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I am blown away by the similar stories from this & other countries - including our own. It baffles me that people can think of a child as a commodity.
A few years ago there was a story on the news about a family from this area who were trying to adopt a child from South America (I think Peru). They’d gone to Peru to live and found a child in an orphanage and started the adoption process. They couldn’t complete it because the mother was known, but a 13 year old with a low IQ. Basically they couldn’t meet the Hague requirements. They brought the child to the US on a visitor’s visa, but could not get immigration approval. She wasn’t an ‘Immediate Relative’ so couldn’t get federal approval. In steps congressman Mike Coffman and get the family a congressional bill to basically ignore the Hague convention.
I wrote him a letter saying that while this fixed this one family’s problem, it endangered international adoptions for everyone. This was exactly the situation the Hague treaty was designed to stop - children being taken from families who were very much alive and wanting their children. Was it ‘better’ for this girl to be raised by wealthy (by Peru standards) Americans but to lose her birth family and culture? Who is to judge ‘better’?
International adoption is full of pluses and minuses. My daughter learned yesterday that because China took away her citizenship when she became an American, she can’t participate in an international event she’s been training for. Other countries give out passports easily (looking at you Italy) but China doesn’t allow dual citizenship. Somehow for the winter Olympics held in China there were all kinds of exceptions for ‘Chinese’ hockey players and skiers and skaters, but not for my kid.
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