Bad News about Slow Down of Referral's

This just in from Jackie Harrah with HFS....

Our Beijing representative has spoken with several of the directors at CCAA about theslowdown rumors. He confirms that CCAA will be slowing down the LID to Referraltimeframe in the near future. There are several reasons for this including the new, greaterresponsibilities given to CCAA, the internal restructuring of CCAA, the preference of socialwelfare institutes for finding domestic families to adopt children (it is easier for theorphanage to complete a domestic adoption since it involves only the local Civil Affairsoffice and not Beijing or a foreign country) thereby reducing the number of children whocan be adopted internationally, the greater number of dossiers being submitted to CCAAby US families and other foreign countries, the reluctance of the Chinese government toincrease the total number of adoptions yearly, and other factors.It can be expected that CCAA will continue to refer half-months' worth of dossiers untilthe time is expanded to ten to twelve months from Login to Referral. This lengthening ofthe overall process will be done gradually and will apply to all non-Waiting Child families.As far as anyone knows currently, there will be no similar slowdown for Waiting Children.

Another poster mentioned that June LID's may not get referrals until April 2006 so that could put us into getting our referral mid to late summer now. As time gets closer to our turn, we'll have to make sure our I-171H and fingerprints do not expire before our Consulate appt. Also, the longer the wait, the higher chance of the twins and our Chinese daughter/son being closer in age.