INSIDE STORY: Lack of accountability leaves Kairi in limbo

ARTICLE | MAY 30, 2012 - 8:31PM | BY DR. MICHELLE HARRISON

Gibi's passport had the name Shepherd, because Erlene was to have adopted her/ Credit: Dr. Michelle Harrison

Kolkata - Kairi Abha Shepherd was adopted from India at three months of age and has no country to call home. She was abandoned at birth in a Kolkata nursing home and taken in by a Kolkata orphanage that has since closed. At three months of age she was sent to the United States for adoption by Erlene Shepherd, a widow with six other adopted children. Erlene died of metastatic breast cancer when Kairi was eight years old, but never filed the papers to make Kairi a US citizen.

Organizations: International Mission of Hope, India (IMH), Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIAA)

Concern over Africa adoption rise

News

Concern over Africa adoption rise

Written By:BBC, Posted: Wed, May
30, 2012

More than 41,000 African children have been
adopted and taken out of home countries since
2004

The number of children from Africa being adopted by
foreign nationals from other continents has risen dramatically, a report has
said.

In the past eight years, international adoptions increased by
almost 400%, the African Child Policy Forum has found.

"Africa is becoming the new frontier for inter-country
adoption," the Addis Ababa-based group said.

But many African countries do not have adequate safeguards in
place to protect the children being adopted, it warns.

The majority of so-called orphans adopted from Africa have at
least one living parent and many children are trafficked or sold by their
parents, the child expert group says.

More than 41,000 African children have been adopted and taken
out of home countries since 2004, the ACPF report says.

More than two thirds of the total in 2009 and 2010 were adopted
from Ethiopia, which now sends more children abroad for adoption than any other
country, apart from China.

Adoptable children shortage

"Compromising children's best interests while undertaking
inter-country adoption is likely and adoption can become a vast, profit-driven,
industry with children as the commodity," the African Child Policy Forum report
said.

The group's director, David Mugawe, said that adoption in some
parts of Africa had indeed become a business.

"It's got an element where adoption has now become
commercialised. And so it's an industry that some orphanages are benefiting
[from] - and they are promoting adoption basically to be able to sustain and
maintain the orphanages," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

He said large sums of money were sometimes being paid by
prospective parents.

"There was a lady who worked with the American embassy in
Uganda and she mentioned the figures ranged between $10,000 to $30,000," Mr
Mugawe said.

According to the ACPF, Ethiopia has more than 70 adoption
agencies, including 15 that only refer children to families in the United
States.

Most African children go to the US, which is where most
adoptions from foreign countries occur - in 2010 more than 11,000 children from
more than 100 countries were adopted by American parents.

Families in western Europe and Canada also adopt African
children.

International adoption is also popular in Nigeria, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco,
Uganda, and Burkina Faso, the ACPF report says.

People wanting to adopt children are increasingly turning to
Africa because changes in adoption patterns and laws in other countries has
resulted in a shortage of adoptable children, it says.

Countries including China, South Korea, Guatemala, Russia,
Romania and Ukraine have tightened up eligibility rules and shut down or limited
overseas adoption - instead promoting domestic adoption.

According to international law, inter-country adoption should
be a last resort - and the rise in the number of children being adopted in
Africa and moved to other countries is of concern to child welfare experts.

"Every child has the right to be reared in the country and
culture in which it was born," said Mr Mugawe.

"It is true that a number of children have actually benefited
from adoption, but is it the best option or have other options been explored,"
he told the BBC.

The report warned that many countries on the continent do not
have strong enough laws and policies to stem illicit activities including child
trafficking.

Only 13 African countries have ratified the Hague Convention,
which provides various safeguards to try to ensure children are not adopted
illegally.

"The onus is on African states to take urgent and decisive
measures to strengthen families and communities to take care of children in
their country of origin," the ACPF report says.

Countries: Ethiopia, Kenya

Organizations: The African Child Policy Forum

ah woman adopted from Indian orphanage THIRTY years ago now faces

Utah woman adopted from Indian orphanage THIRTY years ago now faces
deportation
By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 14:45 GMT, 29 May
2012 | UPDATED: 15:34 GMT,
29 May 2012

Deportation battle: Attorneys are fighting to stop Kairi
Shepherd, who was adopted from India as a 3-month-old baby, being deported

A 30-year-old woman who has lived in the U.S
since she was adopted from an orphanage in India as a baby is facing deportation
after a court ruled she is living in the country illegally.

Kairi Shepherd, who has been orphaned twice
following the death of her biological Indian mother when she was just
3-months-old and her adoptive American mother, has described the deportation
order as a 'death sentence.'

Shepherd could be thrown out of the country
because her adoptive mother, a widow from Utah who died of breast cancer when
Shepherd was eight, never filed citizenship paperwork for her.

Last week Indian authorities highlighted the
'humanitarian dimension' of Shepherd's case - urging the U.S. to deal with the
‘utmost sensitivity and compassion.'

Organizations: ACT Case Kairi Shepherd

Profit-driven adoptions turn children into a commodity

GEOFFREY YORK

Profit-driven adoptions turn children into a commodity

JOHANNESBURG

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Last updated Tuesday, May. 29, 2012 9:24PM EDT

War-orphaned children sit in cardboard boxes at the Kizito orphanage in Bunia in northeastern Congo February 24, 2009. (Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters)

A dramatic rise in foreign adoptions from Africa is ringing alarm bells among child advocates who worry that the soaring numbers are fuelled by financial incentives and a lack of basic safeguards.

The number of African children adopted by foreign families has nearly tripled in the past eight years. Nearly 6,350 children from Africa were adopted by foreigners in 2010, compared to less than 2,240 in 2003, according to a report released on Tuesday.

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The rapid growth has been accompanied by a proliferation of adoption agencies and orphanages, even though the vast majority of “orphans” actually have at least one living parent.

Many orphanages in Africa are set up to generate profits for the owners, since they can receive up to $30,000 per adopted child, the report’s author says. “They were created for financial gain,” said David Mugawe, executive director of the African Child Policy Forum, which released the report Tuesday. “A lot is happening under the table.”

Of the five African countries that produce the most adopted children, none has ratified the Hague Convention, the leading international treaty on protecting children from illegal adoption. And too often the adoption of African children is cloaked in secrecy, according to Mr. Mugawe.

“Some parents are illiterate, so they don’t know what they are signing. They’re not told the whole truth,” he said. “Some are told it’s just a sponsorship for their children’s education, and they’ll get a job and return home to help their parents. They’re often told it’s just foster care for some period of time.”

Mr. Mugawe emphasized that many adoptions are legitimate, and many adoption agencies are good ones. But he said there is also evidence of frequent fraud, the sale and abduction of children, falsified documents, bribery, and children being removed from relatives who could care for them.

He cited the example of Ethiopia, where a number of orphanages were shut down by the government last year – and their children were promptly collected by their parents.

Canada is one of the world’s five biggest adopting countries, with nearly 2,000 children adopted by Canadians from all foreign nations in 2010. Ethiopia is by far the biggest source of adopted children in Africa, and it has also become one of the biggest sources of foreign children for Canadian adoptive parents in recent years.

Canadian adoption agencies have complained about growing restrictions on adoptions from foreign countries. Fees are getting higher, waiting times are longer, and fewer children are available – especially from traditional sources such as China and Russia.

But as China and Russia impose more restrictions, many agencies are turning to Africa to fill the gap. With more than 41,000 children sent overseas in the past decade, Africa has become the “new frontier” for foreign adoption, according to the report by the African Child Policy Forum, presented at a conference in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has also become the world’s second-biggest source of adopted children, and it may soon overtake China to become the biggest source.

Hollywood celebrities and pop stars such as Angelina Jolie and Madonna are among those who have adopted African children in recent years.

In some cases, African children can be adopted in a matter of weeks, compared to waiting periods of years in other countries, the report said.

Because of pressure from adopting countries, many African countries haven’t introduced enough safeguards to protect their children from illegal adoptions, and often they don’t make enough effort to look for informal adoption arrangements in their own countries, Mr. Mugawe said.

“Adoption can become a vast, profit-driven industry with children as the commodity,” he added. “Inter-country adoption should not be taken as an easy and convenient option. It should be a last resort and an exception, rather than the normal recourse to solving the situation of children in difficult circumstances, as it seems to have now become.”

Published on Tuesday, May. 29, 2012 8:32PM

Countries: Canada, Ethiopia

Child abandonment in Europe is neglected issue, say researchers

May 29, Other Sciences/Social Sciences

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Researchers have called for a consistent and supportive approach to child abandonment in Europe to protect the welfare of the hundreds of youngsters given up by their parents every year.

Organizations: European Commission

Persons: Kevin Browne

Countries: Romania

Adoption from Africa: Concern over ‘dramatic rise’

The number of children from Africa being adopted by foreign nationals from other continents has risen dramatically, a report has said.

In the past eight years, international adoptions increased by almost 400%, the African Child Policy Forum has found.

“Africa is becoming the new frontier for inter-country adoption,” the Addis Ababa-based group said.

But many African countries do not have adequate safeguards in place to protect the children being adopted, it warns.

The majority of so-called orphans adopted from Africa have at least one living parent and many children are trafficked or sold by their parents, the child expert group says.

More than 41,000 African children have been adopted and taken out of home countries since 2004, the ACPF report says.

More than two thirds of the total in 2009 and 2010 were adopted from Ethiopia, which now sends more children abroad for adoption than any other country, apart from China.

Adoptable children shortage

Ethiopia has more than 70 adoption agencies, including 15 that only refer children to families in the United States.

Most African children go to the US, which is where most adoptions from foreign countries occur – in 2010 more than 11,000 children from more than 100 countries were adopted by American parents.

Families in western Europe and Canada also adopt African children.

International adoption is also popular in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Uganda, and Burkina Faso, the ACPF report says.

People wanting to adopt children are increasingly turning to Africa because changes in adoption patterns and laws in other countries has resulted in a shortage of adoptable children, it says.

Countries including China, South Korea, Guatemala, Russia, Romania and Ukraine have tightened up eligibility rules and shut down or limited overseas adoption – instead promoting domestic adoption.

According to international law, inter-country adoption should be a last resort – and the rise in the number of children being adopted in Africa and moved to other countries is of concern to child welfare experts.

“Every child has the right to be reared in the country and culture in which it was born,” said David Mugawe, the director of African Child Policy Forum.

The report warned that many countries on the continent do not have strong enough laws and policies to stem illicit activities including child trafficking.

Only 13 African countries have ratified the Hague Convention, which provides various safeguards to try to ensure children are not adopted illegally.

“Compromising children’s best interests while undertaking inter-country adoption is likely and adoption can become a vast, profit-driven, industry with children as the commodity,” the ACPF says.

“The onus is on African states to take urgent and decisive measures to strengthen families and communities to take care of children in their country of origin.”

Countries: Ethiopia

Organizations: The African Child Policy Forum

Help me return to US: Jennifer Haynes writes to Krishna

MAYURA JANWALKAR : Tue May 29 2012, 03:37 hrs

As correspondence between India and the US go back and forth over the possible deportation of Kolkata-born Kairi Abha Shepherd (30), whose adoptive American mother allegedly failed to complete her citizenship formalities 30 years ago, Jennifer Haynes (30), who landed in Mumbai after deportation has urged External Affairs Minister S M Krishna to intervene in her own case and reunite her with family in the US.

While Kairi Shepherd who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis reportedly told the media that deportation to India, in her case, would be nothing short of a death sentence, Haynes, who was deported to the country in 2008, has been a steadfast survivor, making a modest living in Mumbai. “Kairi Shepherd’s mother died of cancer and she is ailing herself. Someone should show mercy. I survived but everyone may not be able to,” Haynes told Newsline.

“When I was just seven years old, I was adopted from an Indian orphanage by an American couple from Atlanta Georgia via American Aid for International Adoption. The same agency that Kairi Shepherd was adopted through,” Haynes’s letter written on Monday states.

She has narrated the trauma she went through as she changed multiple foster homes since her adoption in 1989 and was allegedly physically and sexually abused. “Never did I think that I was not an American citizen until I was arrested for a minor drug charge and sent immediately for deportation,” Haynes said. Her letter adds, “In 2008, I was separated from my husband and two children in the US and sent back to India, a country which I had forgotten and which had forgotten me.”

The ‘nobody’s child’ that Shepherd fears being had been Haynes’s destiny for three years as she tried piecing her life together in a city she remembered nothing about. However, her Indian passport that she obtained last year, gave her what she never had — a nationality.

Haynes’s case seeking action against her adoption agency is pending before the Supreme Court. However, she is uncertain if she will ever be able to return to the US. “I am trying desperately to return home to my kids Kadafi (9) and Kassana (8) who are missing me and need their mother,” Haynes pleads in her letter.

“I am sure you as External Affairs Minister can sure help me in my situation,” Haynes’s letter to Krishna says.

Organizations: ACT CASE Jennifer Haynes

How does an adoptee get deported? More easily than one might think

Uncategorized

By Leslie Berestein Rojas

Photo by Geoff McKim/Flickr (Creative Commons)

An "examination room for adopted children" in Guangzhou, China, April 2010

Q: How does someone adopted legally as a baby by American parents get deported?

A: Relatively easily, and it's happened to several one-time adopted kids.

The case that's been getting media attention lately is that of Kairi Abha Shepherd, a 30-year-old Utah woman who was adopted from an orphanage in India when she was three months old. In spite of her legal adoption when she was an infant, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld an immigration court's decision that Shepherd is in the United States illegally and is deportable.

How and why? It's tricky, but it's a situation that quite a few adoptees have fallen into over the years. Shepherd's adoptive mother, who also adopted other children, died from cancer when her daughter was eight years old. At the time of her death, she had not completed her daughter's application for U.S. citizenship, although the girl was in the country legally.

And there lies the problem. While there are now laws in place that protect younger adoptees, older adoptees not covered under a 2000 statute whose parents failed to naturalize them remain legal residents, subject to deportation if they run afoul of the law. In 2007, Shepherd caught the attention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when she was jailed in Salt Lake City for a probation violation; in 2004, she had pleaded guilty to check forgery, a deportable offense.

Like others in her situation, she didn't know she could be deported until this happened. Some background from a story in the Deseret News:

A widow and single mother to seven children, Erlene Shepherd died in 1991 of breast cancer, never having filed the proper paperwork for Kairi Shepherd, her youngest child. Kairi Shepherd went to live with one of her adoptive siblings, a sister, until she was 14, and then an adoptive brother until she graduated from high school, Smith said.
A sibling said their mother had filed the proper paperwork for her other children.

This is almost always the catch in these cases, which are fairly rare, but do happen every so often. Younger adoptees are covered by the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, which made citizenship virtually automatic for most adopted children brought into the U.S. But it doesn't apply retroactively. According to news reports, Shepherd was 11 months too old to qualify for protection under this law when it took effect in February, 2001.

At the same time, tighter immigration laws that took effect in 1996 made it easier to deport non-citizens, with legal residents convicted of certain crimes, including some misdemeanors, losing most forms of relief under the law. Caught in the middle are people like Shepherd.

Others deported in recent years have included Jess Mustanich, adopted from El Salvador by two U.S. citizen parents from the San Jose area when he was six months old. After years fighting his deportation, he was sent to El Salvador in 2008, at 29. His parents had divorced before naturalizing him, and his father said he'd run into roadblocks after that. At 18, Mustanich and some friends stole from his father, who called the cops - and he was convicted of burglary.

From a story I wrote about him just after he was deported:

Described by his father as “a middle-class white kid” raised in an Anglo household, Mustanich learned a handful of Spanish words from Latino detainees while in immigration detention, but is otherwise starting over as a stranger in a strange land.
Speaking by phone Friday from a San Salvador hotel, he described going through customs at the airport.
“They brought out some guy, and he asked, 'Why don't you speak Spanish?' ” Mustanich said. “I told him it was because I was adopted, and he said, 'Then why are you here?' ”

Not all the former adoptees deported have been young. A few years ago, ICE deported Alejandro Ebron, a Japanese-born man from California who was nearing 50 when he was sent back to Japan. He had been adopted in 1959 as a one-year-old by Navy sailor who was Filipino American and who raised him with his Mexican American wife, both long deceased. I interviewed Ebron for another story while he was detained in San Diego, contesting his deportation:

"I grew up thinking I was half Filipino and half Mexican," Ebron said. "They could send me to Mexico and I would get by. I can speak a little Spanish. But Japan? I'm going to be in trouble if they send me there."

Others who have been deported in recent years include Jennifer Haynes, who was also adopted from India. Deported in 2008, she continues fighting to return to the U.S., where she has a family of her own. Some of these cases have turned especially tragic. Joao Herbert, a young Brazilian-born adoptee, was deported there in 2000 at age 26. Not long afterward, he was murdered.

The website Pound Pup Legacy, dedicated to adoptees and foster children, has a list of former adopted children who have been deported or face deportation.

Organizations: ACT Case Kairi Shepherd, ACT CASE Jennifer Haynes

Bub is already well-travelled

29th May 2012 4:00 AM

0 USE THIS CONTENT

Andrea and Kate van Doore-Nave from Pialba have welcomed a daughter, Anouk Lien India, born on May 23 weighing 7lb 10oz.

Persons: Kate van Doore aka Kate van Doore-Nave, Andrea Nave

Bub is already well-travelled ( Kate van Doore )

BEFORE she was even born, little Anouk Lien India had already visited three countries.

Anouk's mum Kate van Doore-Nave and her partner Andrea are involved with the Forget Me Not Children's Home, a charity in Hervey Bay that supports orphaned children overseas.

The couple travel to do work with the charity about twice a year and when Kate was about 20 weeks pregnant they visited Nepal, Uganda and India.

"She is well travelled already," Kate said.

Because they have spent so much time overseas, especially in Nepal, Kate said they were both relaxed about the visit.

Organizations: Forget Me Not Foundation

Persons: Kate van Doore aka Kate van Doore-Nave