Help Us Bring Home Our Daughters
Our family has been unfairly treated by the United States Citizen and Immigration Services.
I'm writing to you in support of Doug and Gretchen Hanna, of Mill Creek Washington.
We are in dire need of adoption advocacy, concerning our daughters, Comfort and Mary Hanna, ages 7 and 9, who are "stuck" in Ghana. We adopted them in Ghana on 5/16/2013, and have been working tirelessly since then to bring them to the U.S. Our initial I-600 approval was recently revoked by USCIS, and we are appealing to the USCIS AAO to reconsider.
USCIS revoked our I-600 approval for two main reasons: the timing of the adoption compared to a ban put in place by Ghana, and USCIS?s insistence that the girls do not qualify as orphans.
Regarding the timing of our adoption, in one of our original documents from USCIS they clearly indicated that they had confirmed with the authorities in Ghana that our adoption order was valid and legal. Yet, they reversed that position in later documents, and provided NO explanation for that change. In our most recent appeal, we have submitted a new document from the authorities in Ghana that once again confirms the legality of the adoption, and we are confident that this concern has been addressed. But, we have spent additional time and money to prove something that USCIS originally confirmed as valid.
Concerning the issue about orphan status, my husband (their adoptive father) has traveled to Ghana twice to collect additional evidence to show support that Mary and Comfort are orphans, according to the U.S. laws. USCIS continues to base their denial on a single statement that we have proven to be unfounded and inaccurate. They have basically ignored the weight of the evidence that we have supplied and the legal arguments made by our lawyer.
We believe that USCIS has acted arbitrarily and capriciously in handling our case, and we feel that our case should never have required an appeal.
Our situation is dire because of this revocation. The girls have waited long enough to be reunited with their forever family. If we cannot bring them home, they won't have a home. As it is, the children have recently lost their foster home and had to be placed in another. This would not have happened if they were home, where we have been ready for the better part of 18 months to care for and love them.
No one is re-unifying for them. No one is coming for these children. They have no one but us.
Please, we are a great nation of compassionate people. Why else would we open our arms to the flood of illegally entering children, who are crossing our borders due to horrific conditions in Central America? It's the right thing to do, to help those children. Why don't Mary and Comfort have at least as much right to be here as those refugees?
We beg you to help us to legally and quickly unify our family. Comfort and Mary need us. And we need them.
We are in dire need of adoption advocacy, concerning our daughters, Comfort and Mary Hanna, ages 7 and 9, who are "stuck" in Ghana. We adopted them in Ghana on 5/16/2013, and have been working tirelessly since then to bring them to the U.S. Our initial I-600 approval was recently revoked by USCIS, and we are appealing to the USCIS AAO to reconsider.
USCIS revoked our I-600 approval for two main reasons: the timing of the adoption compared to a ban put in place by Ghana, and USCIS?s insistence that the girls do not qualify as orphans.
Regarding the timing of our adoption, in one of our original documents from USCIS they clearly indicated that they had confirmed with the authorities in Ghana that our adoption order was valid and legal. Yet, they reversed that position in later documents, and provided NO explanation for that change. In our most recent appeal, we have submitted a new document from the authorities in Ghana that once again confirms the legality of the adoption, and we are confident that this concern has been addressed. But, we have spent additional time and money to prove something that USCIS originally confirmed as valid.
Concerning the issue about orphan status, my husband (their adoptive father) has traveled to Ghana twice to collect additional evidence to show support that Mary and Comfort are orphans, according to the U.S. laws. USCIS continues to base their denial on a single statement that we have proven to be unfounded and inaccurate. They have basically ignored the weight of the evidence that we have supplied and the legal arguments made by our lawyer.
We believe that USCIS has acted arbitrarily and capriciously in handling our case, and we feel that our case should never have required an appeal.
Our situation is dire because of this revocation. The girls have waited long enough to be reunited with their forever family. If we cannot bring them home, they won't have a home. As it is, the children have recently lost their foster home and had to be placed in another. This would not have happened if they were home, where we have been ready for the better part of 18 months to care for and love them.
No one is re-unifying for them. No one is coming for these children. They have no one but us.
Please, we are a great nation of compassionate people. Why else would we open our arms to the flood of illegally entering children, who are crossing our borders due to horrific conditions in Central America? It's the right thing to do, to help those children. Why don't Mary and Comfort have at least as much right to be here as those refugees?
We beg you to help us to legally and quickly unify our family. Comfort and Mary need us. And we need them.
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