No More EPs

We received an email yesterday from AIAA about the Korea program. We were told that all of the EP's were given for the year, in fact, too many were given. This is common as Korea allows only a certain number of children to be adopted internationally each year. Normally, the EP's run out sometime late Fall. It is shocking to everyone in the adoption process with Korea that it is only the beginning of June and they are already gone!

A friend sent me this explanation they found online...

Here is a brief explanation of how it works...

Each Korean agency is given a certain number of EP's each year which they manage, an emigration permit (EP) to be submitted to the Korean government. Basically, the EP will give approval to leave Korea and will be submitted and approved by Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Each Korean agency has a different quota to manage to, in part based on their relative sizes. The EP quota overall has been reduced each year by the ministry. Last year according to the US embassy website, all of the Korean agencies ran out of EP's, some earlier than others.

Because the EP quota gets further reduced while the number of children coming into care and getting placed for international adoption does not proportionately decrease, the problem tends to grow year over year, resulting in a backlog that grows with the impacted agencies running out of EPs earlier and earlier. Unfortunately as the quota declines, it becomes very hard for an agency to catch up because the number of children coming into care for the new year doesn't necessarily go down, so not only do they have the backlog to clear through but they have the new children to get through the EP approval process as well. Over the years different agencies have run into the quota problem earlier than other agencies.

Here's a made-up example to help illustrate the problem:

Year 1 for a given agency....
Agency is granted 100 EPs
Agency has 110 babies come into care
Agency decides to refer all 110 babies
Agency uses up all EPs by November; only 100 get EP, 10 babies have to wait until Year 2

Year 2 for the same agency...
Agency starts off with a backlog of 10 babies needing EP
Agency is granted 90 EPs (reduction of 10% from the previous year's quota of 100)
Agency has 110 babies come into care (assuming no change in the number of children coming into care)
Agency decides to refer all 110 babies
Agency now has a 110 babies from the current year plus 10 babies from year 1 needing EP or 120 total babies; agency only has 90 EPs
Agency uses up all EPs by October; only 90 of the 120 babies get EP; 30 babies have to wait until Year 3

Year 3 for the same agency...
Agency starts off with a backlog of 30 babies needing EP
Agency is granted 81 EPs (reduction of 10% from the previous year's quota of 90)
etc...

So the complaining of traveling during winter was nothing to worry about since now we DEFINITELY won't be traveling in 2011. We plan to email our agency, AIAA, to find out exactly where we are on the wait list and see if there is any guess on if we will even travel in 2012. So many questions remain...Do we want to proceed? If so, do we want to start over with a baby/toddler, who will likely be older than 9 months, when Ian will be 5 1/2 or 6? Do we want to deal with this uncertainty? It is very frustrating that we finally make the decision to proceed with adoption of baby #4 only to be put on hold for formal application then told that there is no little hope of a referral at the end of 2011, absolutely NO travel for 2011, etc. I try to remind myself that God is in control. He alone knows our needs and WILL provide. HE knows what is best for us. Looking at it that way, I also remind myself to be grateful that we are not one of the families that have already received a referral and were looking forward to traveling in a month or 2 or 3 and now being told that you will not be with your child until after the beginning of next year.

I want to move forward and complete our family ASAP, but yet again, God is telling me to "Be Still and KNOW that I am GOD"