|
|
|
| |
|
|
Newscap is now on summer schedule, with only occasional columns, until August 25.
July 17, 2008. Why Citizenship Should Always Be A Top Priority. U.S. citizens who adopt internationally and who have full and final adoptions of their children in the birth country are now usually accorded the benefit of having their children become citizens automatically when the children arrive in the United States. But the automatic citizenship provisions do not apply to children who don't have a full and final adoption, where only one parent has traveled or who were adopted before the citizenship law changed in 1998. Now a 15 year old girl, adopted in 1994 from Guatemala, is facing the real possibility of being deported. She does not have citizenship and her parents' efforts to obtain citizenship for her have been blocked by U.S.CIS which maintains that her adoption could be fraudulent. The adoption agency has gone out of business, making the struggle for evidence a very difficult one. More Information.
July 16, 2008. McCain Rethinks Comments on Gay and Lesbian Adoption. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has clarified his remarks of published in last Sunday's New York Times apparently opposing Gay and Lesbian adoption. McCain is quoted as having said, "I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption." After facing significant criticism, the McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds rephrased the Senator's position as follows: "Senator McCain's expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible. He recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. John McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative." More Information.
July 15, 2008. A Matter of Justice. Today Judith Leekin will be sentenced in federal court in Manhattan for systematically torturing the 11 children she adopted using four different aliases in New York City a decade ago. Leekin's spent the $1.68 million she received from the child welfare system on her own lavish lifestyle. Morever, Leekin physically abused and kept restrained the children she had adopted, all of whom had physical or mental challenges. She also denied these children, with whom she had moved to Florida, any chance at an education. Whatever sentence Leekin receives will not be long enough. More Information.
July 14, 2008. Vietnam Update. Two weeks ago, on July 1, the Vietnamese Department of International Adoption (DIA) stopped accepting new applications from U.S. parents seeking to adopt from Vietnam. Earlier in the spring, the DIA had announced the July 1 date for ending application acceptance and at the same time stated that the last referrals would be given on September 1, 2008, the date of the expiration of the Memorandum of Understanding between the U. S. and Vietnam which governs intercountry adoption from Vietnam to the U.S. While the July date has come to pass, the September deadline is still unconfirmed. We have heard rumors that the negotiations between the U.S. and Vietnam on a new MOU are continuing; according to some sources at a speedier clip than before. However, it appears that the uncertainty over the fate of in process ICA cases from Vietnam will continue right down to the expiration date of the current MOU.
Center for Adoption Policy (CAP)
Web site created and maintained by
|
