Passports!!!

From the day I laded in Haiti, one of the immediate goals was to obtain the boys' passports. We have been told since June that all the documents the boys needed for their visas would be "embassy ready" when we received passports, and we thought it would be completely possible to have the boys home inside of September. That's why I came to Haiti.

In order to get passports, a file must have MOI (Ministry of Interior) approval. We entered MOI in March. We were told that we received MOI approval on April 21, but that several documents had to be fixed and go back through MOI. We were told that we received MOI approval again on August 2 and were submitted for passports on August 5. On the afternoon of August 5, I was told by the director of our orphanage, that we would have passports on August 7. Day after day we waited and heard one thing after another for why our passports were not available yet. Initially, we were told that we wouldn’t be able to get our files from MOI until Parker’s birth certificate extract was received and approved. We were aware that Parker’s birth certificate was not registered at Archives after his birth. What we were not aware of is that he didn’t have an original birth certificate. Even though Parker has lived at the orphanage for just over two years, his birth certificate wasn’t addressed until after he was legally our son. Something called a Judgment had to be obtained. It would essentially replace the original missing birth certificate. It had to be obtained, and recorded at Archives. Then an extract for his Judgment/replacement birth certificate had to be procured. The extract then had to be certified by three government offices before it could be submitted to MOI to release their files and allow for passports to be printed. We were told that we had an extract in September, but that it had not yet been signed. While we waited for three weeks for the signature, we were told that MOI and the passport office had agreed to start processing our passports so that they would be available as soon as we had the certified extract. We were told October 18 that we had passports but that they were mixed up with non-adoption passports and that they all needed to be sorted out and that the lawyer would bring us the passports the following Monday. After a week of waiting and continually being told that our file would be embassy ready as soon as the passports were received, I decided to call a lawyer. This was all sounding far too fishy to be true.

I notified my agency and my lawyer and I took our trip to MOI on October 29^th.  I spent the day trying to get more information on what is really happening with my adoptions. I went to IBESR and couldn’t get any verification that V’s file has been submitted. I couldn’t get any information on my own file and whether or not we have been approved.  And I left more frustrated than when I entered. The next stop was MOI, The Ministry of Interior. I looked through every weekly docket of every month for 2013. I was expecting to see proof that I exited MOI with approval on April 21 as we had previously been told we did. There was nothing that indicated that we had gotten approval that day. I continued to look through the logs and found nothing that indicated that we had gotten approval again on August 2 as we had been told we had. I looked through every single log until I got to the very last monthly file folder and the very last weekly log and I found my boys names listed for MOI approval on October 10, 2013.  I asked for a copy of the docket and was given a photocopy to show my agency, and orphanage director. This proof indicated that all of my documents would have been released from MOI on October 10, 2013. This was the docket that would have been submitted to immigration for our passports. There is no way that our passports were being worked on in the time frame leading up to this, because this docket is what gives Immigration the permission to print passports. Despite being told that MOI was “holding documents” until they received a certified extract, this was proof of the contrary. They release the whole file when it receives MOI approval.

I then contacted a friend who has connections at the passport office and found out that one of my son’s passports was printed and ready to be picked up. The other son’s passport was not logged into the system. This was perplexing at best and I was anxious to speak with the lawyer and the director of the orphanage to gain an understanding of why/how this has happened. When I got back to the orphanage that day I did not see the director, so I waited with my documented proof of our MOI exit and hoped that I could get some answers that day. I waited approximately five minutes, and the lawyer for the orphanage walked into the office. In his hands were two little blue books. I looked up and asked him, expecting him to smile and say, “no”, if they were ours, and he smiled and reached his hand out toward me and handed them to me. I opened them and saw two of the most beautiful pieces of evidence that my children are ready to come home. They were two blue little books of wonderful, their passports. Everything inside of me was happy and as I walked toward the back of the orphanage to share our news, I grabbed V who ran to me with open arms and a smile on her face and showed all the nannies the passports and received an overwhelming, “mesi jezi” (thank you Jesus) and lots of smiles. I then headed into the back yard of the orphanage to find my boys and prove to them that what I’ve said since I got here is the truth – I AM HERE TO TAKE THEM HOME!!! The nannies in the back shared their happiness and excitement and make proclamations of how “patient” I am and how they are happy that Djedly and Parker will be going home!!!

I have no idea why Djedly’s file was never logged at Immigration. All that mattered in that moment was that I had those blue books in my possession and I was not going to give them back. We expected that the orphanage would need a day or so to organize the documents and that we would be submitting to the embassy shortly.  We found out that many original documents are missing, and no one wants to take responsibility for it.

If I had known in those moments that the lawyer supposedly has so many critical documents that were supposed to be in the boys’ files and embassy ready, I never would have let him out of my sight. By the time I returned to the office, he was gone. I haven’t seen him at the orphanage since that day.  Before we knew that this was not the happy day that it should have been, it was the happiest day we have had in a long time. We are very thankful for these little blue books. We just hope that the boys don’t continue to sit in Haiti like so many of our friends children who have had passports for months, because their files are also lacking the finished products that the embassy requires for visas. There is no reason our children should remain in Haiti like this. It shouldn’t be like this. These blue books should be the proverbial “get out of jail” tickets and the visa should essentially be like a plane ticket.