Race/Ethnicity/Immigration: International Adoption in the United States

Molly Trayner

Jessica Beech

Patrick Branley

Amanda Breckner
Sarah DelTorto

Globalization has a direct impact on international adoption.  Some see it has a positive impact in which we now have a worldwide community of people who are able to communicate with each other.  With celebrities large input in international adoption and the media being so involved, it has become even more popular.

Adopting overseas can be extremely difficult for a handful of reasons and standards.  Depending on the country, the parents may have to make more than one trip overseas to complete the legal process. Some countries allow a child to be escorted to the adoptive parents' home country and the adoptive parents are not required to travel to the country of their adopted child.

There are usually several requirements after this point, such as paperwork to make the child a legal citizen of the adopting parents' country or re-adopt them. In addition, one or more follow up visits from a social worker may be required — either by the placing agency used by the adoptive parents or by the laws of the country from which the child was adopted. In the United States, citizenship is automatically granted to all foreign-born children when at least one adoptive parent is a U.S. citizen, in accordance with the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. 

Depending on the circumstances of the adoption, the actual grant of citizenship takes place either upon the child's admission to the U.S. as an immigrant or the child's adoption in the parent's home jurisdiction.  Adoption policies for each country vary widely. Items such as the age of the adoptive parents, financial status, educational level, marital status and history, number of dependent children in the house, sexual orientation, weight, psychological health, and ancestry are used by different countries to determine what parents are eligible to adopt from that country.  Items such as the age of the child, fees and expenses, and the amount of travel time required in the child's birth country, can also vary widely from one country to another.  The number of Americans adopting from other Countries has dropped intensely over the past few years.

Pros of International Adoption

• The average time frame is 12 –18 months
• The birthmother will not change her mind. The children available for international adoption must be orphans

Cons of International Adoption

• You will not get a newborn infant.
• The child’s background and family medical history may not be known
• If the child was in an orphanage, he may experience developmental delays and other problems related to institutionalization
• The child’s birthmother may have received poor (or no) prenatal care.
• The amount of paperwork can be overwhelming

There are negative sides to International adoption, Child trafficking or child laundering are two of them.  Child trafficking is a broad term that refers to the buying, selling or illegal transportation of children. Child laundering is a more precise term that refers to the stealing of children who are then sold to adoptive parents as legitimate "orphans." Often the pretence is that the child's parents are dead when in fact the child's parents are still alive. In some cases the children are stolen from the home; in other cases the children are left at orphanages for temporary care or schools for education. These then sell the children using false papers. In some cases the parents may even sell the children.

References:

http://www.uscis.gov/

http://www.adoptionservices.org/

http://international.adoption.com/