How long should it take for an international adoption to be completed?

Question

How long should it take for an international adoption to be completed?

Answer 1

I had a friend who adopted from China and it took almost a year.

Answer 2

It can probably take up to 2 years depending on what country you adopt from.  In Brazil they say it could take up to 2 years however if one adopts a sibling group or older children(7 and up)  it can be less time.

I have a friend from the starting the process to getting their child in China it took a little over a year and half. However this was their second child they adopted from China so I don’t know if with their first child if it was longer or not.

Answer 3

We adopted from China in 2005 and the process took 1 year from start to finish.  Now it is taking 3 years + and it is because of the way things are changing in China.  It depends what country you want to adopt from.

Answer 4

Approx 2 years start to finish

-homestudy

-dossier

-fingerprints

-ICE

-criminal background checks

-child abuse clearences

It is a very long process and alot of paperwork.

Friends of ours waited two years to adopt from China and 18 months from Korea.

Answer 5

All have said generally two years. If you want a break down by the most popular countries, including travel times check out my articles on www.adoptive-parenting.com.

International adoption is still pretty popular even though there is a long wait.

Answer 6

It will depend on the country, the paperwork, etc. Many months can be spent preparing documents and a lot of it will depend on how quickly you complete things, how quickly your homestudy is completed. Then it will depend on the country process, referral time, etc.

There are so many contributing factors.

We have adopted 2 children from Guatemala. The first adoption was 9 months start to finish. The 2nd one had a few hiccups and was 15 months.

Good luck.

Answer 7

Hi Jersey

This is from direct experience when we adopted our daughter from Colombia.

We started the U.S. part of the paperwork in late August and had our permit to adopt one child under age 16 and bring her into the US as a citizen in early December. In all, that was about 3 1/2 months. State and local government people were uniformly fast, efficient, and helpful. The Immigration people were difficult and early on we got our US Representative  to assist.

Our adoption agency [World Child International Adoptions] sent the package of information to Colombia for official translation and the adoption package was delivered to the Colombian government on January 16. Colombian government shuts down from about Dec 15 to January 16 each year.

We were "matched" within two weeks with our soon-to-be child. It took about a week to get the Colombian visas. We flew to Bogota, went through a 10 day integration period, then it went to court - about 2 1/2 more weeks for the court procedures.

Our total time in Colombia was about 6 weeks, including all the running around after the Colombian part of the adoption

getting a new birth certificate, new Colombian passport, US-approved physical for our child, US visa then on home.

We have friends who started their adoption paperwork in late July and had their daughter home with them from Colombia in early December. Total time for them was under 5 months.

They also had to get their US Representative involved to track down their application to bring the girl into the US.

I've heard many horror stories about adoptions from other countries but can assure you that our experience with Colombia was excellent - the worst part was battling the US Citizenship and Immigration Services people.

Our daughter has been with us almost two years now and the transition has been mostly smooth.

Feel free to email me if I can answer any questions.

Answer 8

This is totally dependant on country adopting from. Ethiopia right now is running a 4-10 months so with Homestudy easily under 1 yr. Vietnam and China are in terms of years at this point. Have you considered older children or sibling groups. Non infant adoptions take much less time and are more affordable. Search some of the adoption agencies websites it does give timeframe sthere. We have used WACAP multiple times but Wide Horizons and several others if you Google international adoptions will tell you exactly what there time frames are at this point.

Answer 9

lt may take up to 2 yrs