The Great Christmas Debate
Likely the most important question posed on any blog at any time, which is the best animated Christmas story of all time? The Grinch or Charlie Brown?
I know there are many others that are quite good – Rudolph, Frosty and Santa Claus is Coming to Town, to name a few, but I’d like to narrow it down to these two. And, to avoid any confusion, I’m talking about the cartoon version of the Grinch (the classic) and not Ron Howard’s live-action version. The name of one of my dogs gives away my preference, so I’ll refrain from voting.
Great news and less than great news
So, my agency has actually submitted an I-600 for one of the families a few months ahead of me, which I think is fantastic. Today’s not so great news? I have managed to get myself a case of conjunctivitis (for those of you, like me, not in the know, that’s the dreaded pink eye). I could pretend that the baby gave it to me, but since he’s thousands of miles away, I don’t think anyone’s going to buy it. The reason this isn’t actually bad news? No office time for me until I’m no longer contagious.
Tracy on corruption and moral relativism
Tracy, mom to the adorable Noah and Zoe, made me think a bit more about corruption in adoption. I think generally we’re differing on of the semantics on what constitutes “corruption.” I believe that there are both legal and ethical components of corruption. There are obviously differences in US and Vietnamese law, so as a basic premise, adoptions in Vietnam need to comply with both sets of laws. The problems we’ve seen recently appear to imply that Vietnam law may have been complied with (or not stringently enforced), while US visa law and regulations may have been violated. Actually, as we won’t get the details on what caused the NOIDs, this is really speculation on my part.
As Tracy suggests, I’m sure discrepancies in paperwork occur, even though we would all like it to be the case that they don’t. Am I saying that an adoption must be considered to be corrupt if any alteration has been made to any adoption paper? Probably not. But I do think we need to be extremely careful about going down this slippery slope. Moreover, as an attorney who is in the process of adopting, I would be crazy to ever advocate violating the law!
Personally, I think the more interesting part of Tracy’s comment relates to the ethics of adoption. She mentioned that she wasn’t sure whose ethics should apply to international adoptions (the sending country’s, or those of the receiving country). I actually don’t believe there are differences in ethics.
I am not a moral relativist (someone who believes that there are no moral absolutes, or that moral truths differ from society to society (or even person to person)). I am a moral realist. I believe there is one truth underlying an ethical principle (even if I don’t always know what that truth is – that black is black, white is white and there should be no gray (the only gray is what we don’t yet understand)). I don’t believe there is one truth here and possibly another in another culture (e.g., that one person may hold the belief that slavery is acceptable, another person holds the belief that it is not acceptable, and both people are right). Having said that, I do believe we should be tolerant of most other beliefs. I just don’t believe that we have to agree with those beliefs, if that makes sense.
In fact, I think most people are moral realists, even if they have been conditioned to think that they are moral relativists (see the slavery hypo – I’m betting you don’t believe both statements are true). In our culture, we’re taught from an early age that we shouldn’t judge others; that their opinions are as valid as our own. I generally believe this. This does not mean that I think that those opinions are actually correct, though.
So, as this relates to adoption, I don’t think there is one set of ethics in Vietnam and one in the US. I think the ethical principles underlying adoption are the same in each country. For example, if someone were to say that it might be ok in Vietnam to manipulate a few pieces of paperwork because in the end the baby being placed for adoption would have a better life in the US, I’d say that was unacceptable. And, please believe me, that I’m very relieved that that cursory determination in my case (via the I-600 procedure) regarding “my” child’s paperwork will occur before I meet this little boy. If I were to find out something different after I brought him home, would I feel the same? I think I would, but I can’t imagine a case where I would actually return him to Vietnam if I were to find out after the fact that there had been an issue with his paperwork (unless I became aware of an actual case of coercion). I would, however, forever question how to deal with that matter.
While I don’t always agree with the opinions of former PAPs who are now APs, I do agree with Tracy that my feelings towards what is right and what is wrong in adoption might at some point change. I just don’t believe that that means that what is actually right and what is actually wrong has changed. It’s more that my particular circumstances may have changed so that I might be more expansive in my determination of what’s acceptable.
Just wondering
Are any families actually in Vietnam right now for their G&R? Has anyone received their I-600 approval? Just wondering what the process is like now. My agency has yet to actually submit an I-600, from what I understand (and I’m well behind others in terms of waiting). I know a few have been filed by other agencies, but I was wondering where people stand (anyone actually been approved yet? how long is it taking agencies to accumulate the required docs, etc.?).
What I’ve learned from other blogs
- Anyone who currently uses an agency that (a) has ever received a NOID, (b) refers children from a province where a NOID has been issued, or (c) has referred a child that was the subject of an investigation, is a morally bankrupt (or stupid) person, interested only in a quick referral, and may be willing to engage in corruption.
- Anyone who used such an agency in the past (who probably received a “quick referral” back when agencies had them to give and is now home with the child such agency matched them with) is ok, and their adoption is not tainted, so long as they actively denigrate that agency, attack the agency’s clients or bemoan their naivety in choosing the agency.
- Anyone who is with one of the agencies that has not (yet) received a NOID, referred a child from one of the questionable provinces or been the subject of an investigation (of which we are aware) is morally and ethically superior to all.
Clearly, the subject is now closed. All of you in category 1 need to walk away (well, run, really) from your agency (don’t worry about the fact that you still may not have evidence that the agency (and not others in the provinces or at the orphanages themselves) was engaged in wrong-doing or forfeiting the fees you’ve paid, the righteousness you’ll feel from doing so will more than make up for it) and go sign on with one of the “highly ethical” (according to whom, I’m still not sure) agencies. The only tip I have on finding an agency in category 3 is that apparently the agency has to have signed on over 200 clients, all of whom have paid fees and yet are not going to see a referral for probably 2+ years. Evidently, it’s highly ethical to bank that cash while you’re holding your clients back from even starting on their dossiers, but who am I to judge?
I guess we don’t have to consider the fate of the children in the provinces where the category 1 agencies are licensed. Since those agencies are engaged in baby snatching and coercion, I guess that all of those children will be reunited with their birth parents and live happily ever after. Thank you all for setting me straight.
Kiva, anyone?
I need to step away from the bitterness and rancor in the Vietnam adoption community for a while. Think about the irony of that. Well-meaning people wanting to do good in the world by helping a child are attacking each other personally. What is wrong with that picture? Where is the tolerance we would hope these people as parents would teach their children?
Before I slip back into that, I wanted to remind myself that corruption doesn’t permeate the world. That you can do good for people without worrying whether you’re engaged in a crime. I received an email today from another organization with which I work. It’s called Kiva at www.kiva.org. I didn’t know much about microfinance before I started volunteering with them, but I encourage you to check it out. Kiva lets you make a small loan to a small business around the world. You get to choose which business you fund (e.g., you want to help a single mother, you get to decide). The amounts loaned to these people are extremely small in our world (under $1000 and Kiva wants individuals to contribute no more than $25 per loan) and the repayment of such loans is almost 100%. A very little goes a very long way.
Other than the fact that I get to choose who I lend to, the funds actually get repaid to my account, so I get to reinvest the funds that are repaid. All of my loans have been repaid or are on time on their repayments, so the funds just get passed on to another person trying to build their business.
This picture above is one of the women whose loans I’ve funded.
Cut and run?
An interesting comment from Emanual prompted me to consider again whether adoption is inevitably corrupt. I’ve been devouring material in the past few months trying to understand how corruption occurs and whether it’s possible to have an ethical adoption. I’m certain that ethical adoptions occur, so I don’t believe the answer is to cut and run. I think the answer is for us as PAPs to both be proactive in seeing that our agencies are ethical and for us to make sure that we ourselves behave ethically.
We all need to stand up for integrity in adoption. Check out your agency either before you sign, or if you’re already with them, check them out now. This is extremely difficult work – you are never going to get adequate information – at some point you’re going to have to make a judgment call and rely on your instincts. Ask your agency the hard questions – don’t rely on an assumption that someone else must have asked the questions before you. Demand answers to these hard questions. Don’t let yourself be fed rhetoric that any agency could give you. If you don’t get the answers you need on your first phone call. Call again. The agency should not get frustrated at the fact that you’re checking them out.
If you’re able, do a docket search for litigation against your agency. I checked many, and believe me (or don’t – do your own research), there are a lot of cases that have been filed against agencies on the so-called “approved list.” On certain boards, you will see one civil case against one agency cited time after time, as if it is the only salient piece of litigation out there. This case has yet to be decided, and could simply be based on groundless accusations, but it is treated as if it were a decision from the US Supreme Court condemning this agency. But, two considerations about litigation. First, do not assume that just because a case is filed against an agency that the claims made in that case are true – this is America, and we use our civil courts not only for justice but also for satisfying our vendettas. And second, do not assume that just because you hear no references of litigation against the agencies that are considered to be ethical that there is no such litigation. You’d be surprised.
Look at Guide Star for details on both your agency and their charitable foundation (almost all have them). See where the money goes. Understand how corporations work. There’s been a lot on the boards about the “greedy agencies” just wanting to get more clients in the door for fees. But the factor a lot of people seem to forget is that these are NON-profit corporations. These agencies aren’t distributing dividends to their stockholders, they’re not making a profit. The employees in my agency are not well paid and they’re not picking up extra on the charitable foundation side. I’ve checked. The only way they’re pocketing any real money is if they are siphoning off the international fees or getting kick backs from corrupt facilitators. Show me where that is occurring and I’ll do more than point my fingers at them, but until I have something looking like proof, I will not.
We live in a culture where the mere mention of the word “corporation” gets people in a lather. But, people, these are not the oil companies we detest so much. These are agencies whose sole purpose is to find families for children without them. That is what adoption is about. It’s not about you or me or our desire to have a child. It’s not about the fact that you may have been trying to get pregnant for 10 years. It’s about orphans who have a bleak future, who are possibly malnourished and languishing in orphanages in countries that experience poverty at a level you and I cannot understand. It’s about finding homes for children who, if not adopted, are going to be cast aside from the orphanage around age 15, left to fend for themselves in countries that don’t even have the limited safety net we have here. So, do I think we give up on adoption? No way.
My desire to adopt was formed when I was a child. There are millions of children in this world who need families, and I truly believe that those of us who are capable have a responsibility to take care of them. However, there are evil people in this world, people who will prey on those desperate to have a family, who are willing to buy or steal children for a fee. Soon after countries open to international adoption, these monsters come out of the woodwork; that seems to be the cycle. But, I don’t think that these people play a part in the majority of adoptions. I believe they’re fairly rare, but once they’re discovered, we jump to the conclusion that this is the typical behavior. To make that leap, though, I think we have to assume that most people are evil, which I will not do. These people certainly exist, but I will not let them keep me from giving a child a future. Will I adopt from Vietnam? I certainly hope so, but it will be in an ethically sound way. Once I understood more about the gender issue, I became open to either gender (and how crazy was it that I wasn’t before?). I’m going to continue to think critically throughout the process. I’m not going to turn a blind eye to questionable paperwork, ignore red flags or engage in questionable behavior. I believe that if I do, I become complicit in this corruption. That’s just not going to happen.
How much corruption is too much?
The other day, I read on one of the boards a query from a PAP asking for examples of the types of corruption that are thought to be currently occurring in Vietnam (good for her). I was, however, really bothered when she followed that question with a statement that some forms of corruption are worse than others. Really? I think it was an innocent remark and I don’t mean to condemn her, but I think that it does raise an interesting point.
Is it ok to modify forms to slip them through the process, but not ok to pay a birth mother to relinquish her child? Is it ok to accede to a request for an additional $500 at an orphanage, but not ok to pay a finder’s fee? Is it ok to encourage staff at an orphanage to turn away birth parents if they return for their child, but not ok to outright kidnap a child? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say no. It’s not ok to do any of these things.
I understand that international adoption is an incredibly difficult process. That’s probably why they tell you at the outset that it’s not for the faint of heart. I understand that some families come to adoption as a last chance after years and years of attempting to have a biological family. I understand that when in country, after bonding with their child, how unimaginably difficult it must be to leave Vietnam without that child. What I don’t understand is how a person could let the desire (even desperation) to have a child override their sense of what is right and wrong.
*References to unsubstantiated stories ahead* We’ve probably all read the report of the AP in the airport in Asia who had her baby bundled up and in a sling all in an attempt to get the child into the United States without any authorities seeing that the child in her arms was not the child in the passport she was carrying. We’ve also read the stories of PAPs being told that they needed to pay the orphanage another $500 for food for the child they were adopting.
If these reports are true, and I have no way of verifying that they are (and quite honestly, I have a really hard time believing the first, while the second seems like it could be within the realm of possibility(I’m using these for the sake of examples only)), what were these people thinking? What would you do if you were in these positions? I have to hope that, if faced with an orphanage director or an in-country facilitator asking for additional fees to be paid that I would just say no. I know that there’s no way that I would try to SMUGGLE a child out of the country and into the US.
What I continue to read in blogland are accusations against agencies. I read a lot of accusations by APs from the previous round of adoptions in Vietnam of impropriety in their own adoptions, blaming it all on the agencies. And, again, I’ll say that if agencies are engaging in corrupt practices, they need to be shut down.
But there’s another element of corruption that I think we’re ignoring. While we’re quick to point fingers at agencies, I don’t see a lot of analysis of what we may have done to contribute to this. We, as PAPs cannot allow our desire to come home with a child outweigh the absolute need to have the process be ethical. I think we contribute to that in at least a couple of ways. First, we cannot all be requesting HBG AYAP ASAP (healthy baby girl, as young as possible, as soon as possible). I’m not going to turn this into a gender/SN post, but I implore those of you requesting this to think about what you’re doing. You are taxing a system that has broken under the weight of this before. If there is corruption in Vietnam, how are unethical facilitators or “finders” not going to take advantage of our American demand for these girls? Supply is short, demand is high, opportunity for unethical behavior awaits. Unlike here, in VN, there does not appear to be a reliable accounting of where our large international fees actually go. Personally, I don’t want a penny of it to go to people trying to “facilitate” this demand.
Obviously, that is a much more subtle form of corruption, one that I know a lot of people will not agree occurs. I think that we each need to think of the possibility that we might be faced with a situation where our reaction will decide the fate of our adoption. If you knew that the baby in your arms was not the same baby as the one in the passport you were carrying, what would you do? If you were told that you needed to make a “donation” to anyone in addition to the fees you had already paid in order to get “your” child home, what would you do? I know what I would do. I hope you would do the same.
Quite a week
It’s been quite a week in the Vietnam adoption community, what with the Embassy letter and all. If you, like me, need help understanding child trafficking, etc., you might want to take a look at this – http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3679&context=expresso. Of course I’m linking to a law review article, since each of his statements needs to be supported (see “Accountability”). I’m certainly not advocating any position he takes, but I found it useful in the sense of giving me an idea of what this sort of corruption is all about and how cyclical it is (what a depressing thought). It was also helpful to me from the perspective of understanding the economics involved. While other bloggers out there are quick to point fingers at a few agencies, accusing them of wrong-doing, I found it interesting to see how this sort of corruption can easily occur solely in the sending country without an agency’s involvement.
NOIDs are not necessarily a condemnation of an agency. If the Embassy / USCIS are investigating two (or more) provinces, that does not necessarily mean that the agencies that have facilitated adoptions in those provinces are corrupt. The economic incentive to engage in this horrific behavior seems to me at least to lie on the side of those receiving the vast majority of the “international fees,” the largest chunk of money we all pay in connection with an adoption, amounts that are not necessarily going to the US agencies. Might US agencies be directly involved or complicit by turning a blind eye? I’m sure that could be. But, so far, neither the Embassy nor the USCIS has named agencies responsible. Their focus appears to be on the orphanages / provinces themselves (per the Embassy letter). Nowhere in that letter did it state that US agencies themselves are involved in any of the misdeeds that were mentioned.
If impropriety is occurring in these provinces, the US agencies working there (including mine) need to immediately cease placements from there (if the government hasn’t already shut them down, as we’ve heard through the rumor mill). I’m sure they’re all considering whether to do so now. In the meantime, let’s stop the sanctimonious finger pointing and chants of “my adoption is more ethical than yours.” Let’s hope that these events are isolated and we can all get back to the days where our biggest worries were when we would get a referral or travel call.
Paperclips
Notwithstanding my last post, now that I have accepted my referral, I am counting the days until I go to Vietnam. Not clear how long it will take, but my fabulous case manager gave me the helpful advice to place the number of paperclips that represents the average number of days it typically takes from referral to travel in my province (plus a big buffer) and to move one paperclip per day to a separate pile. While I do have many many more paperclips on the waiting side, I do already have some in the other pile. Somehow I find it kind of comforting to be able to visualize it this way.
A reason to be patient
I’m really not good at being patient. Never have been. But I’ve become more patient during this adoption process. I was excited about the prospect of getting my referral, but I didn’t count the days. To me, the referral process brings up conflicting feelings. In order for me to receive a referral, a little boy had to be either relinquished or abandoned by his birth family. Think about how horrible that is. I’m constantly amazed that people seem to turn a blind eye to that.
I posted the news of my referral on my agency’s Yahoo! group. I was a little surprised when all of the individual email messages I received focused exclusively on two questions – 1 – what was my LID and – 2 – when did I get my referral, the information needed to see how long I waited (information I don’t think is appropriate to share en masse). I get that if you’re in month 18 of a two year wait that you’re destined to be tired of the process, and I get it if you’re near the point when your agency typically gives out referrals, but when I see people who are still paper-chasing trying to calculate the number of days until their referral, I’m stumped. I’m even more confused by those desperate to get their referralwho, evidently, won’t consider adopting a boy. Go figure.
To me, the focus of adoption should not be (and is not) finding a child for a prospective parent. It’s about finding a family for a child who needs one. As a result, we shouldn’t be hoping for a lot of referral’s in a month. In fact, one would hope that we’d be hoping for none. Not going to happen in our lifetime (or perhaps any), but it would be fantastic if there were no need for adoption.
An orphanage is not a baby store. The wait to referral is not like waiting for a special-order product to be made for us. These are real babies with real families, going through what I can only imagine is a personal hell, making a life-changing decision to give up their child. So, to me, saying that we want to see a lot of referral’s in a given month is akin to saying we want to see a lot of babies abandoned in the prior month.
Perhaps, in this Adoption Awareness Month, we can all try to focus on the reality of adoption. I think sometimes we get lost amongst the trees, focused solely on our feelings about our adoption. I don’t think that people really hope for children to be abandoned or relinquished (I hope they don’t). It’s a difficult balance, waiting for a referral, yet not wanting another family to go through what has to occur for us to get that referral.
What I found helped me in finding patience in my wait was thinking about what the child I hoped to adopt was going through. Looking at his beautiful, sad face in his referral photo brings me to tears, and not all of them the happy kind. I am so sorry for what he’s gone through already in his young life. What he’s lost. The fear he’s had to experience. While I know it was inevitable, I would never have wanted to accelerate that pain. I don’t think others waiting would either.
I’ll let you in on a secret…
I received my referral! He’s the most beautiful little boy in the world (ok, at least to me), and the most wonderful thing is that he was born on my grandmother’s birthday. Even in normal circumstances this would have been incredibly special to me, given how much I adore my grandmother, but she’s now in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, which makes this so bittersweet. The past few years have been very difficult for my mother, and quite honestly, no one in the family really talks about grandma because it is too painful to discuss what has happened to this beautiful woman. I’m not a religious person, but I do consider myself spiritual, and I believe it is a sign that this little boy was meant to be my son. I’m excited to meet him sometime soon. Off to gaze at his picture (again).
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Etta’s Hats
Where I’ve Been
