Adoption Is Not Trafficking

One of the things that has slowed down our adoption process has been the fear of modern day trafficking of human beings. In August of 2007, UNICEF reported that 47 children from a “rogue adoption centre” in Port-au-Prince were being trafficked (Kidnapped children rescued from traffickers in Haiti). I tried to get more information about this story, but I could not. It seemed to appear as a blip on the International news and then it disappeared. I am just not sure that people would adopt a child if they can buy a child from Haiti for $50 as claimed in this story from NPR, Author Struggles to Stay Removed from Slave Trade. Listen to the interview and hear the author haggling over the cost of a human, the crowning glory of God’s creation.

“There are more slaves on the planet today than at any time in human history.”

Modern day slavery has been making headlines:

Hollywood couple sentenced in Filipino maid ’slave’ case.

They allegedly took her passport away from her and threatened to report her to the immigration lawyers. Elizabeth allegedly hit her and frequently pulled her hair.

Can you believe what the defendant said? Talk about your understatement. Didn’t this woman at any moment in time feel that she wasn’t doing the “right thing?”

“In my life, I have always tried and strived to do the right thing. I failed in this case.” ~ Elizabeth Jackson

S. Florida mom, daughter convicted of slavery. Restavek is the Creole word for “stay with.” In Haiti a desperately poor parent will give up their child in exchange for the promise of a better life. Instead these children become indentured servants. I have posted a video on restaveks on the tabbed-page, “Haiti.” (The second video, the first video is about malnutrition.) This victim was a restavek in Florida.

During the trial, Simone Celestin, 22, testified she was brought to the United States from Haiti when she was 14 to be a maid in the Paulins’ home in southwest Miami. She said she was forced to sleep on the floor and work 15-hour days cleaning the house, instead of going to school.

Finally, Revolt in Mississippi: Indian Workers Claim ‘Slave Treatment’

The workers claim they were defrauded by a Signal International recruiter in India who promised them green cards and permanent residency in the U.S. in exchange for a $20,000 fee. The workers allege that they instead received 10-month work visas, which was only enough time for them to pay off their recruitment fees.

Is legal adoption the same as buying and exploiting humans? Certainly, it is not the same as slavery. It is unlikely that anyone would go through a home study, finger printing, psychological evaluation, criminal background check, USCIS, etc. and the expense to legally adopt a child who would become their slave. Besides, in the two cases cited in this entry in which the defendants were tried and found guilty of forced labor, the common denominator was that the victims had been brought into the country illegally, creating a situation where they were vulnerable to deportation. This is not the case with a legal adoption. Through adoption, abandoned children currently living in institutions join a family where they will be loved, cared for and educated. They are in the US legally. Still, there are some people who try to create a link between adoption and child trafficking.

When I think of human trafficking, I imagine people being forcibly taken from their homeland, transferred in slave ships and sold at the ringing of the slave auctioneer’s bell. I am conditioning my brain to accept that human trafficking still occurs; there are slaves working in the sex industry. There are still domestic slaves and slaves working in agriculture. But, when used in relationship to humans, the word trafficking carries with it emotional “baggage” that is more than just a commercial buying and selling. The people who liken adoption into a family to trafficking, thereby creating a mental link to slavery, diminish the horrors of slavery. They rely on emotion, not fact, to generate support for their cause.

Obviously, it would be naive of me to say that humans are not still bought and sold. It would be more naive to think that birth families were not sometimes coerced or paid for their children. More often impoverished women relinquish their children in hopes that their children will have a better life. In Haiti the number of children living in orphanages is much greater than the number of children who find forever families. The orphanage often feeds, clothes and educates the children relinquished to their care until the child becomes an adult. How would that be a money making operation? Selling children is already illegal. Shouldn’t laws, both domestic and international, be based on the exceptions and not the norm?

I don’t necessarily disagree with changes in our adoption process designed to make sure children aren’t being bought and sold under the guise of adoption. Still, I wonder, “Why does there have to be such a long delay?” Perhaps international adoption needs a project manager! Because my experience is that my adoption has proceeded in a linear fashion. You know, one step after another. Yet really, there are four separate and distinct “steps” in the process.

• Determining that the birth family understands the concepts of relinquishment and adoption and that they are not being coerced, tricked or paid to relinquish their child.
• Determining that the child’s needs cannot be met in his or her birth country.
• Determining that the adoptive parent can emotionally and financially provide a home for a child.
• Determining that the child meets the “legal” definition of an orphan under US law and can; therefore, enter the US as an immigrant.

I believe the first step should be done before the child is ever referred for adoption. But, why can’t the last three steps occur simultaneously? It would take months off of the process. Research has demonstrated that children who have been institutionalized are developmentally, emotionally and socially behind their same-age peers. Most children will “catch up.” But, some suffer life-long emotional and attachment problems. The single best predictor of which children will have trouble adjusting is time in the institution.

Some will argue, “If you fixed the problem of poverty in Haiti, children wouldn’t be abandoned.” And, they would be right. The problem of poverty in Haiti is not easily fixed. There are children in Haiti for which aid is too late. Recently, the world was stunned to learn that Haitians, no longer able to afford rice, were eating dirt cookies. People sent food aid to Haiti. That food is now sitting in a Haitian port, rotting!

While millions of Haitians go hungry, containers full of food are stacking up in the nation’s ports because of government red tape — leaving tons of beans, rice and other staples to rot under a sweltering sun or be devoured by vermin.

As an aside, Passover is approaching. During Passover Jewish families gather to celebrate their ancestor’s emancipation from slavery in Egypt. Christians celebrate their freedom from their slavery to sin brought about by the death and resurrection of Jesus, our Passover lamb. What a wonderful time to teach our children that slavery still exist. It isn’t something from the historical past. Teach them to say, “Never, ever again!”