Progress, with a capital P

There has been a steady stream of praise the past two weeks from families who entered IBESR in September 2012, requiring presidential dispensation for biological children, who have been notified they are out. 

What does that mean: out of IBESR?

This is the flow of paperwork, as I understand it:

• Pre-IBESR - Dossier is prepared to enter into  Haitian Social Services (all papers present, notarized, etc.)
• IBESR - Haitian Social Services / Adoption Authority reviews contents of dossier and verifies status of orphan
• Parquet - "Pre-Courts;" includes birth parent interviews; pre-screening for court process to occur 
• Courts - adoption decree is created and process finalized; legally, child is yours :)
• Attestation - official court documents (particularly the Act of Adoption) is sent to the National Archives where they declare the signature on the Act of Adoption is legal
• "Families receive word of their decree in two ways. Some right after parquet and before the 4 steps in legal = that family would "wait" about 2 months before they went into MOI. Other families are not told about their decree until after all the legal is done = so for them, the wait is only a week or two before its dropped off to MOI"
• Legal / Legalization - Court documents are sent to the Ministry of Justice where more signatures are verified 
• MAE - Ministry of Foreign Affairs legalizes the signature of the person in the Ministry of Justice who verified signatures on paperwork in the step above(!)
• MOI - adoption paperwork goes to Ministry of the Interior to process request for passport 
• Printing - dossier sits in Immigration while passport is processed and printed (Haitian passport w/ adoptive child's new name)
• Visa - dossier is sent to requesting country's embassy for visa processing and approval

So, here's the thing . . . 

If multiple families who entered IBESR the same time we did, requiring the same presidential signature as us, have heard from their orphanage directors / attorneys that they are out of IBESR, doesn't that mean that we, who have little to no communication with our attorney team, are likely out of IBESR too??

Heck yeah, it does! 

See, I told y'all we were going to bring Dimitry home this year.

hee hee