China Update

Since swine flu hit the news there have been rumors floating around that China was going to hold referrals, TAs, etc. until as late as September, and that even if you had TA you would be unable to make appointments in certain regions. TAs, however, kept coming to most agencies, and some people were able to make appointments and even travel. Our agency has taken China’s request that parents delay travel to heart and is not letting anyone travel right now (this only affects SN adoptions as they have not had NSN referrals in a while).

Then, with virtually no advance warning, referrals arrived on Wednesday! They are nearly 3 weeks late, but China claims they were not held for any reason. This batch is about the same size as last batch (yay!!) which is encouraging. However, the fact that they arrived so late means they practically skipped a month. If referrals were held just because of swine flu, then there is a chance that they kept working business as usual, but just did not mail anything out until later. If that is the case, then we could see another batch of referrals in about two weeks, which would get everything back on schedule. If the next batch does not arrive for 4 or more weeks, then the benefit of this being a good sized batch is basically negated. So much speculation...

I think we are still looking at the end of next year as the most likely time for referral, with travel in early 2011. I have not given up hope for travel in 2010, though. Of course, it could be much later, but we will deal with that too.