Twenty-three years ago, former President Bill Clinton signed the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000, following the Senate's ratification of the international treaty on adoption, the Hague Convention on Adoption. After this bill was signed into law, regulations were promulgated, adoption agencies were accredited, and the U.S. Department of State began their role as the designated "central authority" partnering with the Department of Justice's Immigration and Naturalization Services (now transitioned to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) as required by the new law. Prior to the United States joining the Hague Convention, international adoption was regulated by a patchwork of state laws, immigration regulations, and foreign countries' policies. By formalizing federal oversight, Congress hoped to create stronger partnerships with other countries to reduce corruption and enhance services to children in need of families. Though well-intentioned, the goal of helping more orphaned children find permanent families did not materialize. Instead, the total number of international adoptions fell from over 20,000 in 2004 to less than 2,000 today and the intercountry adoption process has become significantly longer and more expensive.
Other countries also experienced a decline in intercountry adoptions, though with the U.S. receiving about half of all intercountry adoptions globally, the decline in our country has an oversized impact on orphaned children. There remain hundreds of thousands of children around the world in need of a family—and many thousands of qualified parents in the U.S. and other countries who are willing to adopt them—yet bureaucratic policies delay or prevent this from happening. These delays also impact relative adoptions. For U.S. citizens who want to adopt their niece, nephew, or grandchild in another country following the death of the child's parents, the process that used to take weeks or months now often takes many years and costs exponentially more.
Congress should act now to form a robust intercountry adoption program that provides technical assistance to other countries to help them increase the number of children finding permanent families, through a process that is not marred by corruption or coercion. The role of overseeing intercountry adoption is not easy. Only children who cannot be reunified with their families or placed for adoption in their own country should be considered for an international placement. Ensuring that adoptions happen in an ethical and appropriate manner is especially challenging when partnering with countries that have fewer resources and less developed legal and social infrastructure. Yet, it is precisely these countries that often have the most acute need for child welfare services. Our past inability to form effective bilateral partnerships with other countries resulted in thousands of children who could have been with families, but instead spent their childhood in orphanages. It is time to acknowledge that what we have been doing for the past 23 years should not continue. The problems within our current system will not solve themselves.
It is time for Congress to convene child welfare and immigration experts and work toward retooling the current intercountry adoption system. Their goal should be to find effective solutions to shorten processing times, lower cost, and provide opportunities for more children to find permanent families. Necessary changes include allowing adoption cases to be afforded prioritization amid immigration cases, so adoption cases no longer take years to process, as is now often the case. It will also mean the creation of meaningful bilateral engagement with other countries. In recommitting to forming a new, functional intercountry adoption system, we can concurrently find ways to partner and support other countries to increase their own local and domestic adoptions, and to facilitate and enhance family preservation and reunification services. It is normal for Congress to review and revise legislation after reviewing the full scope of implementation and learning what has worked well and what has not. After 23 years, it is past time for Congress to set intercountry adoption on a new path forward.
The Honorable Mary L. Landrieu served as U.S. senator from Louisiana from 1997 to 2015, where she was the original co-sponsor of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Adoption.