vscampbell

Very perceptive! My wife is the youngest of 10 kids from a poor mountain village. Some of them have moved to the cities, Manila and Laguna mostly, but other's remain in the provinces. My wife is the most educated and worked as a realestate agent in manila when I met her. She is the leader of the family, oddly enough, and the entire clan looks to her when there is any problem. She's young, but she is a powerful personality and her skills at getting the rest of the family in line are amazing. She really is her mother's daughter, and even her mom and dad now bow to her leadership. I love this family and have gladly filled the role of being her husband and taking on whatever needs must be met to change the course of the next generation there. I've raised one family, my kids are all up and making babies of their own, so I have the time, resources, and enough energy left to take on another family project. I've turned around about twenty corporations of reluctant employees in my career, how hard can one family be? (Joke) Regarding my original question, I had hopes that the USA had some kind of expedited process to get adopted kids here whlie the permanent paperwork was being completed but, alas, now I think not. As a result, we will shift our plans and move there sooner than we might have otherwise. It's not a big deal, I've planned on moving out of the USA anyway, so it's a matter of when, not if.

There are kids wandering all over the Philippines, abandoned. We haven't been back for three years but our friends tell us they are all over the place in the major cities, and the ministers we know in the provinces have dozens of kids that they take care of. One of them sent me a video yesterday of a mealtime situation and there must have been 50 little kids in this one village. Many of them are 10 - 12 years old and never been to school, or just barely. I don't know the numbers, but they are huge and the government has changed the regulations to allow a rapid adoption schedule as a result. We contacted an attorney in the Philippines for adoption help and he told us that it's not needed anymore and attorneys don't even handle adoption cases. If a family qualifies, the paper work is pushed through in about three months and there is no longer even a court appearance required. Sad times to be a kid. Not so different here in the USA. One of my best friends operates a street mission in St Louis, USA, and she has 1,000+ kids eating there that are living on the streets in her inner city neighborhood. Another friend tells me that in their county in Idaho there are an estimtaed 20,000 kids in the school districts that are homeless, and I see those similar statistics elsewhere in the USA. At least we can step in and make sure these girls are kept out of that situation.

That is the whole idea, we want them protected from her. She doesn't really mind and is cooperating, she has only lived with them for two years out of their whole life.. Before that, they lived with their dead father's family and my wife helped raise them. The girls want more opportunity to go to school so they are excited and we have already relocated them back to their father's sister, who lives in Laguna, near Manila. Their mom has six older kids, all by different men. These girls were raised differently and we want to get them out of there. The mom is willing, it means she doesn't have to send support money and the girls will be taken care of.

Thanks! I've self published 6 novels and have many more in development. Some interest from the movie side but I'm holding off. I am only recently published, but the beta readers are very enthusiastic, my editor tells me she can't get enough, and a great publisher is nosing around, a good sign. I write adventure romance novels about a team of mercenaries that fight human trafficking. Subject matter is largely based on real characters and events; fictionalized, of course. I have had a good career in farming, construction, and business consulting and we have been operating a farming operation on leased land in the Philippines. Now we are in the process of buying farm land there. This is a complicated and I have only shared some basics to get my questions answered. I think this is a unique situation where these girls are family, known to us, have lived in the family for years already. They only have lived with their mom for a couple of years, before that she was overseas and now she's headed back to Hong Kong. Due to these circumstances they need someone to step forward and adopt them so they can stop being passed from home to home there. They are great kids, very smart and good students.

We are diong our research because we want to keep all options open. In this case the father is dead and their mother has other male interests. She's not a bad mom, just not focused on these girls and there are other kids involved that are not from our family and she has been in negotiation with my wife for about a year as we process the paperwork for us to take the girls. She knows she can't really provide for them, and now as of today she is in Hong Kong so our family is there right now picking them up and taking them to another aunt to stay until we can get this finished. They all know each other because these girls lived with our family until about a year ago. It's pretty complicated so we're scrambling to sort it out but at least we have a lot of family willing to pitch in and we can provide financial support to make it all happen. We are prefectly willing to go to Phil to take over, we do have a house in Manila already and a farming operation on Mindanao, so the only issue is when my wife and I can relocate to give them more family structure.

We will go back and forth. Not sure of all details, which is why we are asking around. The number of people leaving the USA to live abroad more than doubled from 2019 to 2020. That trend is continuing. She came here to be with me and we always planned on moving to Phil as we have growing business interests there. I am an author so I can work from anywhere and if we stay in USA, which we might continue to keep a residence here, it will be down south somewhere. It depends on the details as they unfold.

My question started out as immigration but that time frame appears to be too long. I was hoping that it would be a more simple matter, at least to get a temporary pass, which I think is called a K4? We are just getting started on the US side of this. The Philippines side is expidited now that they have a priority to get all of these abandoned kids adopted. Yes, we know about the college visa and once we get there we will be exploring options. I need to return to the USA on occasion for various meetings and conventions (I am an author), but we planned on eventually being in the Philippines or another nation as residents anyway.

It increasingly looks like we will be moving there sooner than later since the girls need our presence. Right now they can live with our family, whom they lived with in the past, but that is not ideal. We are making a trip there this summer to buy more farm land. We do have a shared home in Manila but I don't want to live there, I'm a country boy at heart and raising kids in a big city is problematic at best. Once we settle there we can begin the visa process so they can travel back and forth with us, or since they may want to go to college in the USA... increasingly less likely but possible.

Their father is dead and the mother has signed over custody to us so we can process adoption. She has left the country to work OFW, but these girls are all really smart and want to go on to college and there is no money for that. They have basically been abandoned to live by themselves in Manila, we found out about that and quickly moved to secure them while we finish the process. I know it might take a long time to process USA side of the paperwork and frankly don't care. That is only so they can travel back here with us on business as needed. Regarding the comment about more people moving here, I have thousands of associates around the world. Many of them want to come here, all of the ones without money or deep skills. My friends who own businesses and have money are securing homes outside of the USA, almost 100%. They might have a place here, but they are moving their residence to Asia or the Caribbean (mostly.) I was on a plane and met a specialized attorney who is processing 100 businesses moving to Vietnam every month from the USA. thanks for your help guys, I think this gives us what we need for now. TTYL

That was my thought also. We have the means to do that, so I think it's for the best and we have a lot of family there that has rallied around the girls to protect them while we make arrangements.

Thanks guys. I really appreciate your input. This just ads to my list of reasons to move out of the country. 😉 The list is already long and growing. We have property and a home there and were planning on moving in a couple of years anyway, maybe we'll just go there and get the family settled and then apply so they can travel with us as possible. I really wonder if the government has any clue what they are doing. I know so many people who are moving to other nations and taking their money with them. Sad when you think of it. When you travel to Asia it looks like a typical mall in Seattle.

Yes, they are the nieces of my wife. She is here legally and has a green card. She and I are adopting the girls since there is no parent in country there. My wife came here four years ago and we were married within two months of her arrival.

WE plan on waithing until all paperwork on the Philippine side is done before doing anything with USA

Actually I misspoke, the adoptions are still in process but the parent has signed over custody and has left the country. They are staying with family members while we process but so far it has been smooth. No other paperwork with the USA has been filed since this was a recent event.

We have three adopted (family members already) daughters in Philippines and are wondering how long it would take to get them visas to come to the USA? There are so many kids being abandoned there that I hope the US government is helping to expidite matters. The Philippine government has been great, they are basically processing adoptions to qualified parents on a three month schedule due to the many kids wandering the countryside.