Next week we have our final meeting with the Citizenship and Immigration Services. Claire will finally be recognized as a U.S. citizen on December 3rd.
CIS used to be called INS, but after congress realized how ineffective they were, they moved departments around and changed their name. Dealing with the INS/CIS has been the least rewarding of the experience we've had adopting.
When you adopt internationally, you have to submit three forms to them: the Can-I-adopt? form, the Can-my-child-to-come-to-the-US? form, and the Can-you-make-my-child-a-citizen? form. Each of these forms cost hundreds of dollars to submit and each form can take up to a year or more to be accepted. They were so backlogged a few years ago that it was nearly impossible to contact them to get the status of any pending forms. They simply wouldn't respond to their voicemail support number. In our case, we started the INS paperwork for Katie in 1997. It took until 2001 before INS made her a U.S. Citizen.
In 2000, Congress passed the Child Citizen Act, which said (and I'm paraphrasing) "This is silly. When a parent submits the Can-my-child-to-come-to-the-US?, make the child a U.S. citizen at the same time." This law was so common sense, that it had 42 co-sponsors in Congress and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
In response the INS, months later, simply renumbered the third form. The content of the form was barely altered and the form still takes months for approval. The end effect was that the bureaucratic process wasn't streamlined at all. Even though the law says she is U.S. citizen, the INS issued Claire a green card. So here we wait, months after she was allowed in the country, before she gets her Certificate of Citizenship.
Well pigs will soon be flying. Starting next year (that's 4 years after the law was passed), CIS will make internationally adopted children U.S. citizens without having to submit, pay, and wait for the last form. It will still take a couple of months to receive the certificate and it only applies to two-thirds the children that meet a special category.
Too late for us, but its a good move.
Remember back in January when Bush went out of his way to oppose affirmative action at the University of Michigan?
No we know why.
(In the interest of full disclosure: My alma mater, Ohio State, lost to the University of Michigan this past weekend.)
If there is any justice in the world, some day ...
Kelly Jo was robbed.
And, no, I am not proud that I got sucked up into this bromidic series.
Marissa reported this past week: "Boys have to remove their hats when they say the Pledge, but girls don't have to remove their ponytails."
She doesn't miss a thing.
Dennis, a single guy I know, is looking for a girlfriend. He seems to be going out of his way to meet lots of people all across the country. To be frank, he looks pretty desparate for attention, but if anyone you out there know a nice middle-aged women who likes to travel send them here.
There was a study that found adoptive parents are less likely to abuse their children than biological parents. I believe that because adoption is quite a deliberate process. No one adopts by accident. While I don't know the exact numbers, I also assume there isn't much difference.
But unlike biological parents, when a person wants to adopt they have to be qualified by the state to be parents. This is a good thing for the child, but I still get a little annoyed that I had to prove something that unmarried teenagers who get pregnant in the back of car on prom night do not have to do.
Because of a recent law, my wife and I had to take a state mandated parenting class when adopting our second daughter. Ironically this meant having to have grandma babysit our first daughter while someone told us how to care for a child. We also had to take a course at the local hospital and wash a babydoll. Believe me, it is nothing like what I do now: bathe three live, squirming girls at the same time. I also had to be fingerprinted by the FBI and had a log of the fire drills in my house. I had to put a chain escape ladder in the bedroom closet. Prospective biological parents have to do these things too, right?
Even in the general public, I encounter a subtle assumption that adoptive parents are a little less qualified. One of my wife's relatives once asked "don't lots of adoptive parents want to give their child back?" And this was from an intelligent, educated woman.
A few years ago on my local public radio station there was a new story: "Two kids conspire to kill their adoptive parents" but story had nothing to do with the fact the kids were adopted. The adjective chosen just as well could have been "conspire to kill their brown-haired parents."
This past week there was a story out of New Jersey about Raymond and Vanessa Jackson. The parents of 12 kids had depravely starved four of their boys. Aged 9 to 19, the boys all were under 50 pounds while their three daughters were well fed. (Their other five children are adults.) What most journalists imply when reporting this story, is that the four were starved because they happened to be adopted. There is scant mention that three well-fed girls aren't biological either. It was purely a gender thing with the parents. The girls went to public school while the boys were home-schooled and shielded from public view. The girls played in the backyard blow-up pool. The starved boys resorted to eating the house's drywall.
What is especially horrifying is that the New Jersey Divison of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) regularly visited the house over the past few years didn't notice that the house was dirty and didn't have any food or electricity.
Thankfully DYFS is going through a house-cleaning themselves because of this. Unfortunately because of these sad stories, I'm sure there will be another law or two passed in New Jersey to that only applies to adoptive parents. Perhaps another required parenting course in the food pyramid?
I want the congressional branch of my government to create laws. Hopefully not too many and not too few. I want these laws to be created after due deliberation and with its citizens and the constitution in mind. This, being an imperfect world, does not always happen.
I want the judical branch of my government to dispassionately enforce laws. I want these laws to be enforced uniformly and without involving a politcal agenda. This, being an imperfect world, does not always happen either.
The Department of Justice has created a government www.lifeandliberty.gov website to defend the Patriot Act. Although it does have a single link to the text of the Patriot Act (want to read a 132-page PDF file?), the majority of website attacks opponents of the law. It contains blatantly politcal speeches (given at political events), blatant attacks on the ACLU (their views are "myths"), and blatantly politcal editorial quotes from the media (opponents want a "Zacarias Moussaoui Protection Act").
The website has nothing on how it is enforcing the act; it is just a political website. This one is not paid for by any political organization but rather U.S. taxpayers.
Ironically at the top of the website is a paragraph from the Declaration of Independence. Well half a paragraph. The rest of the Declaration was to point out that there should be limits to government powers and its citizens should have basic freedoms. I doubt its author, Thomas Jefferson, would have supported the Patriot Act in any form.
The Kindergarten teacher suggested we take our children along with us when we vote today. Boy am I glad they weren't in the car this morning with me.
This morning I woke up a few minutes early so I could vote before going to work. I went to usual voting location, Hilliard Crossing Elementary, looking for the precinct 10-E table. There was no 10-E table. The kind poll worker said 10-E was at a different polling location: Darby Creek Elementary. So I get in my car and while in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I call my wife to tell me where the other school is.
She kindly gives me address, on Main St, and I drive around for twenty minutes trying to find the place. Darby Creek is no where to be found. Incredulous that one could actually LOSE an elementary school, I call my wife on my cell phone to inquire where it is? She calls the school itself and calls me back and tells me to head down Alton-Darby Rd. Evidently the earlier address was just the mailing address.
I drive down Alton-Darby Rd from its north terminus and I see only Alton Darby Elementary. My hometown is growing like crazy and there are schools popping up like crazy, but I cannot find the one I am looking for. I call my wife at home one more time to get the phone number of Darby Creek Elementary so I can call them myself and get explicit directions.
I call the school office and although the secretary doesn't know North from South, I do get directions from Alton-Darby Rd to Pinefield Dr, where the school is. It is nestled within a subdivision and is not easy to find from the major roads. I enter the Darby Creek gynasium and go the precinct 10-E table. I give them my name and, um, it seems I don't exist. Oh dear. The elderly poll worker does know another person, outside the city, with the name Ken Huffman, but just not me. I go over to the colored map to see what precinct I should be in: 10-P (not 10-E). Which, after some consultation, is my original polling place.
On the way back to Hilliard Crossing, I drive by my house. Because I have driving around awhile, my girls are now waiting at the bus stop and I offer to take them voting before dropping them at school. But my wife reports that there is not enough time for that. So I head off alone to my polling place again.
As I park my car and head into the correct school, a local talk radio reporter (WTVN AM) sticks a microphone in my face and asks me, in light of the low voter turnover, why I am voting today.
Um, good question. The thrill of the chase?