Back in 1990 the United States Department of States’ Office of Children’s Issues said that more than 16,930 foreign-born children were adopted. Thousands from Russia , Romania , China , India , Central and South America sought permanent homes. There are more than 600 international agencies in the U.S. waiting to help you become an adoptive parent. While there are some issues with foreign adoption, most international adoptions are successful. There are few things that the U.S. government can do when things go wrong since it is a private legal agreement.
The actual process of foreign adoption can be very overwhelming for many parents with its copious amount of paperwork, strange foreign laws and language and cultural barriers.
The first step in foreign adoption is choosing an international adoption agency. You need to find a licensed agency that will be your strongest ally during the often hard times of confusion. Adoption immigration laws are strict and complicated so you need an agency who knows the system well. The National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (NAIC) website has a list of agencies that work with certain foreign countries. Begin by asking basic questions on the agency’s policies and ask for a list of referrals or prior clients.
Here is a list of questions to help you get started:
- How long has the agency been in the business of international adoption?
- How many adoptions has the agency successfully completed? How many have failed?
- How well do they understand the culture, customs and laws of the country in which you’re seeking to adopt?
- How up-to-date are they with the current Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) regulations, as well as individual state requirements?
- What are the adoptive parents’ requirements?
- What kind of medical information is usually available on adoptive children?
- Does anyone within the agency regularly visit the foreign orphanages in which the agency is partnered?
- What is the average turnaround time from paperwork completion to adoption?
- What are the costs and what do they cover?
- What other services does the agency offer during the pre-adoption the post-adoption phases?
After you have picked an agency, you have to get a homestudy, which is a written report required by the INS and the state of residency to evaluate your potential as an adoptive parent. A licensed social worker will work with you several times, both at home and in the office, to look at your home and lifestyle. The process from paperwork to interviews to reports takes about six months to complete.
While the adoption agency begins to locate the perfect child for you (waiting list), you will fill out more paperwork and prepare for your dossier. First the I-600A form needs to be filled out; this contains things like fingerprinting. You’ll then be sent the I-71H form, which is a document detailing a particular person. Every agency requires a dossier to finalize everything with parents’ birth certificates, marriage licenses, proof of ownership or rental, employment verification, passports, homestudy document, etc. Once these papers have been approved, they are sent to the country for review.
Once it is approved by the country, you will head overseas to unite your new family. You should plan on about two weeks overseas to complete the foreign adoption process. Once your child is back in the states, a homestudy social worker will come back and do a post-placement interview about 5-6 months later.
Adoption families need to be stable families. Compared to the families that have their own biological children, divorce percentage is much lower. In the latest Norwegian survey carried of 15-19 years old adoptees, it states that 15% of their parents are divorced compared to the 25% of other Norwegian-born teenagers. Adoptive families tend to have a much more stable settlement pattern.
By Jessica Maughan