be able to move forward in a really good way with the Ethiopian government. And I have to say I’m happy that they finally recognized that there were some deficiencies in their system and that they need to strengthen the child protection system in the country, and we want to work with them to that end.
ABBY: The only thing that I would add is that the other part of our conversation also focused on not just the adoption process, but on child welfare support more broadly. So we are looking to not only support the government of Ethiopia in the scrutiny and processing of adoption cases, but also in finding better ways to assist the approximately 5 million vulnerable children in Ethiopia through other programs like foster care, and family care, and school feedings. The government is very interested in expanding their programs to support children in a very broad way, and that is something of course that we are 100% behind them on.
SUSAN: The other thing that I want to say only pertains to the State Department, because USCIS is fully fee-funded. As you all know, there is a threat of a government shutdown that will start at 12:01 Saturday morning. If that happens, it will not be business as usual at the Department of State. We will only have a skeleton staff in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. We will not be answering the phone very quickly, we will not be responding to emails, and we will actually not be doing much of anything. We also will not be being paid.
The government has a rule that if they’re not going to pay you, you can’t work for them. So I hope that you will all bear with us if this does come to pass, and I hope that it doesn’t, we will not be able to answer your inquiries or deal with any pressing matters, but we will, as soon as we get back to work, try to answer all of the mail, all the emails, and all of the phone calls. I apologize for this, but I can honestly say, this is not our fault. We don’t want it and we hope that it will be averted, but should it happen we will get back to you as soon as we can. So, thank you very much.
LAURA: The purpose of the [joint USCIS and Department of State site visit in January] was to review the Ethiopian adoption program in light of the growing concerns about its operations and oversight.
The summary of our findings is that generally, children being adopted from Ethiopia by U.S. parents do meet the definition of orphan under U.S. law, and the cases are approved, the children are able to come home. U.S. adoption processing in Ethiopia can benefit from the implementation of a pre-approval process that enables . . . the screening of cases before parents have completed the legal adoption process in Ethiopia. Do I need to delve into what a pre-approval process is? In a pre-approval process, the parents would submit evidence to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for us to evaluate the child’s [ ] and the child’s background before they delve into the adoption process, and it will help ensure transparency and [that the] the child’s as well as the parents’ best interests are preserved.
Various areas of concerns identified during the site visits suggest that there may be inappropriate activity in terms of how the children are identified as available for adoption. The pre-approval process would help catch this on the front end, before it’s a legal obligation and the parents are bonded.
Taking an analytical approach. Observations and concerns raised by the international community and the Embassy led to the site visit. Procedural observations and case file reviews during the visit led to procedural guidance that will improve case processing. Analysis of case information collected at the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa will lead to targeted inquiries [of files] for issues of concerns.
JOHN: Let’s just have a quick review of . . . adoption processing in Ethiopia, at least as it happens now. So this isn’t a model based on the pre-approval process that we were just hearing about. There are two columns on the slides, on the left is the government of Ethiopia steps that are taken, and on the right are the steps that US [agencies] are taking. . . .
LAURA: The reason that we included this slide in the presentation is to illustrate the . . . disconnect . . . in what is happening in the Ethiopian process versus the U.S. process. If we catch the case at the very beginning, at the point that we’re making the suitability and eligibility determination, in the absence of a child, just in general this family is qualified to adopt, that results in a match, the entire Ethiopian process unfolds, before the USCIS or actually the Embassy will review the case again, and at that point, the status of the adoption, the parents are legally responsible for that child under Ethiopian law, and so there’s an enormous amount of pressure behind the case when it arrives at the Embassy, to move it forward. Everybody feels like they’re within one yard of the finish line, everybody who has worked on the case. When the Embassy staff sees anything that they might want to question, it’s a very difficult moment. We believe that pre-approval would allow U.S. government eyes on the case at a moment [ ] both processes that would enable us to call out something that is of concern and work through that before the commitments are. We think that’s in the best interests not only of the children but also of the families who are adopting.
JOHN: We have identified certain vulnerabilities in this process, and this slide, we’re starting at the bottom and we’re working upwards in terms of time here, so that’s how this chart works. Starting at the bottom here, at the initial outset, in the process where the child is identified as an orphan, either a relinquishment or an abandonment, there are certain issues that we’ve identified that could be an issue.
First of all, there is relatively limited evidence, or record keeping, about abandonments. Some of that is pretty straight forward enough to understand and deal with [ ] but obviously the cases that are abandonments we know very little about how that abandonment took place, and why and when and who. There has been certain anecdotal evidence that ASPs are actually soliciting children [and then documenting these cases as abandonments], and other evidence that local officials and orphanages are actually working together to identify and place children. At one of our site visits that we made back in January [ ] revealed there was a Ministry of Women’s, Children’s, and Youth Affairs employee actually working at the orphanage.
There is a lack of, there are no death records . . . and a lot of the biological parents . . . are whereabouts unknown, or identities unknown, which cuts off a lot of inquiry. At the orphanage and matching stage, we found that orphanages do not have particularly great intake records. Some do, but some don’t, it’s kind of all over the map. There’s also some consensus that is provided that [some ASPs?] may pay orphanages on a per capita basis.
There’s no oversight or independent body looking at the relationship between ASPs and orphanages when it comes to social programs. There’s nobody controlling how that’s taking place . . . so the potential exists for a quid pro quo, and we have some anecdotal evidence that orphanages have at times entered into [coercive contracts], for an example of one, while we were in Addis, a contract stated that a birth mother had to pay a penalty to the orphanage to get a child back [ ] If the child moved into the transition home, we have seen a lack of due diligence on the part of the agency, about the true facts of the child’s availability [ ] the circumstances of the child’s past, of how they got to the orphanage, of who was relinquishing [ ] et cetera, et cetera.
A lot of the case file is not really complete, not consistent at times, and there’s a certain amount of due diligence that has got to take place that we found to be lacking. Similarly, the court documentation about the abandonment or relinquishment were inconsistent with the actual records of the case file. The Court of First Instance Decree said [ ] ended up being inconsistent with the other evidence available. [ ] Not that we necessarily want them to upset the Decree. As Laura would say, at the end of the day, we do think that these children are orphans, but how the case has been documented to that point has been fraught with vulnerability.
So at the end of the day, we are left thinking, after the case has already been approved for adoption in court, well, is this materially consistent with what we are seeing in the case file, something that should lead this petition to be returned, or should we somehow go through trying to rectify these documents or establish the true facts upon where we can feel comfortable with the case going forward.
Those are the kind of dilemmas that Abby and her team have been facing at the Embassy. The Embassy often can’t distinguish between careless errors and other issues that may point to an issue that speaks to a child’s claim to orphan status protection, or potential fraud or misrepresentation. Potential, I would say. How does Abby know the difference, when she is looking at the case file? Where there is inaccuracy or inconsistency, is that simply bureaucratic errors, or does it point to something deeper in the case, which speaks to the child’s claim to orphan status, that needs a thorough investigation? We do feel that if some due diligence is done on the front end, then we can alleviate some of these problems on the back end. Obviously a pre-approval process would help, but there’s other things that can be done [ ].
Procedural guidance that we developed. We did agree that a pre-approval process is going to allow us to be able to screen these cases a lot more effectively, at a point in the sequence that we have an opportunity to fix things before they get broken. Additionally, we do feel that the system itself in Ethiopia lends itself to a pre-approval process. Not all programs in the world have, lend themselves to pre-approval. It might be that the critical documents that we need to be able to obtain in order to be able to do an I-604 are not available before the case goes to court. Ethiopia is not an example of that. We do feel that it is procedurally possible to and it’s desirable and would allow us to identify the potentially [ ] issues before a case goes to court, [before it results in a final adoption].
Now, the Embassy in Addis has been given certain guidance [ ] to help process some of these cases with some of these flaws and factual inaccuracies. Any case where there is a material inconsistency [ ], something that speaks to the heart of that child’s claim to orphan status, the Embassy in Addis is going to be transferring those cases to the field office in Nairobi. One thing we did find while we were in Addis was that Abby’s staff [ ] doing their job, of trying to get cases completed and adjudicated and closed, which is laudable, but it’s a kind of a boutique service, a value-added service, that is not sustainable given the increased volume of the program.
So, if we are going to be able to build a robust model that is scalable enough to deal with the demand, then more of these cases need to be referred to Nairobi that are really truly [ ] in a [ ] technical sense. The Embassy will also ensure that privacy act waivers are on file because the petition creates a relationship between the petitioner and not the adoption service provider, so we want to make sure that if information is being communicated to the agency, that a privacy act waiver [ ]. What we’re also going to be doing is placing a little bit more of the burden of doing the due diligence back to the agency and the adoptive parents, to make sure that the cases are complete and accurate at the time that they are filed, and that cases that are not accurate upon filing will simply be rejected [ ].
JILL: We are going to go into a little bit of case analysis on the findings that we have gathered, that the Embassy folks in Addis have gathered over the last, quite a while, 21 months. But I first want to put up a disclaimer on our approach to this. We first wanted to look at, first of all the case information is not done by a statistician, so what you’re seeing here is a rough, a rough review, initial review of the [information]. We just want to caveat that, but we wanted to get the information out to you guys early though, and use this as a baseline for discussion of what we see is going on in Ethiopia, and see if you guys agree, if this is what you’re seeing as going on as well, and then we can discuss outliers [ ]. . . .
The information is case information from 4,000 cases collected over the past 21 months by our Embassy in Addis. It includes information about adoption service providers, orphanages, the child’s date of birth, the interview date, and if the child is relinquished or abandoned , and who relinquished the child. So, with this type of information we can start seeing some patterns. If the Embassy is starting to see a pattern of places where children are abandoned, or that there’s a relinquishment, things like that, who’s relinquishing, that sort of thing, and see the breakdown in the next couple of slides. So we just wanted to look at trends and anomalies to sort of help us to gather, again, what we see as the baseline [ ].
The program overall is a good program. We see that there’s a lot of things to salvage still in the program, and that overall the children are still meeting the definition of an orphan, so we feel like there is still a solid baseline of cases from which to draw from for the inter-country adoption program. We thought that was a very positive aspect of this program. And again, we looked at a lot of these [ ] statistical analysis or rough statistical analysis anyway to just get a baseline from which to draw [ ].
Next slide. And this is just sort of our baseline, this is rough numbers by adoption service providers. These are the top adoption service providers operating in Ethiopia. That’s all of them? Perfect. So you can see, this is just based on the sheer number of cases that were done the last few months. . . .
WHITNEY: We’re now on slide number 14. We’re going to dive a little bit into the analytical framework that we’ve applied to these 4,000 cases, and what it’s teaching us. One thing I did want to note about the previous slide, the ASP slide. One of the things that we learned, just kind of a side reference, is that 90% of the caseload in this 4,000 was processed by agencies that are Hague-accredited. [ ]
The focus of the analysis, as [ ] told you, we have a fairly significant body of case information that we have been looking at, and it reaches back 21 months, so almost two years. And we think we can do meaningful analysis because most of the cases are approvable. Even the cases that present problems initially, we are able to work through, the Embassy staff is able to work through the problems with the ASPs and the cases are approved. And this tells us, we believe, that we can rely on this, this core of case load, to some extent, to give us these baselines, to create a sense of what is normal, so that then we can see what is not normal. And the way you do that is extracting subsets from the case, and seeing when you take this grouping of cases and compare it to the overall baseline, is it different, and if it’s different, why is it different. And I’m going to go into that in some more detail.
So what we did was we started grouping the cases. We would group them by the ASP that was handling them, we would group them by the orphanage that they came from, we might group them by whether the abandonment was by a brother, or an uncle, or a grandmother. We would create a grouping based on one unifying characteristic and then have a look at how that compares. Some of the things that struck us is areas where we might focus and try to identify anomalies in groups of cases were the unusual age distributions of the children in a specific group. And I ask you to bear in mind when you consider this data is that the ages we’re talking about are the ages of the children at the time of interview. So when we’re talking about under one at the time of interview, you can think about when that child would have been brought to the attention of the adoption processing system, because there’s a number of months that go into processing the case. So that child would have been presented very soon after birth, the under-ones, and just apply that across the board. The children five and over, at the day of their interview at the Embassy they were five and over, so you know what that age can mean.
Another one that we looked for was larger than usual numbers of abandonments in a cluster of cases, and why would that be, and [ ] you’ll see why that was something we focused on. Or larger than usual numbers of relinquishments not by the child’s mother or father but by more distant relatives, and how does that work and why would that be happening. And the last anomaly that we were, that we’ve been focusing on or thinking about is when we [ ] caseload and there appears to be a one-to-one relationship between a certain agency and a certain orphanage, such that out of these 4,000 cases, every single one that was placed out of a certain orphanage was placed by the same agency, or very close to that. If more than 90% of the cases were placed by a single agency, that’s looking pretty much like a one-to-one relationship between the orphanage and the agency. So we can examine these kinds of issues as they pertain to specific service providers, specific orphanages, specific types of relinquishments, and then we can start, when it does [ ] it raises questions. . . .
Let’s go to the next slide which is number 15. So this slide is a pie chart, and what it shows is the overall caseload baseline for the age distribution of the children at interview. This represents all 4,000 cases. The way it breaks up, you can see that there’s a good diversity in terms of the age of the children being presented, almost a quarter of the cases are over the age of five when they’re presented. We can produce some more pie charts, like I was saying, by more subsets, by ASP, by orphanage, by type of relinquishment. There are different ways to come at it, to get information and then mull it over.
I’m going to show you some hypothetical examples, but let me show you some other baselines first, so go to the next slid, which is number 16. And this is the baseline [ ] it’s about how children come into the program. The easiest word I figured out for that is source, which I kind of hate, it makes me a little uncomfortable, but it’s faster than saying all those other words, so you might hear me saying it as we carry on. So if it’s mother, father, an abandoned child, a child relinquished by a more distant relative or a neighbor or a friend or whomever. In some cases other, we don’t really know, we know the child was relinquished by somebody, somebody apparently had custody of that child and relinquished them into the program.
So, this is the same thing. This is the baseline, this is 4,000 cases worth of how it divides up. So you take, you carve out subsets and you compare, and then you figure out what questions that leads you to.
Let’s go to the next slide, number 17. So here’s just summarizing a little bit from those two baselines, some kind of factoid extrapolations. Half of the children are over age two at the time they’re presented for interview. Children over five represent nearly a quarter of the caseload. Mothers relinquish in 45% of the cases. Almost half of the caseload are children who are relinquished by their biological mothers. We can add dads on top of that, that’s 18%. We’re almost at two-thirds of the caseload being relinquished by one parent or the other. And then we have 19% of the cases in our 4,000 involved abandonments. And then the rest are relinquishments in one form or another by a number of different, more distant relatives [ ].
What does this mean? Look at this as the norm, and then where do we go next with it? Go to the next slide, number 18. Here you have the age baseline chart again on the top, the one that’s kind of broken into kind of large pieces, and then on the bottom are two hypotheticals that I’m inviting you all to think about with us, so different distributions. This could be related to specific ASP’s caseloads, it could be related to a specific orphanage’s caseload. It doesn’t matter. The point is you take a look at hypothetical A. . . .
The thing about hypothetical A that looks striking to me, to us as we’ve tried to figure out how to work with this data, is that there is a much larger representation of children over-5 in this example than in the caseload baseline overall. So, let’s say, just for the sake of taking the reasoning further and showing you how the analytical framework works, let’s say that the picture, hypothetical A represents the caseload of a particular adoption service provider. The natural question would be why do they have a whole bunch more older kids than what is, kind of, what you’d expect, the average, the baseline? It doesn’t tell us right off the bat that it’s a bad thing. It’s just a question.
So we could go a little further. All right, well, let’s have a look. So we know what orphanages have been placing caseloads through this adoption service provider. Is there any orphanage in particular that is placing more older children? You can do levels of analysis to try to see what you can learn. And when you do that you create a list of questions and you create the ability to decide exactly where you’d like to target your inquiry. So following up on this example that I’m using, let’s say we figured out that there were two orphanages in particular who were very close together who were placing very large proportions of older children. That might be a natural reason to decide to schedule a site visit to those two orphanages to ask about that. Why is it that your caseload is older, how are they coming to you, to look into it further. At the very end of this [ ] is the notion that we have limited investigative resources that will be added, we want to use them well, and we believe that we have a basically good caseload with problems that we are trying to find and uncover and deal with. So to the extent that we can use information like this to decide where to focus our resources, we can do a better job. I hope you’re tracking with me on that whole sequence.
So let’s think about hypothetical B for a second. This one is . . . we’re still on slide 18. This one goes the other way, where three-quarters of the pie chart are children under one. The caseload in general has a fairly broad distribution of different ages of children. Why would… Let’s say this one pertains to an orphanage. Why does a particular orphanage have mostly very small babies? It may just be that that’s the way they’re structured, and that’s the caseload that they address. There may be some other reasons that we wouldn’t like so much. But maybe we should go ask. Again, it’s [ ] to ask the question. No conclusion in it, there’s a question in it.
Now we can go to the next slide, number 19. So here again is this historic baseline chart and we can see examples and anomalies in that. I wanted to talk about D first because it’s actually easier to think about. Look at the one on top, the kind of yellowish color piece of the pie, that’s the 20%, 19% abandonment caseload. You look at Hypothetical D, three-quarters of the caseload is showing as abandoned. We know that’s not the norm in Ethiopia, we know the norm is that parents relinquish, so that’s a striking difference from the baseline, and would lead you to ask why. And we’ve had some conversations with Abby and with others who work in Ethiopia and we know that in some instances there are reasons for that. There are certain agencies that receive a much higher proportion of abandoned children just by virtue of the work they do. These things don’t yield conclusions, they yield questions.
Hypothetical C is a little trickier. It’s really multi-colored, it’s kind of confusing. The thing I would draw your attention to is the light green piece, in particular. That’s uncles, relinquishing uncles. And presumably that would mean that both parents are not in the picture and that somehow an uncle ended up caring for children that he can’t care for, so he relinquished them. But 18% uncles against the norm in the caseload of 6%. I want to understand that, I’m concerned about that. It may be, someone may disagree with me, but my instincts are that more distant relative relinquishments are more vulnerable than parental relinquishments. That’s just me shooting from the hip, so I welcome you to come back at me and say you are so full of it, please do if I am, but those of us who have been thinking about this caseload have that feeling, that more distant relationships relinquishments, especially when they’re way out of proportion in a subset, is a good reason to be asking questions.
Let’s go on to slide number 20. This is a completely different thing, this isn’t pie chart stuff, this is back to the one-to-one relationship. That’s another thing that we can look at based on these 4,000 cases, and the norm in the caseload is that agencies place children from a variety of orphanages, and that orphanages place children with a variety of agencies. Overall in the caseload that is the norm.
But, we know that there were twelve orphanages, and there are a large number of orphanages placing kids in programs, and a huge number of them are placing a very small number of children, and we, you can’t really analyze that. Just three children, or four children, or nine children from an orphanage, we don’t feel like we can extrapolate anything meaningful from that. But with twenty or more, then we started looking more carefully. We found that twelve orphanages were placing all of their children with a single agency. We found that over twenty largest orphanages, which account for at the end of the day about three-quarters of the caseload, maybe a little more, eight of those appeared to have this one-to-one relationship with an ASP. And nine of our ASPs had at least one orphanage that they were drawing from where in our group of cases, they were the only agency drawing from those cases. Bear with me that this is not, there’s nothing conclusive in this, it’s just a question to ask, there’s some follow up to do. It’s a fairly common phenomenon.
So then if you go to the next layer and you see something else that you want to ask questions about, it’s a one-to-one relationship and all of the children are abandoned, then I get even more curious. In terms of deciding how we’re going to focus our investigative resources, which are limited, to try to go after the things that stick out, this is a tool for us to be able to do that. We’re not, for caseloads that fall in line with what we’re calling the baseline, we don’t think we need to focus our efforts there [ ] with this analytical framework that we’ve been developing. Go to the next slide please, 21.
JILL: I just again want to reiterate that, again, this isn’t anything, what we’ve seen here isn’t any conclusive evidence of fraud or malfeasance in the program, it’s just again a way that we are using it, as a tool to start looking, seeking out ways to focus investigative resources, to help identify fact patterns that we might want to follow up on. It helps also to give us a good line of inquiry that we might want to go down for the ASPs, or the orphanages et cetera [ ].
So we think that using this fact-based analytical approach will help us to identify anomalous fact patterns in the case load and [ ] help us make further targeted inquiries and help the government of Ethiopia uncover some, if there’s unethical practices going on [ ] uncover those at an earlier time frame and start figuring out those patterns and addressing those early on. And really to try to help [ ] and keep the process open for that good and solid core of cases that we’re seeing, we really want to make sure that those adoptions are [ ] in a positive step.
WHITNEY: The flip side of that coin, of what Jill just said, is that what, we’re trying to avoid something as well. We’re trying to avoid a blanket approach to the program that says that “the whole thing is a mess.” We’re trying to avoid that kind of blanket indictment, we’re also trying to avoid management by anecdote.
We refer to anecdotal evidence that we’re aware of in the caseload and it means something, but it’s not the kind of thing that you can extrapolate and generalize on. So, a fact-based approach, an analytical approach that is based on a lot of information we think is a much more solid way to try to evaluate what is happening in the program. We’re all aware of the horror stories, of cases that have gone wrong, or bad things that have happened. They keep me up at night too, they keep everybody up at night. But they are what they are, they’re individual horror stories.
I think it’s really important to keep the perspective that there are so many cases out there where the stories are wonderful, I know lots of those too [ ]. So we think that this kind of analysis, this kind of approach, gives us a different way to come at trying to deal with concerns that nobody for a second thinks aren’t real, I think everybody in this room, everybody on the phone would agree that there’s stuff we need to be worried about in this program, but it’s not just an overall statement that the whole program is a mess, we’re trying to be way more nuanced than that and to really figure out what are the problems, how can we get at them, and how can we fix them. Back to what Jill said, so that we can preserve what’s good. That’s our goal.
JILL: Another reiteration of everything we’ve covered already. That, again, we wanted to emphasize that State and USCIS believe that [ ] the continuation of the program in Ethiopia, when it’s done in a clearer [ ] ethical manner. And I think we are wanting, again, to [ ] baseline information and start looking at more of those fact patterns that are concerning and trying to, again, identify problems early on but not as Whitney said use a blanket approach to everything . . . Again, we also want to get the ASPs and prospective adoptive parents to become more responsible [ ]. Right now, we’re seeing that many ASPs are doing their due diligence, but we’re seeing some that aren’t, and that aren’t necessarily following up with their local [ ] reps. I think that this is an opportunity to start the conversation with those people who are adoption service providers on the phone [ ] start looking at what your local reps are doing. Maybe going and visiting the orphanages that you’re working with, that sort of thing, and helping communicate that information to your adoptive parents as well . . .
[ ? ] We will continue to keep refining the data that we’re looking at . . . 21 months worth of cases, 4,000 cases, is a good core to look at, but we will not stop there. We know that patterns will change over time and we will continue to look at them and analyze [ ].
[ ? ] So that’s the end of what we have to show you, a presentation of how we’re trying to think about this and the approach we’re taking, coming out of the site visit. So we put some procedural changes in place, we’re hoping to put the preapproval system in place in the near term, other procedural stuff that we think will help and at the same time we’re going to continue with this analytical approach trying to distinguish between problem and not-problem and take care of what is good.
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[open for questions and comments]
[Comment from Diane] At [the January] meeting, Susan [ ] UNICEF representative made the statement “Ethiopian inter-country adoptions are broken.” I hear today a refutation of that statement. What I am hearing is that the data analysis . . . indicates that the great majority of cases are good cases. That being the case, and please correct me if I’m wrong . . . how is the United States government communicating its findings to the Ethiopian government, to UNICEF, which is doing many outreach programs in Ethiopia, and to the rest of the international community?
Response from panel: I don’t think they said the adoption process is broken, I think they said the child protection system in Ethiopia is broken.
[Diane] Well, I didn’t hear that. And I would argue that the child protection system in Ethiopia is broken. There are too many children on the street, there are too many children in institutions. And I think that’s a real problem. I think we have a way to get adoptions right, and the international community has a way to work with Ethiopia to get the child protection system right.
. . .
SUSAN [in response to comment] In the final analysis, most of these children are adoptable under U.S. law. That’s the U.S. adoption. I have no idea what the Italians or the French or the Spanish or anybody else that adopts from Ethiopia, how they’re getting their children, and how they are working with their adoption service providers and orphanages. We’re saying that there are problems, and it is the Embassy that has taken the trouble to work through all these cases to get to the facts of the case, because the information that is initially presented to the Embassy is a mess, and it has been Abby and her group that have worked to straighten out all these procedures and misrepresentations that they find in the applications to make sure that these adoptions can go forward.
This is ABBY from Addis, can I just jump in quickly? I just wanted to add again to what Dr. Jacobs was saying, that while we wouldn’t say that the adoption system is broken here, it is very flawed. . . . We have concerns about the due diligence that the government of Ethiopia is doing and the due diligence that the adoption service provider is doing, and that’s why we’re doing all this extra work on our own. What we do when we find an anomaly or a concern or we hear a report from the adoptive parent or from one of our investigations about some kind of improper practice or [ ] we always report that to the government of Ethiopia. We send almost weekly or more frequently than that . . . and they use that to start their own investigations as well, so we do communicate what we think are issues of concern, and we do share with them also our feedback on ASPs and orphanages that we think are doing sufficient due diligence.
[? on panel ] The other problem is, by the time we get the case, the child is adopted. That means either the child would go on the street if we turn them down, or it gets adopted. I mean, we are in a very awkward position when the case comes to the Embassy, because then we are faced with two things that we can do, we can say no this adoption won’t go through, but those parents are responsible for that child, and if they choose not to take them . . . or we let it go through. So we in a way are putting a stamp of approval on what might be a flawed process only because it is probably in the best interests of the child. It is very important for the adoption service providers and for the orphanages to keep better records, it behooves the government of Ethiopia to have records. They have very few birth records, they have very few death records, they don’t have marriage certificates, so this is something that we are trying to work with them, to strengthen their system so that we have greater faith in what is presented to us when a case comes to the Embassy.
ALLISON: I think the whole purpose of today is how we don’t want that to be as Whitney said a blanket approach. We do see the anomalies, we see the red flags out there, and so we’re going to need to investigate them. So we want to do that in a targeted manner, so that folks who are practicing within the norms don’t get held up, especially with the government now taking closer scrutiny . . . so if that process is going to slow down, we want to make sure that we are doing everything on our end to target the right fact patterns. . . . we see the red flags, we see the anomalies, and we’re going to need to investigate those.
WHITNEY: There’s no one in this room who disagrees with that. Every adoption needs to be held to the highest of standards. Every one should be looked at as a child, whose paperwork should be looked at properly, exhaustively, and honestly. That’s all we ask.
WHITNEY [in response to question about use of term “anecdotal”] When we talk about anecdotal, we mean an incident of, as opposed to a trend of. . . . Not hearsay, evidence that we actually have about one case, or two cases.
[Representative from World Horizons] We feel that we are stuck with this burden that is being placed on ASPs to do the due diligence. We are committed to doing as much due diligence as we can, we do do it on our cases, but it seems that there is a lot of unclarity around what is it that the Ethiopian government wants, especially regarding the orphanage ASP relationship. It is our understanding that we are not allowed in the orphanages, we are not allowed to work exclusively with one orphanage, that support cannot be on a per child basis, but yet there’s clearly a differing role that different agencies have. The pros to that is that we respect the Ethiopian government, what we consider to be the regulations that they have dictated to us. On the other hand, we end up having to stop working with orphanages because we find out that they’re not caring for the children, they’re not using our support fund appropriately. Our only recourse is to reject the cases or stop working with that orphanage to try to build a relationship with another one, and keep enough different orphanages that we’re not working with one, so it spreads out our resources. In the days when they didn’t force the kids to stay in the orphanages so long and they could be in our transition homes, we had a lot of liability as an agency to care for these kids ourselves, who weren’t legally ours, but at least we could manage it. We could hire the staff, we could train then, we could get them to the hospital when they were sick. So that’s one big disparity that’s tough. To do the background investigation ourselves and try to manage the care of these kids in orphanages that we can’t even get into really, according to the Ethiopian government. So we’re struggling with that. . . .
WHITNEY [responding to questions from Tom with JCICS] I think we have a joint position, USCIS and the Department of State. . . . I think the fundamentals are that from the site visit, we believe that the program has a solid core of caseload in it that is good. To go back to what Diane [ ] was asking, we didn’t find that the program is broken, that was not our finding.
We found that the program is a good one, with problems, serious problems, that we can’t just not look at. They need to be pursued, and aggressively pursued. We as a government support inter-country adoption. American citizens want to do it. We think it’s a fine thing to do, fine in the good and kind sense. To the extent that we are practicers of immigration benefits, we’re trying to enable that within our framework.
So what is our position on Ethiopian adoptions? Our position is that we want to protect and preserve what is good about the program, we want to devote our energy as smartly as we possibly can to identifying, isolating and pursuing things that are of concern, to see if there’s something we can do to block it. We want to work with our community. As Joanna said in the beginning, the program exists because we all do it. We’re the immigration processors. It’s really the adoption folks that are running this program, and we want to work with you to keep it good, to keep a hold of what is right about it, and to pursue the good intention that really underpins inter-country adoption. There’s no doubt about it that it attracts other things that we would rather not have to deal with, but they’re there, and we have to deal with them, so we can work together. Is that a position statement?
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[? from panel, in response to question] Each agency can look at the slides and see what the norms are, then they can look at their caseloads and see whether their caseloads fall within the norms or where it is outside the norms.
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WHITNEY [in response to question] It’s a tough one from our perspective . . . what we do is adjudicate individual cases. If we uncover information over the course of an investigation that leads to a finding of something wrong that causes us to deny, that we will do. But we need to have evidence . . . we don’t deny on suspicion, we don’t deny on concern. . . . We will indeed deny a case when it is presented and there is fraud in it, something that is a deniable piece of evidence, that we will do. That said, we have not denied a case for fraud, it hasn’t happened so far. It is very hard. . . . The issue that we’re concerned about is at the very beginning, how are the children being identified and brought into the process as available for adoption? . . . the data analysis that we’re doing gives us pointers, and helps us try to figure out where we should try to look harder. We genuinely believe that cases are real and good, and other cases are not. We’re trying to figure out how to get to that through the analysis that we can do. We need those of you in the community who are working with us, we need staff on the ground in Ethiopia to buy in with us, on the notion of this good think that we’re trying to do really needs to be, I guess the buzzword, transparent, ethical, honest. The what can we do about it question? We can all work harder.
SUSAN [in response to question about MOWA slowdown] This was not a decision that was forced on the Ethiopian government by the United States or anyone else. This was a decision that they made themselves after hearing about concerns about the rapid processing that was taking place without very many safeguards at all. They have one person approving cases, and I think they finally realized that this couldn’t be maintained. That is why we and others have offered them technical assistance, because we agree five cases is not a very large number of cases, but if they had additional people working on this they would be able to put the due diligence and scrutiny into the process and do more cases so that they can get children out of institutions.
ALLISON: What we’re talking about today is a way to actually make the process run more efficiently. We’re trying to go after the bad fact patterns so that cases can move forward that are able to move forward, so I would actually argue that this will help to improve the efficiency of the process. We all wish that there would be more cases being processed per day going forward, but that’s a decision of the Ethiopian government that we can’t tamper with. What we can do though is work on making sure that are moving forward can, and the cases that need investigations are being investigated on a case by case basis.
ABBY: I think we’re all saying the same thing here, which is, our goal isn’t reduce cases, our goal isn’t more cases, our goal is 100% ethical and legal cases. The government of Ethiopia realized they could not meet that goal at their current rate with their current staffing. As Dr. Jacobs and Allison said, our goal is to support them in having the capacity so that they can add the due diligence in their process, so that they, by themselves, not on the basis of any kind of pressure from any part of the international community, they on their own have determined it’s necessary to maintain the stability of the adoption program in Ethiopia.
WHITNEY [in response to a concern that baseline data may not be valid] We are operating from the premise that in a caseload of 4,000, the majority are okay. A baseline is not a precision science from our point of view. . . . We are not statisticians. We don’t really know what the accuracy counters are, plus or minus however many percent or anything. It’s a fair point, but given that we approve the cases, and we know that even those that come to us with a lot of trouble in them when we first see them, Embassy staff have been able to work with the ASP and with the Court of First Instance, sometimes they figure out that the fact pattern of the case is completely different than what has been presented in the case file, but the case is still approvable. It’s still an orphan, at the end of all of that work. 4,000 cases have been approved gives us some reassurance that there really is a solid foundation there. How accurate is it, how perfect is it, I agree with you, we don’t know, but we think it’s a reasonable baseline against which to compare smaller subsets.
SUSAN: The other thing that we understand is that the government of Ethiopia is making an effort to find out who is institutionalized in Ethiopia, and if they can complete that kind of study we can compare that information with the information that we have on adoptions and really have a better understanding of the age spread and how children came into care and a better basis for determining what the baseline is and what the norms are.
ALLISON: What struck me when I looked at it, and this is just my own personal observation on that pie chart on age spread, is that it was a good age spread. It didn’t strike me that there were overwhelming amounts of children under the age of one in the baseline norms that we saw. Maybe we’re a little off on that data, and maybe there is evidence that would support another finding, but it struck me that that was a fairly good age spread.
JOHN: One other thing that strikes me when I look at that data as well. We’ve got some 65% of cases that are relinquishments by a biological parent, which is very comforting for us because if nothing else works, we can do a DNA test to establish that pattern. So the fact that the cases are being presented as a relinquishment by a biological parent, two out of every three cases, gives us a reasonable confidence that they’re good cases, because it would be so easy to disprove.
. . .
WHITNEY [responding to question about pre-approval process] The notion of the pre-approval process would be that after the family is matched with the child, the case file would come forward with everything in it except the adoption decree, so everything you would be required to present with an I-600 petition except the adoption decree, would come forward for examination, and the purpose of that is to evaluate the match between the parent and whether or not the child meets the definition of orphan under U.S. law, before the family goes to court in the country of origin and completes the adoption. So it re-sequences the steps in orphan processing almost exactly in line with the Hague process, and we think it puts the safeguards and sequences in the right order so that people aren’t left hanging in limbo with a child they’ve legally adopted . . . but they’re not sure they can immigrate to the United States.
JOHN: . . . that’s what the I-604 investigation focuses on, that specific child’s claim to orphan status, so there has to be a specific child in question.
[transcript to be completed.... someday]
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