I posted a few days ago that I would soon be giving some sort of explanation about the prospective future of the China wait times. This is an extremely complicated issue that cannot possibly be explained in one post, but I found a fairly good summary on ChinaAdoptTalk (aka "Rumor Queen"). I recognize that this article can at times get very confusing for you (trust me, it's confusing even to me), but give it a shot and ask me any questions you may have - I'll try to answer them. The following synopsis is from RQ's blog.
BTW - some of the acronyms listed within the article include: CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs), LID (Log-In-Date), SN (Special Needs), NSN (Non-Special Needs), USCIS (U.S. Citizen & Immigration Services), IA (International Adoption), SWI (Social Welfare Institute-[orphanage]).
The immediate future - rumors for and against a speed up
"We all know that the CCAA told multiple agencies and countries during their tour that things will pick up after the first of the year. Specifically, they will do 15 days at a time (or take two calendar months to do a LID month, there were several variations that said the same thing).
As I’ve noted before, it appears that in order to do 15 days at a time they will need to increase the number of NSN referrals issued per month in order to make that happen.
There has been a lot of speculation on whether this will happen. People remember that the CCAA has told agencies other things in the past that didn’t turn out to be true, and so there is a good deal of mis-trust about this statement.
I’ve received a few emails from people who claim to have special knowledge. Though they are a bit cryptic about their actual source, it appears from what little they do say, that their sources are probably different from each other. And yet they all have a few things in common. The most notable being that the 15 days per month are not going to happen. Putting them all together, I believe the main points are:
The ceiling/quota next year will be even lower than this year (which is lower than last year’s ceiling/quota).
The COA (which is part of the State Department?) is frowning on agencies that are trying to be vague about the wait times for China.
Two weeks (15 days) of referrals will not happen. They may get close a few times, but do not expect it to happen on a regular basis.
The Special Needs Program is now the primary focus, and they are trying to ramp the NSN program down as quickly as possible without it becoming a media event or having an outcry about human rights issues.
What does this mean?
I don’t know. I have people with “special insider information” saying both things - that the ceiling/quota is going to be higher next year from some and that it will go down yet again from others. The supposed sources for the good news seems to be agencies and facilitators and for the not-so-good news seems to mostly be from U.S. official channels. How would our State Department or USCIS or COA know these things? I don’t know.
Also, at least two agencies seem to be basing their speed up statements on the fact that they know that the CCAA is has matched their clients pretty far out ahead of time. As I’ve said before, I’m sure that the CCAA is matching some families far ahead of time, but I don’t know that they have matched everyone ahead of time. I have some circumstantial evidence from the most recent batch that tells me that they are not matching everyone early. I don’t know anything for sure, but if I’m correct on that then at least two agencies are basing their speed up hopes on incomplete information. Just because the CCAA has matched their families pretty far in advance, it does not mean the CCAA has matched all families so far in advance.
One thing I have heard quite a bit of that seems to be in agreement from all sides: Current SN vs NSN consulate appointments seem to be more SN than NSN. Also, many agencies (not all agencies, many agencies) are reporting that they are now sending more families to China to complete a SN adoption than they are in the NSN program. I believe that at this time the SN program is bigger than the NSN program. Not in terms of dossiers, of course, but in terms of children actually being adopted each month. (As a side note, the State Department numbers should be out soon for the fiscal year just ended, it will be interesting to see what those numbers say. I wish they broke them down by program, but I guess we take what we can get at this point.)
I believe that December 2005 is about 60% the size of November 2005. I also believe that the CCAA should be able to get through December in three months (with maybe a few December LIDs included in a fourth month that would be mostly made up of January LIDs). This assumes that they continue to do about the same number of NSN referrals per calendar month as they have been doing. If they increase that number then it could be less than three months, if they reduce that number even more, then, well, I don’t want to go there.
As far as speed up rumors, let’s look at a bit of history. Over the past two years we have had at least two big events where we were SURE things were going to speed up in the next month or two. First there was the promise last summer that the CCAA didn’t want the wait to go over a year. We were certain things would speed up since we were so close to that year mark - and even when we hit the year mark there were agencies saying it wouldn’t go over 14 months, that the CCAA was working hard to keep the wait from continueing to grow. I believed them, as did many others.
Then, last fall we had the combined rumor of new SWI’s being added to the IA program in the spring plus Brian Stuy’s statement last September that we were currently at the longest wait times. And then there was the waiting dad with a December of ‘05 LID who asked the CCAA director face to face when he would get his referral and was told December. (We all thought it meant last December, none of us thought it was possible it would be the following December.)
So last fall we were all pretty much believing things would speed up, which didn’t happen. And then came January ‘07 and they put the brakes on even more.
There was also the rumor from agencies that the CCAA wasn’t going to let the wait get to the point where people would have to redo their I-171H, but the CCAA later made it pretty clear that they were not concerned about that and if we didn’t like it we should look to our government to change, not to them to shorten the wait.
So where does this leave us now? We’ve basically been promised (again) that things are going to pick up a bit. Soon. And this time we are hearing it from the CCAA (told to multiple agencies and governments over the summer) as well as agencies continuing to get this word now from the CCAA. Some of us interpret the CCAA’s statement to governments and agencies to mean this next batch (since we are through with November) and some people interpret it to mean the batch to arrive in December (the first batch of the CCAA’s next fiscal year) and some people interpret it to mean the batch to arrive in January (since that’s the first of 2008). And many of us feel like Charlie Brown and the football - not going to fall for it again. But then, hope springs eternal, and maybe they are telling the truth this time and the football won’t be yanked away yet again.
To summarize:
We know that if things stay exactly the same then LID days per batch should increase because we know there aren’t as many people logged in during the next few months.
We’ve been promised 15 days at a time (two months to do one month, etc), which would seem to mean an increase in the number of referrals per month.
There are rumors out there that the ceiling/quota will indeed be higher next year, which means maybe they are going to pull it off.
There are also rumors that the ceiling/quota next year will be lower, which would be very very very bad.
We may know this month, or next month, but at the latest we should know by the January batch whether this rumored speed up is going to happen."
This entry was posted on ChinaAdoptTalk (aka RQ) on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007.
BTW - some of the acronyms listed within the article include: CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs), LID (Log-In-Date), SN (Special Needs), NSN (Non-Special Needs), USCIS (U.S. Citizen & Immigration Services), IA (International Adoption), SWI (Social Welfare Institute-[orphanage]).
The immediate future - rumors for and against a speed up
"We all know that the CCAA told multiple agencies and countries during their tour that things will pick up after the first of the year. Specifically, they will do 15 days at a time (or take two calendar months to do a LID month, there were several variations that said the same thing).
As I’ve noted before, it appears that in order to do 15 days at a time they will need to increase the number of NSN referrals issued per month in order to make that happen.
There has been a lot of speculation on whether this will happen. People remember that the CCAA has told agencies other things in the past that didn’t turn out to be true, and so there is a good deal of mis-trust about this statement.
I’ve received a few emails from people who claim to have special knowledge. Though they are a bit cryptic about their actual source, it appears from what little they do say, that their sources are probably different from each other. And yet they all have a few things in common. The most notable being that the 15 days per month are not going to happen. Putting them all together, I believe the main points are:
The ceiling/quota next year will be even lower than this year (which is lower than last year’s ceiling/quota).
The COA (which is part of the State Department?) is frowning on agencies that are trying to be vague about the wait times for China.
Two weeks (15 days) of referrals will not happen. They may get close a few times, but do not expect it to happen on a regular basis.
The Special Needs Program is now the primary focus, and they are trying to ramp the NSN program down as quickly as possible without it becoming a media event or having an outcry about human rights issues.
What does this mean?
I don’t know. I have people with “special insider information” saying both things - that the ceiling/quota is going to be higher next year from some and that it will go down yet again from others. The supposed sources for the good news seems to be agencies and facilitators and for the not-so-good news seems to mostly be from U.S. official channels. How would our State Department or USCIS or COA know these things? I don’t know.
Also, at least two agencies seem to be basing their speed up statements on the fact that they know that the CCAA is has matched their clients pretty far out ahead of time. As I’ve said before, I’m sure that the CCAA is matching some families far ahead of time, but I don’t know that they have matched everyone ahead of time. I have some circumstantial evidence from the most recent batch that tells me that they are not matching everyone early. I don’t know anything for sure, but if I’m correct on that then at least two agencies are basing their speed up hopes on incomplete information. Just because the CCAA has matched their families pretty far in advance, it does not mean the CCAA has matched all families so far in advance.
One thing I have heard quite a bit of that seems to be in agreement from all sides: Current SN vs NSN consulate appointments seem to be more SN than NSN. Also, many agencies (not all agencies, many agencies) are reporting that they are now sending more families to China to complete a SN adoption than they are in the NSN program. I believe that at this time the SN program is bigger than the NSN program. Not in terms of dossiers, of course, but in terms of children actually being adopted each month. (As a side note, the State Department numbers should be out soon for the fiscal year just ended, it will be interesting to see what those numbers say. I wish they broke them down by program, but I guess we take what we can get at this point.)
I believe that December 2005 is about 60% the size of November 2005. I also believe that the CCAA should be able to get through December in three months (with maybe a few December LIDs included in a fourth month that would be mostly made up of January LIDs). This assumes that they continue to do about the same number of NSN referrals per calendar month as they have been doing. If they increase that number then it could be less than three months, if they reduce that number even more, then, well, I don’t want to go there.
As far as speed up rumors, let’s look at a bit of history. Over the past two years we have had at least two big events where we were SURE things were going to speed up in the next month or two. First there was the promise last summer that the CCAA didn’t want the wait to go over a year. We were certain things would speed up since we were so close to that year mark - and even when we hit the year mark there were agencies saying it wouldn’t go over 14 months, that the CCAA was working hard to keep the wait from continueing to grow. I believed them, as did many others.
Then, last fall we had the combined rumor of new SWI’s being added to the IA program in the spring plus Brian Stuy’s statement last September that we were currently at the longest wait times. And then there was the waiting dad with a December of ‘05 LID who asked the CCAA director face to face when he would get his referral and was told December. (We all thought it meant last December, none of us thought it was possible it would be the following December.)
So last fall we were all pretty much believing things would speed up, which didn’t happen. And then came January ‘07 and they put the brakes on even more.
There was also the rumor from agencies that the CCAA wasn’t going to let the wait get to the point where people would have to redo their I-171H, but the CCAA later made it pretty clear that they were not concerned about that and if we didn’t like it we should look to our government to change, not to them to shorten the wait.
So where does this leave us now? We’ve basically been promised (again) that things are going to pick up a bit. Soon. And this time we are hearing it from the CCAA (told to multiple agencies and governments over the summer) as well as agencies continuing to get this word now from the CCAA. Some of us interpret the CCAA’s statement to governments and agencies to mean this next batch (since we are through with November) and some people interpret it to mean the batch to arrive in December (the first batch of the CCAA’s next fiscal year) and some people interpret it to mean the batch to arrive in January (since that’s the first of 2008). And many of us feel like Charlie Brown and the football - not going to fall for it again. But then, hope springs eternal, and maybe they are telling the truth this time and the football won’t be yanked away yet again.
To summarize:
We know that if things stay exactly the same then LID days per batch should increase because we know there aren’t as many people logged in during the next few months.
We’ve been promised 15 days at a time (two months to do one month, etc), which would seem to mean an increase in the number of referrals per month.
There are rumors out there that the ceiling/quota will indeed be higher next year, which means maybe they are going to pull it off.
There are also rumors that the ceiling/quota next year will be lower, which would be very very very bad.
We may know this month, or next month, but at the latest we should know by the January batch whether this rumored speed up is going to happen."
This entry was posted on ChinaAdoptTalk (aka RQ) on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007.
I realize that this article may have caused more confusion than it actually helped. Welcome to the club.
