Voices for Vietnam Adoption Integrity

16 Vietnamese kids, US families in adoption limbo

Most of the adoptions already in the pipeline went forward under exceptions to the 2008 moratorium, but paperwork problems delayed the Bac Lieu cases. Vietnam now says it hopes to join the international Hague Convention on adoptions in October and that the pending cases must start over under those tighter rules, which bar prospective parents from even seeing the children until everything is finalized.

Some families blame the U.S. State Department for the hold up, arguing it has pressured Vietnam so hard to impose stricter regulations that their cases ended up getting stuck. They’re now hoping for exemptions and have gained some leverage: Two U.S. senators have blocked President Barack Obama’s pick for the new U.S. ambassador to Vietnam over the issue.

The orphanage is a two-room former prison deep in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Couples had rotated visits there before January, each time taking food, milk, clothes and toys for the children who otherwise receive very little.

They brought video cameras to capture the moments and document the changes every parent yearns to see. With no shared language, they communicated using hugs and kisses.

Since then, photos sent by other visitors reveal that the children have lost weight.

After the 2008 suspension, most of the 534 cases already being processed were resolved and the children were allowed to leave. But officials put the brakes on Bac Lieu cases because irregularities were uncovered, including wrong birth mothers’ names on paperwork, according to Keith Wallace, director of Families Thru International Adoption, the Indiana agency brokering the adoptions.

He said they reinvestigated most of the cases and fired a staffer who had taken “short cuts.”

In one case, a baby who already was matched with an American family was returned to its birth mother because her financial situation had improved after she married, he said. In other cases, the agency obtained DNA samples and new paperwork from birth mothers stating they knowingly gave up their babies, Wallace added.

Alison Dilworth, adoptions division head at the U.S. Office of Children’s Issues, said Washington has pressed Vietnam’s Communist government to release the children, but that officials there have refused to provide information on why they rejected the cases.

“We’ve made it very, very clear that we want them to move forward on these cases, and I can understand why the parents are absolutely frustrated,” Dilworth said.

She denied that Washington’s push for Vietnam to join the Hague Convention was to blame for the hold up, saying the adoption agency may have raised false hopes that these cases were still moving forward.

“I think they told a lot of their clients that it was the big, bad U.S. government that was stopping things, when in reality, we’ve never had a chance to even take a look at these cases,” she said by phone from Washington.

Vietnam prohibited The Associated Press from traveling to the orphanage, and adoption officials in Bac Lieu province declined to comment.

In a written response to questions from the AP, Vietnam’s Adoptions Department said all 16 cases are ineligible for processing under the old system and will go forward under the new Hague rules expected to be adopted Oct. 1. The toddlers will first be put up for adoption within Vietnam. If no one comes forward, they can then be paired with foreign families. A process that will take months, at best, if the American families are re-matched with the children.

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From the Bangkok Post:

Thailand repatriated five pregnant Vietnamese women and five babies yesterday after freeing them from a Taiwanese gang which forced them to be surrogate mothers to Taiwanese customers.

The five are among 15 Vietnamese women liberated during a police raid on Taiwanese-run Baby 101 Co in the Thararom housing estate on Ramkhamhaeng Road in February.

Four of them gave birth to five babies – two of them twins, five others are pregnant, and another six women were not. The latter group was sent back to Vietnam on May 13.

The babies to be delivered by the five surrogate women will be taken care of by the Vietnamese government, according to the Public Health Ministry. The women had earlier wanted to seek abortions but changed their minds…

Bangkok and Hanoi earlier signed a joint agreement to combat woman and child trafficking and to provide assistance to victims of the illicit trade.

The problem has prompted the two countries to crack down on human trafficking which is considered a transnational crime.

Police are currently searching for a Taiwanese suspect, identified as Lao Pan, who is accused of being a coordinator with potential customers in Taiwan where the government bans the use of surrogate mothers.

Investigators believe the man is still in Thailand.

Thai officials during the raid on Baby 101 Co arrested four Taiwanese nationals on human trafficking charges. They are currently being held at a prison in the Min Buri area.

Their company allegedly provided babies for customers by artificially inseminating surrogate mothers. The customers were charged 100,000 baht for each successful pregnancy.

Two private hospitals, one of which has no surrogacy certificate from the Royal College of Gynaecology of Thailand, were accused of working with the company.

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VVAI first posted news about this story here.

From the Washington Times:

Freshman senator, Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, has blocked President Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Vietnam.  

Rubio’s hold on the nomination of David Shear, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, who since 2009 has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State, is the first hold for the Obama administration. 

Shear was expected to sail through the Foreign Relations Committee, as all other ambassador-designates have, but troubling developments at the Department of State, led adoption advocates and adoptive families to mount a challenge to Shear’s nomination.    

Last week Senator Rubio placed a hold on the nomination in an effort to get assistance for American families whose children are stranded in orphanages in Vietnam. His hold follows that of Senator Dick Lugar, Republican from Indiana, who initially placed a hold on Shear nomination last month amid concerns.

“Senator Lugar placed a temporary hold on Ambassador-designate Shear’s nomination in an effort to secure information about the status of assistance to American families with pending adoption cases in Vietnam,” explains Andy Fisher, a senior aide to Lugar.  “This included responses to requests made by the families to obtain copies of their respective adoption files from the Departments of State and Homeland Security. Unfortunately, the families had encountered innumerable roadblocks in this regard.”

American families who received referrals for orphans in Vietnam more than three years ago are in limbo as the United States rethinks its international adoption policy.  Known as “pipeline families,” these U.S. citizens were matched with orphan children, their paperwork processed in the U.S and in Vietnam.  

Then, requirements in both countries began to change.  These children and their families have been caught in a cycle of shifting regulations.

For the past three years, the families have grown to known their children through visits.  These American families provided medical care, emotional support, toys, books and clothing for their children while they are being raised in an orphanage overseas.

Adoption advocates asked that that these adoptions be grandfathered in under the rules in which these adoptions were originally processed.

They urge that the subsequent DNA matches, relinquishment records from birth mothers and other paperwork be accepted so that these children can be reunited with their families while the United States and Vietnam work out the final details of inter-country adoptions going forward.

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From the Dayton Daily News:

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