What is MOI?

MOI, stands for the Ministry of Interior. It used to be that adopted children could travel to their forever family on a Haitian passport that was issued at any time during the adoption process. That passport was in the adopted child's birth last name (when a child is adopted, his/her last name changes to the adoptive family's last name).

With UNICEF's increased scrutiny into Haitian adoptions, the Haitian government decided to add an additional step after the adoption and to only permit adopted children to leave on a passport that had the adopted last name.

That is how the MOI step really came about (before that time, documents were always checked over by the Buereau de Juritique inside of MOI, but it was usually a quick process).

Now, in order to obtain an adoption last-name passport, the orphanage has to submit all the original related Haitian documents to the Immigration office. That is the first step in obtaining the passport.

The immigration department brings the document file to MOI where the documents are studied for any mistakes. That is step two.

While the document file is inside of MOI, the orphanage representative has to go to MOI and do the "long form" or also called "interview form" where additional information is provided about the birth family, the adopted child and the adoptive family. A two-page form is filled out and passport photos of the adopted child and adoptive parents are glued onto that form. The form stays in MOI as a record of adopted children who are leaving the country. That is step three.

If there are any mistakes on the documents, then the orphanage representative is responsible for getting the mistakes taken care of. That is step four (if there are mistakes). The orphanage rep. brings any corrected documents back before the file can be signed out.

The Director of Political Affairs signs a letter that authorizes the issuance of the passport. Then the file and letter is taken back to Immigration by one of the MOI employees.

At that point, the orphanage rep picks up the documents from Immigration (sorry, I had mistakenly written "MOI" - it should have said "Immigration") and gets the actual passport application ready. The application and photos are submitted to Immigration and they issue a Haitian passport in the child's adopted name.