China Adoption

It's horrible if ANY agency is still saying anything less than 5 years!! I've looked at a lot of agency information, and there used to be some that were not updating their wait times, but now, it seems all that I have looked at, do not give a wait time, probably because PAPs and APs alike pointed out the errors. As for turning 50, my agency has assured me that everything stops at the point the PAPs are logged in. If your parents friends were already logged in, then turning 50 would not apply. The new rules are only valid for anyone logged in after April 2007. Also, switching to SN does not put someone at the end of the wait line, in fact, there really is no "wait line" when PAPs apply for SN. But there does tend to be high competition for one child if the child has only minor SNs. So, I'm assuming your parents friends had something else happening other than turning 50, or maybe they were not logged in prior to turning 50. It has to be something other than what you have heard, unless the agency was for some reason, trying to convince the PAPs not to adopt, or their agency was no longer licensed for IA, and they had to switch agencies?? It's also possible (although I hope not the case) that the agency wanted the PAPs to complete their adoption sooner so the agency could get paid sooner as well..IA agencies are not doing so well financially these days as they were 5 years ago...So they might have given the PAPs misinformation to encourage them to switch to SN or domestic to complete their adoption sooner? Who knows. But I do know the information you got from your parents is not the "whole" story. I would be curious to find out what the whole story was though. The only thing that would really change the ability to adopt from China if someone was logged in before May 1st 2007, is if a major catastrophe happened to the PAPs such as cancer or death, or if they no longer qualify by income as the family must have a yearly income of at least $10,000 per person in the household, per year. The China adopt forecast has not been updated since referrals came in December of 2011, so it's not up to date. However, that forecast also assumes referrals will be with an average of 2-3 days of referrals per month. But the norm has been 2-3 months per year, so I think even China adopt forecast is off with it's predictions, even if it were updated. Perhaps it's just my optimistic self again, but at some point, there has to be a turning point. I don't think it will ever be like it was, but I do believe (due to attrition alone) at some point, the swing needs to start moving in the other direction, if nothing else, just a little.