Background check help!!

January 22, 2008

Let me be honest with you. Domestic violence, like child abuse, is a huge red flag for U.S. homestudy and placement agencies, the USCIS, and foreign countries.

The fact that your homestudy agency felt that you were approvable suggests that your offense was truly minor. Homestudy agencies are usually extremely quick to deny people who have had domestic violence convictions. However, the offense will have to be mentioned in your homestudy report, and this could cause the USCIS to deny you or the foreign country to deny you.

Have you gotten USCIS approval of your I-600A yet? This is the first hurdle you must face after your homestudy is complete. The USCIS may well ask your homestudy agency for additional information about your situation, and unless the homestudy report and your social worker's explanation are very persuasive, there is the possibility that you won't be approved. The USCIS does not want to risk approving a family to bring a child to the U.S., if there is any chance that he/she will become the victim of violence or traumatized by witnessing violence within his/her home.

The very fact that you have a recent criminal conviction, for any offense, may be a problem in some Eastern European countries and elsewhere. I'm not familiar with Estonia, but some countries, such as Russia, are extremely strict when it comes to approving people who have ANY sort of criminal record, even if it doesn't involve violence, especially if the incident took place within the past ten years or so.

The fact that the conviction is for domestic violence is likely to be of even greater concern. Virtually all countries state that they will not approve people who have committed crimes of violence. And virtually all countries state that child abuse and domestic violence are causes for rejection. Your homestudy report will need to convince the authorities in a foreign country that, as you say, the incident was "blown way out of proportion", or you could well be rejected.

Unfortunately, the concern about violence has been made greater in Eastern Europe, because of reports that a few Eastern European children who were adopted by American parents were abused or killed by those parents. While the fact that your homestudy agency approved you suggests that you are no more likely than any other person to commit child abuse, you have to understand that your situation may worry the foreign authorities.

I would suggest that you discuss your situation with several highly experienced agencies, not just one, working in Estonia and other countries of interest to you. They will be in the best position to advise you about how a given country is likely to react to your application.

Some agencies may even be willing to discuss your situation with the adoption authorities in a given country, to see if they can get a preliminary reading on how the country is likely to view your criminal record.

Some agencies may also suggest things you can do to make you more approvable. As an example, you might check whether having an evaluation by a mental health professional, to assess the likelihood that you will commit violence in the future, would make the authorities in a foreign country view your candidacy for parenthood more favorably. You might also check whether attending an anger management course might be a good idea, from the standpoint of the foreign country.

You say that you "can't get straight answers" from the placement agency you have consulted. However, what a foreign country will do in any specific case is often very hard to predict, even for a highly experienced agency. Plenty of agencies have found that a candidate whom they thought would be approved was denied, and vice versa.

A good placement agency will generally be very cautious about accepting a family. It won't waste a family's money and its own staff time by going through the adoption process, if there is a good chance that the foreign country will not place a child with a family. It won't get a family's hopes up, by submitting a dossier to the foreign country, if the dossier is likely to be rejected.

It sounds as though you have been talking to a good agency, since it has been honest with you about its doubts. But to be certain, it is advisable that you talk with other agencies with long experience in your countries of interest.

And let me just offer one small suggestion of my own. When dealing with a person who has committed a criminal offense, most homestudy and placement agencies, the USCIS, and most countries want to see evidence that the person realizes that what he/she did was wrong and stupid, truly regrets his/her actions, and has taken steps to make sure that a similar event won't occur in the future.

In general, these entities do NOT want to hear excuses. They don't want to hear, "Everyone else was doing it," or "I didn't inhale". They don't want to hear, "It really wasn't a big deal," or "The police blew it all out of proportion." Such excuses suggest to them that the person doesn't fully understand that what he/she did was just plain wrong, hasn't learned any lessons from what happened, and hasn't really thought about how to prevent it from happening again.

I'm afraid that the way in which you have made your case on this board, with terms like "a silly argument" and "blown way out of proportion", could work against you if you do things the same way when talking with an agency or dealing with the USCIS or a foreign country. You would be better served to admit that you did something wrong, to express in a heartfelt way your sense of shame over the action, and to give evidence that you have thought about how to make sure that you won't do the same thing again someday.

I'm not saying that taking this approach will guarantee your acceptance by the USCIS, placement agencies, and foreign adoption authorities. But I am saying that your situation may be viewed more sympathetically than it would be if you attempted to downplay the event.

Sharon