[sak9645]

As far as the situation of adopting while living overseas and then returning to your home country, do remember that most countries have immigration laws, and not just adoption laws. Immigration laws govern the conditions under which a person who is not a citizen of your country may enter your country.

I am not at all familiar with French immigration law. As a result, I do not know whether a child you adopt outside of the traditional French adoption process -- or the children of Arche de Zoe -- would have the legal right to enter France.

In the U.S., however, we have a federal law called the Immigration and Nationality Act. This law governs the issuance of all sorts of visas -- immigrant, vistor, work, etc. -- for people wishing to come into the country.

Basically, the INA creates two main categories of adoption visas, called IR-3 and IR-4, and sets forth the terms under which they can be granted. As an example, these visas can be granted only if at least one member of a couple (or a person adopting as a single parent) is a U.S. citizen; they cannot be granted in cases where parents are legal permanent residents or on any other sort of visa. The parents must go through a specific process to determine their eligibility to adopt, including a homestudy in their state and approval by the USCIS.

The children for whom IR-3 or IR-4 visas are requested may NOT have been living with two parents prior to their adoption. They can have been living with a single parent only if he/she is unable to provide care for them at a level considered normal in the foreign country (NOT the U.S.) They may also have lost both parents to death, been abandoned, been legally relinquished with no further contact by the bio parents, or been removed from the family home by action of a legitimate court for reasons such as abuse or neglect.

If a person adopts a child overseas and either he/she or the child does not meet all the requirements, the child cannot come home unless the adoptive parents live overseas with the child in their custody for at least two years. At that time, the family can apply for a normal dependent visa for the child.

I believe that the INA needs a good bit of revision. As an example, I think that the rule about a child not being eligible for an adoption visa if he/she has been living with two parents is no longer appropriate. The law was originally promulgated because of a belief that adoptions of children who had two parents were often fraudulent -- just a convenient way of getting the child to the U.S., with no intent of changing the child's relationship to his/her bio parents. I am not sure that this is true, and I believe that if an investigation of ALL visa applications is made, as required by law, fraud will be minimized.

I also think that some of the distinctions between IR-3 and IR-4 make little sense. For example, if both parents in a married couple see a child overseas before the issuance of an adoption decree in the foreign country, the child gets an IR-3 and can become a U.S. citizen the minute he/she enters the country; however, if only one spouse in a couple sees the child overseas before the adoption is decree is issued, the adoption is not considered "full and final" and the child must be readopted in the U.S. before he/she becomes eligible for citizenship.

Still, the INA is the law of the land right now, and I observed it when I adopted my daughter I qualified to adopt as a single Mom, and my child (from China) qualified as an eligible orphan (abandoned child). Therefore, I was able to bring her home on an IR-3 visa, right after I adopted her.

With regard to the children of Arche de Zoe, I read their stories on the site you mentioned. I read French fairly well, and their stories were truly heartbreaking.
I am also not a fan of UNICEF. I believe that UNICEF, despite the good it has done in helping children overseas get an education and so on, has done a great deal to prevent orphans from finding permanent, loving families.

UNICEF tends to support the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the U.S. does not. This Convention says that foster care in a child's home country is preferable to international adoption. I simply cannot accept this, since I believe -- as most responsible adoption professionals and physicians do -- that children need PERMANENCE. Foster care, by its very nature, is impermanent.

And foster care, even in the prosperous United States, is often fraught with problems. It is difficult to recruit, train, and monitor foster families, and, unfortunately, some people wind up becoming foster parents for financial reasons. In economically depressed countries, it is even more difficult to recruit, train, and monitor foster families who will raise children with love and responsibility.

I support the principles of Hague Convention #33, which says that, if a child cannot remain with his/her own parents, or in a permanent family in his/her own country, then international adoption is preferable to impermanent foster care. Although I believe that the way the Convention was implemented in the U.S. needs some work, I am pleased that my country's government participated in the design of the Convention and recently ratified it.

But do be aware that neither the Hague Convention nor the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child supports the adoption of children whose countries are in the midst of civil war or natural disaster.In such situations, it is often difficult to know for sure who is an orphan. It is also difficult to be sure that a child does not have relatives or community members who would be willing to adopt him/her, if they could return home from hiding out across the border or living in a refugee camp, rebuild their homes, reopen their shops, and get their lives in order.

Moreover, adoption is a legal process. It involves having a legitimate government terminate the rights of a child's birthparents and create a new legal relationship with the adoptive family. If there is no legitimate government in a child's country -- or if the legitimate government cannot carry out its functions because of natural or manmade disasters -- there can be no legal adoption.

In general, most responsible adoption professionals recommend that children affected by natural or manmade disaster should be kept safe until such time as the situation settles down, a determination of their status can be made, relatives and community members can determine whether they can support additional children, and a legitimate government can sign off on a decision based on the children's best interests.

It's a delicate balance. Permanence may be sacrificed for a time, but it is generally believed that it would be a terrible tragedy to place a child for international adoption, only to learn, later, that a Mom, aunt, or neighbor was looking for that child and wanted to parent him/her.

So while I sympathize with the plight of the children of Arche de Zoe, I must say that I have some concerns about the tactics the organization used. There was NO legitimate government representing the interests of those children, and with the country in turmoil, there was much that even village chiefs and elders could not possibly know about their circumstances. Taking the children across the sea to another land and placing them for adoption may NOT have been the most moral and ethical choice.

Sharon