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Post placement supervision and reports are required for most international and domestic adoptions. All of our post placement reports are written to agency and country specific standards. Post placement supervision and reports are not part of the home study fee. Post placement supervision is for those families who have a child placed with them but the adoption is not finalized. This is the case especially for US domestic adoptions. Post adoption is for families who have completed the adoption process and the child holds an adoption decree. This is the case for most international adoptions. Contact our post placement coordinator Jaime Groat, LCSW at jaimegroat@randybarlow.com for any questions or concerns.
There are many decisions to be made about how to immigrate the child as a U.S. citizen once the adoption is completed in-country. The US Citizenship Act of 2001 changed immigration procedures for children adopted in a foreign country. Be sure to look at the U.S. Citizenship Act 2001 at the CIS website for the latest information.
If you plan to go directly (or at least within six months) to the U.S. with your child, you should try to obtain an IR-3 visa. Under the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2001, a child who enters the USA with an IR-3 visa may become a US citizen upon entry to the USA. Your child is eligible for an IR-3 visa if BOTH parents (in a joint adoption application) physically see the child prior to a finalized adoption, and you have a valid 171H and the child is legally considered an orphan by the courts of the child's homeland. The USCIS 864 (Affidavit of Support) is no longer required in most cases if you are eligible for the IR-3. With an IR-3 Visa, your child is eligible to obtain American citizenship upon entering the U.S. at any point of entry. Since 2009 USCIS has changed some of the requirements for automatic citizenship for many Americans living abroad. Please see these citizenship requirements for more details.
An IR-4 visa is issued for adopted children who do not meet the IR-3 requirements.
If only one parent sees the child prior to the adoption, you are not eligible for an IR-3, but are eligible for an IR-4 visa, which means you must complete a USCIS form 864 (Affidavit of Support) and re-adopt the child in the U.S. before he/she will be granted U.S. citizenship. In other words, if your spouse is unable to accompany you to adopt your child, your child is not automatically granted U.S. citizenship upon entering the U.S. First, the child must be re-adopted in the U.S. The process for obtaining US citizenship for a child that is issued an IR4 visa is quite different than the child who receives an IR3 visa. You should be aware of this difference and understand that the IR4 visa process will require additional steps.
In both cases (IR-3 and IR-4), once you have obtained citizenship and your child has a U.S. passport, he/she can enter your overseas country of residence as any US passport-carrying tourist, which, in many countries, does not require any visas. Then once in your country of residence you can request recognition by local authorities and the necessary residence permit for your child as any other legitimate, US-passport-carrying member of your family.
If you are planning to return directly back to your country of residence with your child before traveling to the USA to immigrate him/her and get a U.S. passport, you have several entry options depending on your residence status overseas.
If you are U.S. military (SOFA), it is advisable to obtain a letter from JAG
indicating that your adopted child is also entitled to SOFA status and you intend to take the child to the U.S. for citizenship in the near future. This letter will need to be translated into the official language of the country to which you are returning and presented to the immigration officer once you enter that country.
If you are non-military related and living within the European Union, and wish to return to Europe directly from the country from which you adopt, you may apply for a Schengen Visa. If you are entering any of the following countries, you should get a Schengen Visa: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
You can obtain a Schengen visa from any of the Schengen (or you can say European Union) countries you will be traveling to or returning to, once your child has been adopted. In order to do this, you will need to request the Schengen visa while you are in the country from which you are adopting. You will need to go to the embassy of whichever country you intend to travel to or return to with your adopted child (e.g., if you are adopting in Romania and reside in the Netherlands, you would obtain the Schengen Visa from the Dutch Embassy in Bucharest). Although it may not be necessary, we advise you to try to contact the embassy where you intend to request a Schengen, prior to your traveling to adopt your child. This will help to ensure that you have all of the necessary documents required to proceed with this process at the time of your adoption. The big benefit to a Schengen visa is that you can travel to any of those countries on the same visa. Once your adopted child has an American passport, you should not need a visa for any Schengen countries.
If you are non-military related and residing outside the European Union, and wish to return to your country of residence directly from the country from which you adopt, you will need to request a visa from authorities in your country of residence. This should be arranged prior to travel. Generally speaking, there are two ways to go about this. You can contact your residence country's embassy in the country from which you are adopting, explain what you are doing and that you will be receiving a US immigration visa for your child but wish to return to your residence before completing immigration (and hope that they will comply); or you can contact the immigration authorities in your country of residence and plead your case to them. We generally recommend traveling directly to the USA to immigrate your child before returning to your current country of residence. For most western countries, once you travel back to your residence country with your child carrying a US passport, no special visa is required for entry on "tourist" visa status. Once in your country of residence, you may need to register your child with authorities and this may require some further local adoption formalities, however, to receive a residence permit for the child.
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Post adoption consists of the post placement visit and report. The post adoption/post placement is a follow-up with the adoptive family as required by your agency. This report is required by most agencies. We provide resources for post adoption issues.