WASHINGTON — After a long, bureaucratic year and a half, Mike Norton had little reason to doubt that by this weekend he’d finally welcome Joseph and Marianna, his new Chinese son and daughter, to their home in Laurel, Md.
Instead, Norton, 37, a senior director in information technology, his wife, Annie, and their now five children are living in a hotel room in Guangzhou, China, unable to leave because their adopted babies, both 20 months old, can’t get their travel visas.
The State Department’s Consular Consolidated Database, which keeps all the background check records on individuals seeking U.S. visas, started having failure issues July 19, creating a backlog.
The system went back online Wednesday but is operating at a “significantly reduced capacity,” according to the State Department, which could not say when it would be fully operational.
The cause of the failure is unknown, but State Department officials have ruled out foul play.