Adoption Notice

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of Consular Affairs
Office of Children’s Issues

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Change in Processing Timeline for Adoption Cases

March 5, 2010

The Department of State shares families’ concerns about recent media reports alleging direct recruitment of children from birth parents by adoption service providers or their employees. In response to these reports, the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa has implemented some changes to adoption visa processing. Adoptive parents should be aware that an I-604 (Determination on Child for Adoption, sometimes referred to as “orphan investigation”) must be completed in connection with every I-600 application. Depending on the circumstances of the case, this investigation may take up to several weeks or even months to complete. Therefore, adoptive parents should not plan to travel to Ethiopia until they have confirmed with their adoption agency that their visa interview appointment has been confirmed.

Adoption agencies submit case paperwork to the U.S. Embassy for review before the Embassy schedules the immigrant visa appointment. In some cases the I-604 determination could take several weeks or more from the time a case is submitted to the U.S. Embassy to the scheduling of a visa interview appointment. We understand that in such cases this will result in a longer period before parents are able to bring their adopted children to the U.S. However, this additional scrutiny is required to ensure that the adoption is legal under both U.S. and Ethiopian law. The U.S. Embassy will work with adoptive parents and their adoption agency to ensure that each case is processed in the most expeditious manner possible in accordance laws and regulations. Families should continue to work through their agency to schedule immigrant visa appointments and answer questions regarding pending cases.

If families have concerns about their adoption, we ask that they share this information with the Embassy, particularly if it involves possible fraud or misconduct specific to your child’s case. The Embassy takes all allegations of fraud or misconduct seriously.

The best way to contact the Embassy is by email at ConsAdoptionAddis@state.gov. Please include your name, your child’s name, your adoption agency, the date of the adoption (month and year), and, if possible, the immigrant visa case number for your child’s case (this number begins with the letters ADD followed several numbers and can be found on any document sent to you by the National Visa Center). Please let us know if we have your permission to share concerns about your specific case with Ethiopian government officials.

We strongly encourage you to register any complaint that you may have about an adoption agency in the following ways:

• You may file a complaint with the state licensing authority where your adoption agency is licensed and conducts business. The Child Welfare Information Gateway, which is maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services, provides such a list at the link below: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/reslist/rl_dsp.cfm?rs_id=15&rate_chno=AZ-0008E
  
• You may also file a report with the state’s Better Business Bureau. Following is the link to the Better Business Bureau’s website where you may file a complaint on-line: https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/getstarted.aspx
  
• If your agency is a Hague-accredited adoption service provider, you are encouraged to file a complaint on the Hague Complaint Registry located at the link below. This information will be used by the accrediting entities to evaluate the agency in connection with the renewal of its accreditation status. http://adoption.state.gov/hague/overview/complaints.html
  
  The U.S. Embassy continues to work with the Government of Ethiopia to ensure that appropriate safeguards exist to protect prospective adoptive children, their birth parents, and prospective adoptive parents. Please continue to monitor adoption.state.gov for updated information.
  

http://adoption.state.gov/news/ethiopia.html

Ethics, Transparency, Support
~ What All Adoptions Deserve.
http://www.pear-now.org/

Media: Vietnam's hill tribe children "stolen" for adoption

Vietnam's hill tribe children "stolen" for adoption

By Simon Parry Feb 23, 2010, 3:08 GMT

Hanoi - High among the jagged limestone peaks that mark Vietnam's border with Laos, Cao Thi Thu squats on the stone floor of her family's hut and pleads, 'Please help bring my daughters home.'

It is more than three years since officials came to Thu's village and offered her the chance to send her daughters - Cao Thi Lan, 3, and Cao Thi Luong, 8 - to be educated in the provincial capital. Instead, they were sold for adoption overseas.

Clutching the only photographs she has of the girls - shots ironically taken at the children's home to send out to prospective adoptive parents abroad - the pain of separation from her daughters is as sharp today as it was on the day she last saw them.

'I am sad and I am very worried,' the 35-year-old said. 'I don't even know which country they are in. I don't know if they are together or apart. They should be with their families here in Vietnam, not thousands of miles away with strangers.'

Lan and Luong were among 13 children taken away from Vietnam's smallest and least developed ethnic minority - the Ruc hill tribe - and then given to adoptive parents in Italy and the US months later in return for fees of around 10,000 US dollars per child.

A police investigation has been launched into complaints from the parents that their children were adopted without their permission but villagers fear it will be a whitewash and want foreign governments to intervene. Those pleas to diplomats have so far fallen on deaf ears.

It was in September 2006 when officials from Quang Bing province's capital Dong Hoi visited the tiny hill tribe, which numbers only 500 people.

They picked out 13 children aged 2 to 9 and offered to house and feed them at a children's social welfare centre in Dong Hoi and return them when their education and vocational training was complete, the families say they were told.

The parents - all poor farmers and most illiterate - agreed and were driven to Dong Hoi with their children where they signed consent forms placing them into the care of the local authority.

Four months later, in the Lunar New Year holiday in 2007, Thu went to visit her daughters. 'They looked well but they missed me very much. They said 'Mummy, please take us home',' she recalled.

'I couldn't bear to see them so sad so I decided to take them home. I took them by the hands and led them out of the children's home towards the bus stop - but the security guards stopped me and told me I couldn't take them away.

'The officials at the children's home said I had signed papers and had to leave them in their care. I was crying and very upset but I believed them and I went home alone.'

A year later - shortly before the 2008 Lunar New Year holiday - Thu travelled to Dong Hoi to visit her daughters again. When she arrived, she was told both girls had been adopted overseas.

'Those men lied to me,' said Thu, who has three other children. 'They said the children would return to the village when they finished school. But they sold them as if they were livestock.'

News of the children's fate spread quickly around the Ruc community villages as other parents discovered that their sons and daughters too had been sent overseas for adoption. Some were even handed photographs of their children with their new adoptive parents.

In the provincial capital Dong Hai, Le Thi Thu Ha, director of the children's home where the 13 children were taken, confirmed a police investigation had been launched into the circumstances in which the Ruc children were adopted overseas.

Ha - who recently replaced former director Nguyen Tien Ngu who handled the adoptions - insisted, 'All of the legal documents (for the adoptions) were in order. It was approved by the provincial ministry of justice and the provincial social welfare centre and it was done with the consent of the Ruc parents.

'The local police force started investigating the case a few months ago when the parents persisted with their complaints. We expect the investigation to be complete and the results announced in the first quarter of 2010.'

By the time the investigation is complete, the children will have been apart from their parents for more than four years. Despite appeals made to them nearly two years ago, neither the US nor the Italian embassies have taken up the parents' cause.

Anthropologist Peter Bille Larsen, who worked in the border area, alerted the embassies in early 2008 and is baffled by the inaction. He argues the children should be sent home however long it takes.

'I would want to see my children again even if they had been sent to the other end of the world,' he said, dismissing the idea that the youngsters were better off in relatively wealthy western families.

Asked why diplomats in Hanoi had apparently done nothing to help the families, Italy's charge d'affaires in Hanoi Cesare Bieller said that his embassy had no powers of investigation.

However, Bieller added, 'We acknowledge the importance of the task you are undertaking and we hope that your story will be received with the importance that it deserves.'

Read more: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/features/article_1535744.php/Vietnam-s-hill-tribe-children-stolen-for-adoption-Feature#ixzz0hK6kf8Hc


Ethics, Transparency, Support
~ What All Adoptions Deserve.
http://www.pear-now.org/

Letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Opposing the Families for Orphans Act

Last month, PEAR joined in with Global Action for Children in voicing our opposition to the Families for Orphans Act. The Senate version act is currently sitting in the Committee on Foreign Relations. Below is the letter sent to Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Committee and Senator Richard Lugar , Ranking Member.

February 22, 2010

The Honorable John Kerry
Chairman
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
218 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Richard Lugar
Ranking Member
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
306 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Chairman Kerry and Ranking Senator Lugar,

We are writing in strong opposition to the Families for Orphans Act, S. 1458 and are dismayed that its supporters are using the tragedy in Haiti as cause for moving forward this counter-productive legislation.

We object to the bill for the specific following reasons:

1. Instead of building on the success of offices that are already working for children worldwide, the bill needlessly duplicates the Orphans Assistance Act (PL 109-95) in some areas and conflicts with the mandate in others to the detriment of children and their families. The Families for Orphans Act calls for the establishment of a separate Office of Orphan Policy, Diplomacy and Development within the State Department. Establishing such an office would be entirely duplicative, not to mention harmful to the successful on-going coordination between U.S. government agencies supporting orphans and vulnerable children and adoption in Haiti.

The Department of State (DOS), Bureau of Consular Affairs, already has statutory authority to handle all child welfare matters that involve intercountry adoption of orphans from Haiti or elsewhere. This existing authority has taken efforts to fast-track adoptions from Haiti that were already in the pipeline and in the past few weeks has issued approximately 900 visas to pre-identified orphans eligible for adoption and in the adoption process —three times the typical number of visas issued annually to children for adoption from Haiti.

Adding an additional office in the State Department would harm rather than help children in Haiti and elsewhere. The redundancy would confuse and duplicate efforts as well as drain precious funding and resources. A more effective route would be to fund the existing PL 109-95 Secretariat (Orphans and Vulnerable Children office) which is currently, despite being unfunded, doing a heroic job of coordinating all U.S. agency efforts in Haiti on behalf of Orphans and Vulnerable Children.

2. The bill would impose expensive and impossible-to-achieve requirements on poor countries. This not only burdens already over-burdened countries with red tape, it puts the future of working programs already in place like child survival, maternal health and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in jeopardy. The Families for Orphans Act mandates a biennial census of children without permanent parental care for all member countries of the United Nations including the United States. Not only would such a census be literally impossible for countries to comply with, it would cost billions of dollars to even attempt—billions that could be used to actually assist families to care for their children.

Further, according to this legislation, if countries failed to comply with these untenable requirements, the development assistance they receive from the United States, some of which supports the very children this bill purports to assist, might be cut off.

We are all motivated to assist orphans and vulnerable children in crisis in Haiti and around the world and thank you for your dedication to these too-often overlooked kids. Yet this bill is not the solution they need. We are worried that it is being rushed through Congress without enough public discussion regarding how it will impact longstanding U.S. global programs that are already in place to help these children and their communities grow.

Therefore, we strongly urge you to decline to consider this ill-conceived bill and instead fully fund existing mechanisms, such as the Orphans Assistance Act, that are doing good work on behalf of orphans and vulnerable children around the world.

Sincerely,

American Adoption Congress
The Episcopal Church
Ethica
Global Action for Children
Global AIDS Alliance
Mothers Acting Up
Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church & Society

Victor Groza
Grace F. Brody Professor of Parent-Child Studies
Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH

Karen Smith Rotabi, PhD, LMSW, MPH
www.HagueEvaluation.com

Richmond, VA

cc: Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Senator Russell D. Feingold, Senator Barbara Boxer, Senator Robert Menendez, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Senator Robert P. Casey, Senator Jim Webb, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Edward E. Kaufman, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator Bob Corker, Senator Johnny Isakson, Senator James E. Risch, Senator Jim DeMint, Senator John Barrasso, Senator Roger F. Wicker and Senator James M. Inhofe

Ethics, Transparency, Support
~ What All Adoptions Deserve.
http://www.pear-now.org/

PEAR Releases Second Series of State Directories of Adoption Resources

Link to Directories updated on May 14, 2010
This library is housed at http://www.pear-now.org/resources.html , where you can freely download the pdf directories .

Series 2 has four directories: California, Arizona, Hawaii, and Nevada.

Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform (PEAR) does not officially endorse any listing in these directories. The contents are provided for informational purposes only as a community service.
PEAR has no means of certifying the competence or quality of practice of any practitioner. PEAR makes no representations, warranties, guarantees or promises on behalf of or for those listed, and does not assume liability or responsibility for any service or product provided.

Each state directory is arranged into four sections: Health, Education, Bureaucracy, and Support alphabetically by city.

Health contains Early Intervention information and licensed practitioner listings. Each listing has a designation for specialty or service with a PEAR. See the index at the beginning of the document for definitions. Residential Treatment Centers are included here.

Education contains tutoring, remediation, specialized schools & interventions by non-licensed practitioners.

Bureaucracy contains information about:
Apostilles & Authentications
Medicaid waivers
Better Business Bureau
State statutes on adoption
Criminal background check
Notary
Recognition of foreign adoption decree, Delayed Certificate of Birth, or Re-adoption
Social Security offices/how to obtain card
Filing consumer complaints
State adoption subsidy
Licensed agency checks
USCIS
License checks for health professionals
Vital records (birth, marriage & divorce cert.)
Hague Convention information (due diligence and complaints)

Support contains state-based support groups, web-support, and organizations. Respite care is also included here.

Keeping Directories Current
These directories will be updated at least twice yearly. If you know of any resource that assists internationally adopted children and is not on this list or if you have corrections, please email information to pveazie@pear-now.org

Check back on the PEAR website soon for the release of future state series.










Ethics, Transparency, Support
~ What All Adoptions Deserve.
http://www.pear-now.org/

UPDATE: DOS Adoption Alert - Swaziland

Swaziland

Adoption Alert

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of Consular Affairs
Office of Children’s Issues

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March 1, 2010

On February 24, 2010, the Deputy Prime Minister of Swaziland informed the U.S. Embassy in Mbabane that it will not process intercountry adoptions cases while the Department of Social Welfare completes a review of its adoption procedures. Only cases that were already with the Swaziland High Court will be processed during the review. The U.S. Embassy in Mbabane has not been provided with an expected completion date of the review.

Please continue to monitor adoption.state.gov for updated information.

http://adoption.state.gov/news/swaziland.html

Ethics, Transparency, Support
~ What All Adoptions Deserve.
http://www.pear-now.org/