Striking anomalies

On April 6th 2011 a conference of the American Immigration authority USCIS with agencies and parents took place. The USCIS officials had carried out a study of the situation in Ethiopia in January 2011. American adoptive parents at the Embassy must prove that the child is an orphan and adoptable in line with American legislation in order to obtain a visa for an adopted child. Increasing evidence of irregularities and the ever increasing number of adoptions make it difficult for the embassy to issue visa.

A presentation by the USCIS with the results of the study was presented at the Conference. On page 14 of the presentation, the following anomalies in recruitment agencies / orphanages are presented as a reason for further investigations of the USCIS and are seen as potential evidence for unethical practices by the Agency:

• an unusual age distribution of placed children (meaning a high proportion of babies);
• an unusual high number of abandoned children;
• an unusually high number of children abandoned by other relatives than parents;
• exclusive relationships between orphanages and agencies.

In the subsequent discussion, it became clear that the burden of proof for the proper documentation of the status of children lies with the adoptive parents, even if they see themselves as dependent on the agencies. (This is  in principle no different in German adoptions). To the question of how adoptive parents can know which agencies behave correctly,  a representative of the USCIS replied: "You are spending $30,000 on to adoption, you want to do a lot of due diligence on the organization that you are hiring to work for you. Many people research a car more closely than they research on agency."

First published in German on April 17th, 2011.