The US Embassy called me and said that they will NOT EVER issue a visa for us. They want the judge to completely rewrite the court order, which is highly offensive. I don't see that happening. There are many, many, many American families here and many waiting to come and NONE of us will receive visas.
This is a death sentence for Sarah. We will have to find someone in Uganda willing to take a girl in her condition (unheard of) and leave her with a stranger. She has severe failure to thrive. She has finally attached to me and now I would have to leave her.
The pain is unimaginable. My boys... what do I tell my boys?
Here is a letter we sent to our congressman tonight...
We had a terrible thing happen today. As we were finalizing the last step in getting our daughter home, the unthinkable happened. We were informed by Sarah that the embassy has changed its stance on Ugandan guardianship and WILL NOT issue her a VISA. Yesterday all the were waiting on was the medical signature and today she is never coming home with us.
I arrived in Uganda an hour ago and was greeted with this news. Basically we are now legally responsible for this girl per a Ugandan court order, but we can not take her out of the country. We can not stay here much longer, I can not be gone from work and we have 3 other boys to take care of at home and visitor VISA are only good here for 2 months, but if we leave we are breaking Ugandan law.
If they made this decision moving forward I would understand, but to be this far along in the process, literally we would have been issued a VISA yesterday, but the doctor was too busy to sign a paper.
Yesterday our paperwork was OK. Today it is unacceptable.
The embassy vice-consular says that they have contacted their lawyers in Washington DC and they said we cannot have a Visa.
The embassy wants the judge to rewrite the entire court order saying that she is allowed to be adopted in the US instead of "allowed to immigrate to the US" and allowed to be a US citizen instead of "will remain a Ugandan citizen." This last part is meant that she would be allowed dual citizenship of both US and Uganda but the US Embassy wants the order to specifically say that she can be a US citizen. This is silly as Ugandan judges cannot rule that anyone be a US citizen.
Ugandan judges are extremely offended at being asked to change something they have been doing for a long time. Many children went home to the US from Uganda with the same wording and now suddenly it is a problem.
We are devastated.
We are meeting with our lawyer in the morning along with about 20 other American and Canadian families.
For those of you from our church, would you please forward this. Would you please send it to our Children's Minister and our Rector. Please ask for prayer.
I don't know how to close this.... I'm on my knees begging for mercy. Begging for my daughter's life. Begging for our family and the other families. Begging for the children who think they are finally free from a life of an orphan and have been told they are going home and will now be dumped by their new parents and left here as orphans again. This IS NOT RIGHT!!!!
4 comments:
hi Mandi- I forwarded your comment to Amy and will let Amy send you that info. Thanks for your support!
Thank you Jennie. Sorry to hop on your blog out of the blue. Sen. Chambliss is on the task, finally found someone whose office seems to care. Thank you for posting about this great need for the James 1:27 family.
no problem!! That's why I posted here!!! Thank you for your help, I emailed Sen Chambliss as well and will call his office later.
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