To EE regarding Portland Oregonian

December 21, 2001

Originally Posted By EE

The Portland Oregonians website is However, the articles were from last month (Nov 18th and, I believe Nov 13th), so they may be difficult to find on the web site. Most of the Oregonian articles include the authorҒs e-mail, so you may want to contact the author Margie Boule (Marboule@aol.com) for more information, or contact the paper directly for back copies.

I have an electronic copy of the first of the two articles (from Margie Boule of the Portland Oregonian, around Nov 13th, 2001), although I should mention that the situation with the family depicted below has since been resolved:

IN LIMBO, A FAMILY WAITS TO BRING ELLIANA HOME

Ron and Shellie Smith became parents for the second time on Oct. 29, in a small round building with "no landscaping -- just a clothesline and a few scraggly trees," says Ron - -- near Hanoi, in Vietnam. Most

expectant parents wait nine months. Ron and Shellie spent 15 months wading through paperwork, paying fees, arranging to travel to Vietnam with their 3-year-old daughter Emma, whom they adopted from China two

years ago.

Now they wonder if they'll ever be able to bring their new daughter home.

The 5-month-old girl they call Elliana already is their daughter. "They brought in our baby," Shellie says by phone from Vietnam, "and she looked just like her pictures. Very dark hair that stands straight up on end, and really round dark eyes. I cooed at her

and she smiled right away." Shellie took Elliana in her arms. Little Emma told a woman at the orphanage, "That's my baby."

The Smiths thought they'd be in Vietnam for two weeks, long enough to travel to the province where Elliana was born, participate in a legally binding "giving and receiving" ceremony, and then travel to Ho Chi Minh City to wait a day or two for Elliana's visa from the

U.S. consulate.

They had plane tickets to return to Portland Wednesday. The tickets expired. Ron had to be back at work on Friday. He won't make it. The Smiths took $2,000 with them to Vietnam. They've nearly run out of

money, medications and disposable diapers they brought from home.

The Smiths are caught in immigration limbo, along with several dozen other American families in Vietnam and Cambodia. Their adoptions have been approved according to U.S. and foreign law. Their children are now their own, and are their responsibility. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service won't issue visas for the babies to enter the U.S. "And they won't tell us why," says Ron Smith. "And they won't tell us how long their investigation will take."

Ron and Shellie thought this adoption would be a smooth one. At their interview at the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City last Friday, says Ron, "We brought a thick packet of information and official forms, including an I-171, which showed we had already been approved by INS to bring our daughter home to the U.S." The form is not required of adoptive parents, but the Smiths had gone to the trouble to get INS

preapproval to avoid problems.

Instead, problems found them. "We are now trapped in Vietnam for an unknown length of time," Ron says.

INS authorities in Portland aren't privy to the workings of the INS in Vietnam and couldn't comment on a particular case anyway, because of privacy issues. But local INS spokesman Ed Sale says the State

Department recently issued an advisory on fraudulent adoptions in Vietnam.

But nobody at the INS told the Smiths about the advisory.

David Slansky runs Journeys of the Heart adoption agency in Hillsboro, which is handling the Smiths' adoption. David says the INS appears to be targeting clients whose adoptions are being facilitated

in Vietnam by the International Mission of Hope. "It's particularly offensive that they're picking on IMH," says David. "It's been (operating in Vietnam) since the 1980s and has a long track record of integrity."

In fact, the International Mission of Hope was founded by Cherie Clark, an American woman who was instrumental in the baby-lift at the end of the Vietnam War. Cherie left Saigon on one of the last charter planes, under fire, as the city fell to the communists. She returned to Vietnam in 1988 and has lived there since, working closely with the governments of Vietnam and the United States, building

orphanages, organizing reforestation and road-building projects, working with Vietnam veterans groups to build schools and medical clinics. "There are so many sleazy, seamy, fly-by-night adoption organizations over there," says David, "it baffles me why they are

going after IMH."

Without realizing it, the Smith family flew to Vietnam and walked into a Catch-22 situation. Until they adopted Elliana, the INS would not accept her visa application. Now she's their daughter, but she

can't leave Vietnam without an INS immigrant visa. And Ron and Shellie Smith wouldn't dream of leaving their new daughter behind.

"She's just a tiny little girl," says Shellie, "and we've bonded with her. She's started to recognize us. . . . When she sees us she smiles and her eyes light up. She knows we're Mommy and Daddy. Emma's very

attached to her; she calls her Elliana Banana. . . . And we've learned she's allergic to milk, so we've put her on soy formula.

There is no way we would take her back to the orphanage. They care very much for their babies, but they don't always have much money to care for them."

Ron and Emma may be forced to return to Portland soon. Shellie will stay with Elliana, she says. She's been learning the locations of stores where she can buy diapers and peanut butter. She's been trying

to learn about Vietnamese money and phrases. "This is frightening,"

she says. "We want to come home. The children are getting sick, and we have limited money.

"But I will stay as long as necessary. We're not giving her back."