International Adoption - The Basics of Adopting from another Country
By Patrick Phillips

The issue of “Foreign Adoption”, “Overseas Adoption”, “International Adoption”, “Intercountry Adoption”, call it what you will or prefer, has been raised a great many times. The common misconception of a well meaning family from the developed world carrying a suitcase full of cash and dubious papers to some shady third world agency and coming home with a child wrapped in blankets seems to arise every now and then. Probably because occasionally (and I emphasise the word occasionally) this does indeed happen but on a great many more occasions (and very much in the majority of cases) the process is entirely different, well run and works extremely efficiently.

This article serves by and large to provide a basic understanding of what International Adoption (Foreign Adoption etc) is all about and the basic International Legislation that covers it.

Firstly the basic question arises time and time again, why do many International Governments allow Adoptions from another Country to happen when there are probably still a great many children within the country who need new families. Well basically the answer is as follows, although there are many children at home looking for an adoptive family, there are still many children in other countries who need homes. Adoption from abroad may be their only opportunity to belong to a permanent family. For humanitarian reasons, Government allow International Adoptions to proceed where:

• the child cannot be cared for in any suitable manner in his/her country;

• the adoption would be in the best interests of the child and with respect to the child's fundamental rights as recognised in international law; and

• the adopter has been assessed as eligible and suitable to adopt from abroad by a registered adoption agency (a local authority or voluntary agency registered to work on International Adoptions).

Currently it can take anything from 1-3 years in total to adopt a child from another country, depending on the adoption system in the other country and the availability of suitable children for adoption.

The world of International Adoption has by it’s very nature needed very tight legislation – after all child trafficking is an extremely abhorrent, cruel and nasty practice (not to mention very illegal) and now it appears that this legislation is now starting to take effect. The major item of International Law that covers International Adoption is the Hague Convention.

The 1993 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption aimed to establish an international system of co-operation that aims to prevent the abduction of, the sale of, and illegal traffic in children. The Convention requires that International adoption happens only when it is in the child's best interests, that all adopters are assessed and approved as suitable to adopt and that no profit is made from the adoption process.

Where an adoption has been completed under the Hague Convention the child will automatically receive Citizenship from the Country that you or your partner originates from. The adoption will be automatically recognised in all other contracting Countries.

Taking this all into account is it still possible to legally adopt a child from a Country that has not either recognised or been recognised by the Hague Convention? The Answer to this question is yes, but if the adoption order is not recognised in the country of either origin or your own, you will need to re-adopt the child in a domestic court from your own country for the adoptive relationship to be legally recognised.

What is the process for adopting from a Hague Convention country? You should first contact your local authority social services department or a registered adoption agency to discuss your plans to adopt a child from a Hague Convention country. Your agency will provide advice and information about adoption that will set out the legal requirements and procedures for adopting from a Hague Convention country.

If you are eligible to adopt under the Hague Convention, the social services department or a registered voluntary adoption agency will carry out an assessment of your suitability to adopt, involving in-depth social worker interviews, police and medical checks and interviews with your personal referees (privately commissioned assessments are not acceptable).

The information gathered, on which you will have an opportunity to comment, will be presented to the social services department or adoption agency's panel. The panel will consider the assessment and make a recommendation about whether you are suitable to adopt.

A senior manager at the agency will then, taking the panel's recommendation into account, make a decision about whether to approve you as suitable to adopt.

An Adoption Order severs all legal ties with the birth family and confers parental rights and responsibilities on the new adoptive family. The birth parents no longer have any legal rights over the child and they are not entitled to claim him back. Your child becomes a full member of your family; they take your surname and assumes the same rights and privileges as if they had been born to you, including the right of inheritance.

Bringing up a child can be mutually rewarding and great fun, as well as being hard work and a big responsibility. This is especially so when you choose to bring up a child who was not born to you.

As of the time of writing this article (things do change from time to time) a fairly comprehensive list of member governments who have signed up to this convention can be found at: http://www.internationaladoptioninformation.com/hagueconventionmembercountries.html

Patrick is the principal advisor for International Adoption Information, an independent advisory organisation in Social and Child Welfare. http://www.internationaladoptioninformation.com, http://www.internationaladoptionusa.info and http://www.internationaladoptionresourcecentre.com

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Tags: Adoption General Information, adoption in the uk, african adoption, scottish adoption records, taiwan adoption agency, us adoption agency handling belize adoptions

 

Today in the United States and Canada people who wish to adopt children will have to wait years and years. Sometimes people decide that it is not worth the hassle and they give up trying to adopt a child. This is a shame as there are children in the world today that deserve to have a loving family and they never get it. They are left in foster homes and orphanages until they are eighteen when they can go out on their own. In some cases the foster homes are good but there are some that are bad.

As a result of the long list of people waiting for an adoption to go through they start looking for other options. Today more and more people are opting for international adoption. International adoption is different from adoption in the United States or Canada. This form of adoption is an essentially a private matter between an individual or couple and a foreign courts which operates under that country's law and regulations. If you wish to take this route to adopt a child the United States authorities cannot intervene on the behalf of the adoptive parents.

For those people who are interesting in international adoptions they can obtain information from the Department of State. This could be information on the adoption process in various countries as each country may have different rules and regulations when dealing with international adoptions. You can also get information that deals specifically with the United States legal requirements to bring a child in the United States from a foreign country. There are also websites that can visit to obtain such information. These sites can explain the adoption process to you and you can even submit questions about anything that you want to know. The information is available twenty-four hours a day.

While there are certain things that the State Department can do for you to help in any way there are things that it cannot do. The State Department cannot become directly involved in the adoption process in another country. Nor can they act as legal counsel or representation of the prospective adoptive parents. They are also unable to order that an adoption take place or that a visa be issued. While the State Department cannot help they can put you in contact with someone that can.

About the Author

James Hunt has spent 15 years as a professional writer and researcher covering stories that cover a whole spectrum of interest. Read more at www.guide-to-adoption.info

Tags: adoption agency, Adoption Announcement, Adoption by Country, Adoption by State, Adoption General Information, international adoption

Christian International Adoption - Why We Chose Haiti For Our International Adoption
By Mike DeJona

Hello and thanks for stopping by!

My name is Mike and my wife Jenny and I adopted an awesome 4 year old girl from Haiti, the 2nd poorest country in the world. We found an orphanage in Haiti that had a tremendous need for Christian parents to step up and see the need for rescuing children who need to come out of poverty, hunger and no way out.

We began searching for the right path to take in 2004 and were led to an orphanage that was being run by an awesome Haitian pastor. He has dedicated his entire life to helping get the kids adopted out of Haiti. We actually did not go through an agency but dealt with orphanage directly, which they were very, very good to work with. They are Christians and so we felt comfortable that everything would be on the up and up.. and it was.

Haiti is the 2nd poorest country in the world and the government has put a ban into effect that once a child turns 16 they are unable to be adopted.

Kayden (who we adopted) qualified for the state spelling bee and the state speech meet after only being in the U.S for 1 1/2 years, we consider that pretty amazing considering the fact that she could hardly speak any English when she arrived in the U.S.

We actually met Kaydens birth parents, it was very moving and powerful experience, they simply could not provide enough food for their kids. We now help support them. The average yearly income is $300.

Reasons why we chose Haiti:

1. The cost. It's only $9000 for the first child and if you adopt more than 1 you get a discount. Our government gives a $10,000 tax credit so it balances out.

2. Its close. It still is international but its only an hour or two off the tip of Florida, a round trip ticket was only $500 from Iowa. We chose not to adopt locally because of the risk the birth parents wanted their child back.

3. It's safe. No funny business from the government wanting money under the table.

4. Convenience. We didn't have to spend the extra money going through an agency.

5. God led us to them!

If you are looking for a place to adopt from that is priced well, close to the U.S and is run by Christians, this is a great place. There is a yahoo chat group of past, present and future adoptive parents from this orphanage that you might like to get involved with and ask questions. Go to groups.yahoo.com and type in HCRM in the search box.

Mike Dejona and his wife intend to adopt again from Haiti soon. You can see pics of Kayden here at http://www.mljl.info/ChristianInternationalAdoption.html and you can visit the orphanage to see kids that are available for adoption here at http://www.haitichildrensrescuemission.org/newsite

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Tags: Adoption General Information, antioch adoptions, christian adoption, christian adoption agencies, christian adoption services, christian international adoption

 

Hardly a day seems to pass by nowadays without some emissary and entourage from a well-heeled location somewhere in the west jetting off to some third world country and returning days later having effectively bought themselves a shining bright new baby. These actions in themselves has in a rather brutal way highlighted one of the great iniquities of modern life

It is hard not to view these incidents as just this year's fashion statement on behalf of the rich and famous.

Last year it was "let's all campaign against the brutality of hunting animals for their fur" and this year it's a case of lets take our obscene amounts of money and go and buy a baby from Africa.

There are several issues on different levels here and on one hand we have to accept that it is every child's right to live in a happy, stable and loving family unit where possible, a right that is sadly all too lacking for about 95 percent of the worlds children. On the other hand you have to accept that in some cases money isn't necessarily the Universal Panacea for the World ills that we sometimes believe it to be.

More often than not there is an upsurge in this sort of activity right after some natural disaster of almost biblical proportions has wiped out either entire coastlines or communities built out of brick living on some geophysical fault line somewhere have suffered a massive earthquake.

In itself there is nothing wrong with this supposed outpouring of communal generosity but sometimes you have to try and view these activities from the other side to obtain a better rounded picture of what is exactly the best course of action to take here.

Adoption experts say the best thing people can do is to donate money to causes that directly help the children. They say it's wrong to take a traumatized child away from the environment that they have grown up in. "Adoptions, especially inter-country ones, are inappropriate during the emergency phase as children are better placed being cared for by their wider families and the communities they know," said the charity Save the Children in a statement released Jan. 6, 2005. International Adoption needs to be well planned "The last thing they need to do is be rushed away to some foreign land," said Cory Barron of Children's Hope International, an American adoption agency. "We have to think of the child first."

Perhaps that is the problem with so many designer International Adoptions nowadays - the parties involved don't necessarily think of the interests of the child first rather a case of satisfying the maternal longings of people who should know better and most cases don't.

Perhaps now would be a good time to start to implement and effect that change.

About the Author

Stephen Morgan writes regularly on social matters and is editor of http://www.adoptionusa.info http://www.internationaladoptioninformation.com and http://www.internationaladoptionusa.info

Tags: Adoption by Country, Interacial Adoption, international adoption

International Adoption Resources
By Peter Emerson

There is plenty of information available online and offline to guide you through every step in adopting a child from another country. The Internet is a vast storehouse of information on international adoption, with sites on adoption agencies, adoption information, and country-specific adoption information from the United States' point of interest. The American government also has lots of online information on the laws and regulations in the country regarding international adoption.

Adoption.com is a large online library covering anything that is even remotely connected with adoption, including parenting, upbringing of foster children and adopting. Specific resources on international adoption cover the A-Z of the entire process, from getting medical advice to the types of adoption, legalities, monetary concerns and country specific information.

Adoption.org covers this process from the adopted child's point of view, and has information for kids trying to seek out their original parents. This website is an adoption resource in the real sense of the word, as it carries advertisements of prospective parents and articles on related subjects. International adoption is given many full web pages of solid information on laws, procedures, books, camps and other logistics of the adoption process. The website also provides country-specific guides to international adoption.

The United States government travel website provides extensive resources on international adoption and the formalities associated with it. The URL http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/ covers areas related to international adoption, including country-specific information, visa statistics of orphans and other related facts. The website also outlines the involvement and limitations of the government in the process of international adoption. It also provides an online booklet that is a complete guide to anybody wishing to adopt a child from a foreign country.

For more resources on international adoption, you can also go to http://international.adoption.com/ and www.mapsadopt.org. Some good books on international adoption can also be found at www.tapestrybooks.com

International Adoption provides detailed information on International Adoption, International Adoption Agencies, International Adoption Services, International Adoption Resources and more. International Adoption is affiliated with Baby Adoption Showers.

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