Message from Ethica

 

Dear Ethica Supporter:

Ethica has submitted comments on the U.S. Citizen and Immigration
Services (USCIS) new administrative procedures for the ratification of
the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. The USCIS comment
period ends this Monday. We encourage adoption community members to
contribute their thoughts on these procedures which can greatly
influence the way adoptions are
conducted.

Ethica’s comments can be downloaded here:
http://www.ethicanet.org/DHS_RegComments.pdf
Your own comments can be submitted through the regulations website:
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main

Step 1 � select “Documents with an Open Comment Period”
Step 2 � select “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services” from the drop down list
Step 3 � select “All Document Types” from the drop down list
Step 4 � select “Docket ID” from the drop down list, enter USCIS-2007-0008
Step 5 – select the yellow bubble under “comment” in order to contribute your views
Please notify us at info@ethicanet.org once you have submitted your comments.

Thank you for your support and for keeping adoption as a just and
ethical option for children and families.

Linh Song, MSW
Executive Director
Ethica, Inc

**********

International Adoptions and Corruption

I heard a horrible number the other day that really hit home. In Guatamala, 1 out of every 100 children are exported to the US. I know we like to use more gentle terms such as “sending country” or “recieving countries”, but really.. to me, a spade is a spade.. and countries are importing and exporting children..like olive oil. One out of every 100…we can make it look small like “only 1%” but in respect to a whole countries future, their children, being sent away to be nationals of another country..it’s almost a genocide.

Now I have always made it clear that International Adoptions are no so much my niche, but through adoption osmosis, I know much more than I ever thought I would have cared to know about various international adoption situations. And while, yes, I get it that it is horrible for kids to live in poverty so drastic that we cannot imagine, I still maintain that it sucks to take the child out of poverty because that baby has value (30K) to someone in this country, but mom and the rest of the family has no value, so we leave them in the inhuman poverty. Great, now you are still poor and missing your kid!

GottoGetaGuat? That Will Cost You 30K for a Kid

Of course it is horribly unethical to pay women for their children. No matter how much the current lack of ethics sucks, if we end up living in a world were we openly pay women for thier children, then…then.. then…oh hell..I don’t have a good altermatium.
Coz it totally happens already! In very poor developing countries ( “sending” countries..aka the exporters og babies/ goods) this alone
could coerce women to relinquish their children…and it does! There is just too muh money changing hands for the corruption to not take place. If out of the average 30K in US funds that go to “gottogetaGuat”, 2 to 10 thousand of that makes it into the actual Guat community by way of “finders” aka recruiters and the like.. right down to the mothers or the families of the mothers who are paid for their genetic contributions. This also happens in Bulgaria…. it happens in Cambodia….and and it is still going on in Vietnam.

Side note: on RegDay, there was an older CC momma with her two Cambodian girls. While she seemed a bit put off with our overall message, she was able to have a civil conversation with me. The one thing that almost felt comical to me? She made a point of telling me “how unfair” she thought it was that they had closed down Cambodia based on the “actions of one women”. She was talking about Seattle International Adoptions, run by Lauryn Galindo – who was found guilty two years later of visa fraud and money laundering related to Cambodian adoptions. The sad part is, of course, that the “actions” were not of just one woman, but had far reaching tenticals, yet, it was only for these bogus charges has any degree of justice been had. And that’s because there is virtually no laws on the books to control all the lovely loopholes in adoption…but it’s not fair..whine whine.

What’s Fair in Adoption?

I guess it all depends on how we look at “fair”. Personally, I hate it when my kids start complaining that “It’s not fair!”. Granted they usually say that in complaint to something I did or did not do to their liking. And even that is kind of hard because I do want them to desire fairness and justice, yet I get to play ultimate momma dictatorship. Yes, even sometimes I can play the hypocrite.

• Is it fair that children are born into gross poverty?
• Is it fair that anyone has to live that way?
• Is it fair that people lose thier childrem because they were born into poverty?
• Is it fair that people with means take thier children?
• Is it fair that we “save” the children and not them?
• Is it fair that anyone makes money off this?
• Is it fair that the people who “just want to save a child’ have to fork out oodles of bucks?
• Is it fair to stop all situations because of ” a few bad apples”?
• Is it fair to ignore the few bad situations because “most” adoption situations are positive?
• Is it fair to assume they are “positive” because the people who say that have the money and power?
• Is it fair that we do not hear the voices of the families left behind..or the children who have yet to grow up?
• Is it fair then that the children who have grown up and ARE speaking get called names?

or my personal peeve….
Is it fair that it’s ok to remove a child “from the only home they have ever known” as long as that “home” is an impovished nation’s hogar, or orphanage and the child is going to a “better” home in the US? Even if that child is 18 months old..or 3 or 5? Why yes..it is always such cause for celebration!
So is it fair that it is considered a terrible tragedy if a child, say at age two, might get returned to their natural family for the very same reason: It’s NOT ok to remove a child “from the only home they have ever known” if that home was an adoptive families home and the child is, yikes, going back to those pesky bio folks! Then, we are disrupting the poor kid…giving them atachment issues, etc.

How come we can’t apply the same ‘attachment’ bonding stuff to a child returning to a natural family as we do to one leaving an orphanage? Is it fair that this only works one way?
Will it be fair when the people who hold Eveyln Bennett hostage from her family use that ploy???
Is it fair too that Angelina says she won’t bring Zahara back to Africa to visit her very ALIVE mother??

Really, is adoption fair at all??