The “Children in Families First Act of 2013”
(http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1530), sponsored by Democratic
Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, begins with the assumption that “The people
of the United States recognize and believe that children must grow up in
permanent, safe, and nurturing families in order to develop and thrive.”
Unfortunately, that underlying assumption by the Senator and her co-sponsors is
not supported by the changes proposed to adoption law and regulation in the act
itself.
Senator Landrieu makes many authoritative-sounding
assertions that lack any evidentiary support in social literature and studies.
For example, while neglect in an institutional setting should certainly be
avoided, there is nothing that shows that long-term foster care arrangements
with area foster families is detrimental to child development, and the ability
of a child to thus remain in their native culture can and should be seen as a
significant advantage.
The goal of the bill is to “realign the United States
Government’s current operational system for assisting orphans and vulnerable
children, and processing intercountry adoptions.” Thus, the primary goal of the
bill is not to seek to improve the domestic adoption program inside the United
States, but to impose United States goals and desires upon the rest of the
world. The bill, for example, will require each sending country to annually
report to the United States Department of Homeland Security how many children
are “living without families,” to what extent “family permanence solutions are
being utilized,” and other detailed reporting requirements. It is not clear why
other countries would or should feel obliged to provide this information, but
the bill seems to assume that such reporting can be accomplished by legislative
fiat.
Although the subsidiarity principle (placing children
domestically as a first priority) is recognized by the authors of the bill,
under this legislation both in- and out-of-country options would be considered
simultaneously, with preference given for whichever method results in the
quickest adoption. Thus, under the terms of this act, if an infant child could
be adopted within a month through international adoption and six months through
domestic adoption, the act gives preference to the international adoption.
This, in effect, negates any deference to the subsidiarity principle as
codified in the Hague Agreement.
The underlying assumption among those in the adoption
industry, including the authors and supporters of this bill, is that the
collapse in international adoptions in recent years is due to increased
administrative and regulatory burdens on sending countries, adoption agencies,
and potential adoptive families. The conventional wisdom is that there are
millions of orphans that could find permanent homes if the governments of the
world would just get out of the way. The “Children in Families First Act of 2013”
thus seeks to convert the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from a
participant in the international adoption arena to its overseer.
But the facts are that the decline in international
adoptions has been the result not of increased regulations and oversight, but
adoption scandals in the sending countries themselves. China, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Guatemala, Ethiopia, and nearly every other large program collapsed
or is collapsing under the weight of baby-buying and other unethical practices. The “Children in Families First Act of 2013” does not address this reality, and
imposes no new safeguards to make the world’s international adoption program
more secure, transparent or ethical.
As concerned parents of adoptive children from around the
globe, PEAR feels passionately that steps must be taken to improve the
transparency and ethical standards of the world’s adoption programs. We support changing the U.S. definition of child trafficking, for example, to include
trafficking for purposes of adoption. But the “Children in Families First Act
of 2013” does little to increase the reliability and transparency of the
international adoption programs in the world.
For additional information on the Act, see: http://www.adoptionbirthmothers.com/children-in-families-first-chiff/
Ethics, Transparency, Support
~ What All Adoptions Deserve.
http://www.pear-now.org/
