International Mission of Hope - Update January 30, 2002

Viet Nam UPDATE - 2/20/02

In April 2001, International Mission of Hope (IMH) was targeted by negative press in Vietnamese newspapers. At that time, we provided information refuting the allegations in those newspapers and received a letter of support from the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) supporting the work of International Mission of Hope in Viet Nam.

In late October 2001, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) started investigating adoption cases facilitated by IMH. MOLISA wrote another letter in support of IMH at that time. In the end, two groups of families were delayed while INS investigated, but eventually received approval to bring their children home to the United States with them.

Unfortunately, a group of eight families (with nine children) who traveled in December also had their cases investigated by INS and received Notices of Intent to Deny (NOIDs) visas for their children issued between December 26, 2001 and January 2, 2002. The paperwork in these cases was no different from that of the other families who had been approved just weeks before, but the NOIDs were issued just the same. UPDATE: February 20, 2002. All IMH families have now had their NOID's cleared and are traveling home with their children.

At the same time as the NOIDs were issued, yet another newspaper article was published in the World Security (An Ninh The Gioi) newspaper - a newspaper which is described by the Far Eastern Economic Review as vying "for the same lurid appeal" as the "raunchiest" tabloids in Viet Nam. Unfortunately, the article contains many inaccuracies – including allegations of baby-trafficking. Since then, the U.S. INS office in Ho Chi Minh City has faxed and distributed the article by mail to Senators and other U.S. elected representatives to support INS’ concerns about IMH’s activities in Viet Nam as the basis for detaining eight families with their nine children in Ho Chi Minh City.

To address the allegations both in the newspaper article and in the NOIDs, IMH has been gathering documentation to rebut every point in the NOIDs and refute every allegation in the article. We are still gathering documentation on a daily basis, but would like to share some of the information we've already collected:

IMH response to allegations of baby trafficking in the World Security Newspaper on December 27, 2001. [This is a very large (1.2MB) PDF document, so please allow time to download if at first you see a blank page. This seems to be a particular problem for AOL users.]