25390: Ginny Farr: (reply -- ask) Re: 25372: (news) Chamberlain: Haitian kids suffer in servitude (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Ginny_Farr@nifc.blm.gov


I just don't get it.  Maybe my question is too simplistic or lacking in
understanding, but I am posting it anyway.  WHY has the Haitian government
made it even more difficult for abandoned children to be adopted by
families in other countries?  Why are adoption approvals stalled and the
requirements for familes to be approved for adoption tightened to the point
of preventing so many families from adopting?  Families from the US have to
demonstrate to our own government that we are financially able to provide
for the children before being approved by our country.  We have to go
through psychological and physical evaluations and home studies by social
workers.   Yet the government of Haiti, who cannot provide for these
children, is denying families like the one from Texas in a previous post
the approval to bring four children home.  I know of another couple who
were denied.  They have been together for 13 years, had already adopted one
Haitian child a couple of years ago, and recently married.  Although they
could have adopted prior to the marriage, now they cannot be approved
because Haiti requires that you be married for a certain length of years
prior to adoption.  Obviously an acception should/could be made.  And even
for those who meet the requirements, the paperwork processes so slowly that
orphanages and creches are financially strapped in already difficult times
as they have to provide for the children for many more months than they
used to.  Was not the government supposedly corrupt before????  Was not the
change supposed to improve the situation?  What thinking person would
prevent children in dire need of families from being adopted by families
who want to love and provide for them and have the ability to do so?  I see
children in Haiti starving and dieing of treatable illnesses.  I see
families here who want to adopt and are qualified by justifiable standards
to adopt.  I see a government that seems to be uncaring and uninterested in
the fate of its' most vulnerable and innocent citizens.

Is there any justifiable reason?

just a mom and a list reader normally