Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
February 21, 2008 issue
Local Family, Split Apart by Bureaucracy, To Be Reunited Soon
Story by Bernadette Cahill
A local couple, whose family life has been split apart by a wrangle between the U.S. State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services over a Vietnamese adoption, will be reunited this weekend.
Martin and Mary Quigley successfully challenged objections to their application for a visa for the son they adopted last October, and their son’s visa was issued late Wednesday morning.
Both Martin and Mary received email messages from the U.S. State Department on Monday informing them that U.S. Immigration had approved their petition for the visa—yet again. The Deep Gap couple had already successfully rebutted a State Department challenge to their visa request and had to wait for this successful conclusion to a second challenge from the State Department. Although the State Department, through the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, recommended revocation of the petition for the visa, U.S. Immigration had the final word.
Martin said Mary will arrive home with their son on Saturday evening. “We’re pretty buzzed about it, I must admit,” he said.
U.S. Immigration’s final decision was the third stage in a process that the couple never imagined they’d have to deal with when they began the year-long adoption process in early fall 2006.
The Quigleys traveled with Maggie, their 5-year-old daughter, to Vietnam last October to adopt their son officially. Immediately afterwards, they applied through the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi for a visa to bring their child home. Because of the experience of countless adoptive parents before them, they anticipated that the visa process, which normally took about three weeks, would be routine.
“We expected to be home in time for Halloween,” said Mary in a telephone interview from Dublin, Ireland, three weeks ago. Mary has stayed in Ireland with her son under a visa from the Republic of Ireland because Martin, a legal immigrant to the United States, is an Irish citizen.
But the Quigleys didn’t get home in time for Halloween, and they were devastated when staff at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi told them they would not be getting a visa at that time.
The problem arose because the U.S. State Department disputed the validity of the background to Mickey’s adoption, questioning whether Mickey fit the legal definition of an orphan under U.S. law.
The U.S. State Department is concerned about baby trafficking and initially demanded further proof that Mickey had been abandoned to ensure that he fit the legal definition of an orphan under U.S. law. The guard at the orphanage did not record Mickey as an abandoned child, but “[he] pointed out to both the U.S. investigators and to the Vietnamese law firm we hired that he is not required to record abandonments,” said Mary.
The State Department has also disputed 25 other adoptions that occurred around the same time.
When the family learned that the visa had been refused, Martin stayed in Vietnam with Mickey; Mary and Maggie returned to Deep Gap.
The Quigleys had to hire lawyers in Vietnam and the United States to challenge the refusal of the visa. They heard about three weeks ago that they had successfully rebutted the refusal of the visa, but then had to wait on tenterhooks again, because the State Department challenged their petition for a visa again.
Finally, on Monday, the completely unexpected process came to an end—and on a U.S. holiday, Presidents’ Day.
“We have no idea of the evidence the State Department gave [this second time] for not granting the visa,” said Martin.
“Our lawyer asked for the documents, but was told it was a matter between [U.S. Immigration] and the Department of State and they could not release this information until we were asked to refute it.”
In early December, Mary, a professor of history at Appalachian and currently on family leave, traded places with her husband in Vietnam and in mid-December went to Ireland where she has been staying since, “moving from friend to friend and relative to relative,” not knowing when this would end.
The bureaucratic nightmare has cost the Deep Gap couple dearly. They have had to live apart on two continents, pay for two households and plane tickets back and forth, and deal with an unfavorable dollar exchange for the euro. These everyday expenses are apart from the costs of hiring lawyers here and in Vietnam.
The Quigleys decided to apply to send Mary and Mickey to Ireland as the better of the options they faced late last year. Either they had to give up their child or keep custody of him for the two years that is required for their son to be eligible for U.S. citizenship. The options for keeping custody were either foster care or for one of them to look after him. “Considering the alternative was putting him in foster care, it wasn’t ideal, but [sending Mary to Ireland with Mickey] was the better of the two alternatives,” said Martin.
To the Quigleys’ knowledge, 25 other families have been caught in this foreign adoption wrangle. Martin is in contact with about 11 of them, and the Quigleys are only the fourth or fifth family to get the green light to bring their child home.
In November, the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam changed the visa application procedure, and now couples must receive approval for the visa before going abroad to pick up their child.
Despite the cost, the logistical nightmare and the problems of dealing with government departments halfway across the world, Mary considers herself lucky, because not all of the other 25 families have been able to maintain physical custody of their newly adopted child.
When Mary arrives home, “we’ll become social hermits,” said Martin. “We’re not going to stir for a couple of days to let Mickey get used to his new environment.”
While normality will continue as Maggie goes to school as usual on Monday, Martin is also hoping to take a couple of days off work to enable the whole family to rebond. Martin spent six weeks with his son in Vietnam, but hasn’t seen him since January 4 when he returned from Ireland after the holidays.
“We had a video cam set up, but I’ve not been able to hold [Mickey] for a good eight weeks now,” he said. “It will be good all round. At least he always had one of us [with him] and hopefully he’s young enough for it not to have been a big deal.”
Mary, still in Ireland at the moment, can hardly believe that she and Mickey are finally coming home.