Adopting my Wife Niece

[PeterYuri 0]

I was wondering if anyone could provide me any sort of guidance or websites, english preferably to help with the following situation.

My wife is a green card holder from Vietnam, she has a niece in Vietnam whoses parents are divorce and neither can really support the child. So i'm wondering if there's a process or website with information on,

1. Adopting the child (she's currently 6 right now) in Vietnam

2. How to bring said child to America

Some concerns of mine-

Length of time for everything.

Paperwork that would require us to physically be in Vietnam for any part of the process.

I appreciate any help tips or starts to help me figure out how to do this.

[Boiler 45,647]

Adopting would be an issue for the local courts.

Once your wife is a Citizen she can sponsor her sister and the child would be a derivative, she might however age out.

Once her mother is in the US she can sponsor her daughter.

[Penguin_ie 5,994]

While you may be able to legally adopt the child according to local laws, US immigration does not generally accept adoption of non-orphans for the purposes of immigration. You would need to have physical custody of the child for 2 years before it would be accepted, ie need to live in Vietnam.

An easier and cheaper option for everyone, since the parents are alive, may be for you to pay for a boarding school for the child in Vietnam; that way she is looked after and gets a first rate education, but can still visit with her family.

[aaron2020 11,651]

Hi Peter,

Here is the jist of the problem. The US Government does not allow petitioning for a niece or nephew, and is well aware of people adopting to get around this restriction. There are strict rules for getting an immigration visa for an adopted child. You and your wife do not want to be in the position of having adopted her niece and not be able to get her an immigration visa.

Vietnamese laws will cover the adoption.

US laws will cover an immigration visa for an adopted child. The only option where there are two living parents is for you and your wife to go live with her in Vietnam for 2 years and show that the parents can not care for her in accordance with Vietnamese standards. There are no exceptions.

The normal route is for your wife to get US citizenship and petition for her sibling which currently takes 13 years. It can be longer. If the child is 21 years old or younger when the petition for her parent becomes current, then she can come. If she is older than 21, then it would be another decade for her parent to petition for her.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

If this route was possible, then many of us would have adopted our nieces and nephews.

Best of luck.

[PeterYuri 0]

I want to sincerely thank you all for the information you all given me. Thank you all for your time and responses. This helps me a lot.