United States / Vietnam Inter-Country Adoptions
As a member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, I am very sympathetic to the plight of prospective parents and children caught in the middle of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) discussions between the U.S. State Department and the Vietnamese government.
The U.S.-Vietnam Adoption Agreement is set to expire on September 1st 2008. This agreement, signed on June 21, 2005, ended the moratorium on adoptions which had been in place since 2003. Since the lifting of the moratorium, about 1,100 U.S. families have adopted from Vietnam.
Vietnam has announced that it will allow completion of adoptions where prospective parents have been matched with a child and received an official referral prior to September 1, 2008. Problems may still emerge for these families – if the adoptees’ paperwork is not in order and the State Department suspects an unethical adoption, no immigrant entry visa will be issued for the child. For this reason, the State Department is urging prospective parents to delay travel to Vietnam until they have received Embassy notification that their case is ready for final processing.
My Actions
You will be pleased to know that I have joined many of my colleagues in the House of Representatives in urging Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to quickly negotiate a new MOU with the Government of Vietnam that addresses concerns surrounding the adoption system in Vietnam.
Click here to see the letter to Secretary Rice spearheaded by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption.
State Department Actions
The U.S. is a party to the Hague Convention on adoption and Vietnam is not. Hague convention rules are designed to stop baby selling and forced or coerced adoptions – where a child is taken from the birthparent(s) without their consent. While the Convention does not apply to arrangements between a member country and a non-member country, the U.S. continues to work to promote ethical inter-country adoptions. State Department investigations and reports indicate that the adoption irregularities that led to the 2003 moratorium on Vietnamese adoptions are ongoing – at least in some provinces.
Therefore, the State Department continues to insist that Vietnam take steps to ensure a transparent fee structure and ethical adoptions. The State Department is also working to re-negotiate a memorandum of agreement with the Vietnamese government to ensure continued processing of legitimate inter-country adoptions, however, they have advised prospective parents against initiating new Vietnamese adoptions at this time.
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