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I think the most important thing you can do is to get advocates who can help you bypass some of the (passive aggressive?) barriers; one at the US Embassy and one at the Jamaican Adoption Board. We were lucky enough to find a guardian angel/saint at the Adoption Board who facilitated everything for us on that end. In fact, we took our son home (in Jamaica, at the time) a couple of months before he was officially released for adoption. (He was abandoned by his biological parents, who could not be located or identified, so there were legal things that needed to be done to be sure he was not going to be reclaimed).
The US Embassy in Kingston was the real stumbling block and I swear, they did everything they could to prevent us from getting a visa for our son. Our paperwork - passports, marriage license, birth certificates and other sensitive, important documents - bounced back and forth from Jamaica to the US and back, while the INS offices argued about which end should handle this. A friend of a friend had another friend who worked for INS, and without her, I'm not sure we would have "gotten through" (as they say in Jamaica). Oh, and one other advocate: somebody knowledgable and experienced in international adoption from an agency. You don't need a lawyer to adopt from Jamaica. Once you get your kid into the US, there may be other regulations and fees to pay, but the hard part is done.
As I said before, if there is any way you can free up five or six months to actually stay in Jamaica and deal with stuff personally, that would be the best.
Good luck to all of you! There are lots of children growing up in orphanages in Jamaica, and it's a tragedy.
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