The news came as a surprise, even for those who had been praying for it. In an unprecedented move, the State Department announced on Monday that up to 900 children already on the adoption roles will qualify to leave the country and be united with their already identified U.S. families before all of their paperwork is complete.

As of Wednesday, the Embassy had processed immigrant visas for 46 orphan children whose cases were almost complete when the earthquake struck. In addition, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has granted humanitarian parole to more than 100 orphans whose adoptions where in process, and had already been matched with waiting families. That number is expected to grow daily.

On Thursday, 50 members of Congress sent an open letter to the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, and US Agency for International Development calling for a more coordinated effort to evacuate the 600+ remaining orphans that are eligible for a humanitarian parole under the international adoption policy announced on Monday.

While families who were already in the process of adopting children from Haiti before last week may have allowed themselves to dream that the earthquake could actually speed things along, hopes were dashed by early reports of buildings that housed important paperwork being leveled and the Haitian officials needed to sign off on those papers unaccounted for.

Under the new plan, humanitarian parole into the U.S may be granted to the following children: those who have been legally confirmed as orphans eligible for intercountry adoption by the government of Haiti and are being adopted by U.S. citizens; or children who have been previously identified by an adoption service provider or facilitator as eligible for intercountry adoption and have been matched to U.S. citizen prospective adoptive parents.

The on the ground task of determining which orphans may depart Haiti is an orderly process that is picking up speed, according to Whitney Reitz, branch chief, for the International Operations Division U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services . Orphanages bring kids as a group to the Embassy in Port au Prince and individually assess which type of Visa is granted based on the criteria. The children, along with an escort, leave Port au Prince on planes that are empty after delivering their relief supplies. Adoptive parents are advised not to enter Haiti or the Dominican Republic in an to attempt to locate their child, but are encouraged to email the State Department at askci@state.gov with a list of all known information about their child.

Document Request for Pending Haitian Adoption Cases:

DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has set up a special e-mail box haitianadoptions@dhs.gov to receive scanned documentation on pending Haitian adoptee orphans.  If you have already sent documentation to askci@state.gov , it will be forwarded to USCIS on your behalf.

USCIS requests that all communications from prospective adoptive parents and adoption service providers should be formatted as follows:

• Subject line: LAST NAME, First name of the adopting parent, and USCIS case number and NVC case number, if  available
• If you are adopting more than one child, please send separate e-mails for each child
• Include the name, DOB, gender of the child, and the current location of the child in Haiti
• Include any contact information for the child’s current whereabouts
• Please include a recent photograph of the child

Attachments: please limit attachments to 10 megabytes per e-mail message.  If necessary, split your communication into more than one message, and indicate in the subject line the total number of e-mails and the message number  (i.e. “1 of 2”)