Haitian Adoption Push

In the midst of every disaster, people are focused on how it personally effects them and their families. Prospective adopters, have a singualr focus on the children they are in the proces sof adopting.

As when Guatemala closed its adoptions because of corruption, Haiti's earthquake, has left adoptions "in the pipeline" - promised but not yet delivered.

Adoption agencies and prospective parents across the United States are making their voices heard loud and clear with articles in every newspaper and on TV news, orchestrated by Tom DiFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services.

In addftion to the children themselves,they are also concerned about that "government officials who deal with adoption cases may be missing, hurt, or otherwise focused on the disaster" - imagines that! - which means the adoptions won't go through.

Of an estimated 50,000 children who were living in Haitian orphanages when Tuesday's earthquake hit.  But the concern is focused on the 800 and 900 of the children were in the process of being adopted by families in the United States and an additional 1,500 had been matched with European families, mostly in France and the Netherlands.


While bodies are still being dug out of rubble, and tens of thousands are verging on starving...,

"The orphans need to be granted refugee status and allowed to come home to their adoptive parents," said Allison Garwood of Los Angeles, California, who adopted a boy from GLA and brought him home last year. "The U.S. needs to not only allow but demand that children be sent to their adoptive families right away."

"I would like to see the international community come up with a plan for the children that have been adopted by European, Canadian, and American citizens of how these children can go to their adoptive parents' countries, either under refugee status or emergency status of some sort,"  Dixie Bickel, director of God's Littlest Angels orphanage just outside Port-au-Prince told CNN.

Hopeful adopters are urging foreign governments to accept Haitian orphans on humanitarian grounds,
They are seeking emergency visas and passports to help push through adoptions that were stalled after the quake.