Why
consider international adoption?
It's
simple: so many children need a place to call home. So many
people want a child to love!
There are an estimated 523,000
children in foster care in the United States, and more than
119,000 of them are waiting to be adopted. Globally there
are millions of children orphaned, languishing in poverty,
orphanages or living on the streets.
American citizens are seeking to adopt children from abroad
in ever increasing numbers. Each year thousands of children
come to the United States from foreign countries, either
adopted abroad by U.S. citizens or as potential adoptees. In
2006 the USCIS issued 20,679 immigrant visas to children
adopted abroad by citizens of the US.
Why are
children relinquished by their birth family?
In
foreign countries (and in the United States) high
poverty rates, high fertility and live birth rates,
unemployment, lack of education and other factors most
frequently lead to relinquishment. These reasons,
combined with cultural stigmas, the lack of state-funded
social service programs, family protection policies and
a lack of economic resources provided by the State all
contribute to a situation where families are forced to
placed their children for adoption.
It is in the child’s best
interest that, whenever possible, a child remain with
their birth families, followed by adoption within their
own country. Poverty should not be the sole reason
someone chooses to place a child for adoption, and in
most cases it is not, as evidenced by the fact that the
vast majority of families who live in poverty do not
place their children for adoption. Complex pressures
from both inside and outside the family virtually always
contribute to the decision.
A Love Beyond
Borders offers assistance to both individuals/couples
seeking to become parents and children in need of parents,
and brings the two together; children needing a home and
people wanting a child to love. The first question is how to
get started.
Who can
adopt?
A Love Beyond Borders provides adoption services
to qualified singles and married couples, without regard to
race, creed, sexual orientation (within the scope of
international law), religion or marital status.
Most
foreign adoption programs have flexible guidelines as
determined in the foreign country, but sometimes an adoption
agency itself sets tighter criteria for adoptive parents.
That is one reason for the discrepancy of requirements which
a prospective adoptive parent may find from agency to
agency.
At A Love
Beyond Borders we provide programs that meet the guidelines
set forth by the foreign country, which often include single
men (although with limited options) and single women, older
parents, and families with a large number of children
already in the home.
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