Tag Archives: adoption agencies

Adoptees Support the Abolition of Adoption?

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Adoption Mosaics’s November 9 “We the Experts”panel will feature adoptees who favor the abolition of adoption.

This has to be among the most complex issues in adoption, which overflows with complexity. It’s not a simple issue nor an easy conversation. I know many adoptees who favor abolition. Some had terrible experiences because of adoption. Some love their adoptive family and hate the adoption industry. Some see adoption’s complicity with capitalism and imperialism, along with white saviorism, as more than enough reason to abolish adoption.

And it’s not because they want children to languish, to be unsafe, to die in orphanages, to be aborted, or to suffer in any way. Ideas like family preservation, adequate resources, legal guardianship, systemic change, the dynamics of power and privilege, organized abandonment, and more, I imagine, will be discussed.

These are my ruminations. The best approach is, of course, to hear from the experts, the adoptees themselves.

This Saturday, November 9, you have the chance to do just that. I will be there. We non-adoptees don’t talk or ask questions or make comments—we agree to listen and learn. Whatever connection you have to adoption, please join this conversation. You can register here.

The notion of abolishing adoption is a tough one for many folks; at the same time, it is increasing in the adoption community. “Abolition” is itself is a term that raises controversy and confusion, along with “reparations.” These words need to be parsed thoughtfully; all have nuance and depth.

I have no doubts the panelists—JinYoung Kim, Lina Vanegas, Marly Osma de Forest, and Schai Schairer—will be passionate, insightful, and challenging. As de Forest says on the Adoption Mosaic IG page, this will be an opportunity “to spend time with other adoptees imagining more expansive, holistic, and trauma-informed practices of care that do not demand severance and possession.”

Full disclosure: I am a consultant at Adoption Mosaic, an adoptee-led, adoptee-centric organization providing resources and support to all members of the adoption constellation.

A Podcast With Ethiopian Adoptee Mike Davis, Speaking Out for Citizenship for All International Adoptees

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Mike Davis, a 61-year-old Ethiopian adoptee deported to Ethiopia in 2005, did a wonderful job in talking about his hopes for citizenship for himself and all international adoptees, on a podcast with Unraveling Adoption.

I was honored when Mike asked me to join him on the podcast, hosted by Beth Syverson. (Be sure to check out Beth’s other podcasts and resources on Unraveling Adoption.) I appreciated Beth’s compassion and openness. Mike was focused and strong, for which I give him great credit given the harshness of his situation.

You can help Mike with his legal and medical issues via this GoFundMe. All the money goes to Mike, for legal expenses as well as doctor bills and medicines. It is not easy to be alone in a country far from family and friends, and to have significant health issues. Mike has been working with Adoptees for Justice and their lawyers (thank you!) to, we deeply hope, return home to his wife, children, grandchildren, and friends. Many thanks to all who are able to donate, and for sharing the GoFundMe.

If you want more information on ways to help all international adoptees gain citizenship, check out this blog post.

International adoptees prior to 2000 were not granted automatic citizenship, contrary to what many in and out of the adoption community might think. Some have been deported. Many fear being deported. Please join Mike and others in advocating for citizenship for all international adoptees. Please help Mike and all deported adoptees come back home.

Why Are Americans—and Especially Adoptive Parents—Not Outraged by the Deportation of International Adoptees?

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“The U.S. is unique in this: No other nation that has taken in adopted children deprives them of citizenship.”

That’s a quote from an AP article, “Thousands of children adopted by Americans are without citizenship. Congress is unwilling to act.”

It’s plausible that adoptees without citizenship could be included in mass deportation actions.

Thousands of international adoptees, brought here to the U.S. for adoption from an assortment of countries,, do not have citizenship, through no fault of theirs. The children were not responsible to obtain citizenship. Adoption agencies, adoptive parents, and the U.S. government had and have responsibility–not the adoptees.

Citizenship is handled through federal legislation (not on a state level). Our federal government has not yet acted to help these children, who are now adults. Adults who often didn’t know they were not citizens. (If they vote, they are committing a felony.) Adults who now live in fear. Adults who worked all their lives and cannot access Medicare or Social Security. Adults who committed a crime, served their sentence, and then were deported. Adults who were brought here to live with “forever families” and were deported, now living in a place with no family, no friends, often no language. They are often severely limited in ways to support themselves. They are living in horrific poverty. loneliness, and isolation. Many were adopted by U.S. military officers, and now the U.S. denies the adoptees citizenship, through no fault of the adoptee.

Bureaucrats and virulent anti-immigration sentiments are destroying the lives of international adoptees. Some of those bureaucrats are ostensibly pro-adoption, pro-life. The hypocrisy is devastating, and thousands of adopted people are at risk.

Please read the AP article. Please share it with others.

Mike Davis, pictured above, has been separated from his family since his deportation to Ethiopia in 2005. His wife and sons are waiting to welcome him home. He has five grandchildren he’s never met. He has significant health problems. As an international adoptee, whose adoptive dad was a U.S. Army officer, how much does he have to be punished?

Adoptive parents, and anyone else, please take action.

Contact your federal Senators and Representatives and ask them to sign on to the Adoptee Citizenship Act. In the U.S. Senate, the bill is S. 4448.

Right now the Senate bill has a total of 7 co-sponsors. That’s right: only 7 U.S. Senators (out of 100) are willing to work for citizenship for all international adoptees. That’s just over 5% of our Senators.

In the U,S, House of Representatives (435 Members), the bill is H.R. 8617. So far, the bill has 23 co-sponsors, or also just about 5% of the House.

You can find your U.S. representative in the House here., and your U.S. Senators here. You can send a brief email saying you are their constituent and you want them to co-sponsor the Adoptee Citizenship Act. It’ll take just a few minutes, and it could make an enormous difference. Thank you.

Other actions are to support the work of organizations such as Adoptees For Justice, Alliance for Adoptee Citizenship, Adoptees United, the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and any others working to provide this basic right. Stay informed, and share the information with others.

Contribute to the Mutual Aid Fund of Adoptees For Justice to provide funds for deported adoptees, who are often struggling mightily.

If you have any connection to adoption, if you believe in adoption, if you care about adoptees, please take action.

Deported Adoptee Adam Crapser Has Strong Words for South Korean Government, Holt Adoption Agency

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Though many international adoptees have been deported, Adam Crapser may be the best known, due to press coverage and to his lawsuit against South Korea and Holt.

According to an Associated Press article, yesterday Adam “delivered a scathing denunciation of the Korean government and his adoption agency in a Seoul appeals court,” Now 49 years old, Adam was adopted in 1979, and deported back to South Korea in 2016. In 2019, he filed a lawsuit in Korean courts. He “accuses Holt and the Korean government of ‘malfeasance’ that contributed to his traumatic adoption experience in the U.S. He says he was abused and abandoned by two different pairs of adoptive parents who never filed his citizenship papers.”

Lawsuits can take many years to work their way through the system. The South Korean court ruled on Adam’s case in 2023; there are still additional matters pending. Per the AP article: “Crapser’s lawyer, Mina Kim, said her client was seeking 200 million won ($144,700) in damages and urged the court to see how the Korean government and Holt were supposedly liable for ‘their role in this illegal adoption, which was similar to human trafficking.’

The Seoul High Court will decide on the case on Jan. 8.

Crapser’s lawsuit accuses Holt of manipulating his paperwork to disguise him as an orphan despite the existence of a known birth mother, exposing him to abusive adopters by botching background checks and not following up.”

I’ve written for over 10 years about the unethical and tragic reality that the United States deports international adoptees who came here as children with the oversight of the both the U.S. and sending country. If for whatever reasons the children’s parents did not get their adopted children citizenship, the children, when they become adults, are subject to deportation if they commit a crime. The crimes can range from selling marijuana in the case of Joao Herbert, who was deported back to Brazil and murdered there in 2004, when he was 26 years old. He had been adopted when he was 8. Adam Crapser’s crimes were more serious. His childhood was more fraught as well, including multiple placements and the conviction of his adoptive parents for sexual abuse.

Since at least 2016, there has been legislation in the U.S. Congress to grant citizenship to all adoptees. It has still not passed, despite the efforts of organizations such as Adoptees For Justice and others.

Via Adoptees for Justice: “There are 18,603 Korean American adoptees alone who do not have American citizenship, according to the Korean Health Ministry.”

Further, “There are cases of individuals without citizenship who were adopted from 28 countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Ireland, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Spain, South Korea, St. Kitts, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam.”

I also know of at least one deported adoptee in Morocco.

Being deported is a traumatic, lonely event. Often the adoptees don’t speak the language, don’t have any family or friends in their country of origin, and have tremendous struggles to make even a poverty-level living.

You can help by supporting the Congressional legislation, by sharing information about deported adoptees, and by donating to a Mutual Aid Fund set up by Adoptees for Justice.

Also, please support the work of the Adoptees United and their Citizenship Clinic.
They provide free and low cost services for intercountry adopted people who have US citizenship issues or questions. “The clinic’s services include legal screenings, consultation and advice about legal options, and legal representation to secure a Certificate of Citizenship.”

All of us in the international adoption community, and especially we adoptive parents, should step up to help all intercountry adoptees get citizenship, and to bring home those who have been deported,



“I willingly, joyfully adopted my sons from Paraguay. I would never do it again”—An adoptive mother speaks out

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Marjie Alonso adopted two boys in 1995. She deeply loves them both. In 2011, they all returned to Paraguay; her sons reunited with their mothers there. The reunions were poignant, and eye-opening.

Here is an excerpt from Marjie’s article, “I willingly, joyfully adopted my sons from Paraguay. I would never do it again.’

“What I thought—what most adoptive parents thought—was that we were helping children who would otherwise languish in orphanages. The truth, made horribly plain in the stories recently released (about Korean and Chinese adoptions) is something very different. In international adoptions, children are often coerced away from mothers. or literally stolen. My children weren’t stolen, but there have been confirmed cases in Paraguay and elsewhere…

And either way, the inequities of wealth and privilege mean the ‘choice’ to relinquish a child may not be a true choice at all.”

I agree with Marjie. These are hard truths for adoptive parents to acknowledge. We love our children deeply, and our decision to adopt may have caused them and their original family trauma and pain, due to the vagaries of power, money, privilege, and inequities.

Marjie writes “How much money would have allowed my children’s birth mothers to keep their children? It cost me more than $30,000 to adopt my sons. The agencies got the bulk of it…I was in Paraguay for nearly three months…My hotel bill would have housed and fed both families in relative luxury for at least a year.’

“But the adoption industry isn’t propelled by altruism. It is a multi-billion-dollar business. The product they sell is children. There is no money in the family-saving business. There are untold riches in the family-making business.

Had I been asked, I would not have given that same $30,000 to save my sons’ biological families and come home empty-handed, a difficult truth to reckon with.”

I give Marjie great credit in voicing and sharing these hard truths. I hope it opens more of a conversation about the complexities of adoption, the role we all play in it, the notion of whose best interest is being met, and how we can do so much better.

As China Ends Adoptions, Media Reports & Adoption Agencies Focus on Prospective Parents. There’s a Much Bigger Picture.

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China’s recent decision to end intercountry adoption has evoked a range of responses in the adoption community. As historically has been the case, the focus is almost exclusively on adoptive parents, rarely interviewing or quoting adult Chinese adoptees nor Chinese birth parents.

The National Council on Adoption, whose members are adoption agencies and adoption attorneys, has been vocal about the closing, though only from the perspective of the prospective adoptive parents who may not be able to adopt from China, despite having referrals of children. From NCFA’s Action Center:

“Urge Congress to ask State Department get clarity from China on in-process adoptions. 

Families in the process of adopting from China recently received the devastating news that the country is ending all intercountry adoptions. Hundreds of U.S. families who were matched with a child and approved to adopt from China have patiently waiting for years – with China having suspended adoptions due to the COVID pandemic. After such a long wait, and significant financial and emotional costs, these families are being given very little information on the future of adoption in China. Children and families deserve better. (Emphasis in original.)

Contact your U.S. representative and senators today and urge them to encourage the U.S. Department of State to ask China for clarity on in-process adoptions and to resume intercountry adoption.”

NCFA has not, as far as I know, called for any support for Chinese adoptees who may be struggling with China’s decision, nor any statements about how adoption agencies will assist with searches and reunions for Chinese birth/first families.

The plight of the prospective adoptive parents has, as usual, permeated national and global news reports, most of which mention only prospective adoptive parents. I understand the sadness of the prospective parents, many of whom have waited for years. I am not dismissing their emotions.

I would though argue that this event–China’s ending of international adoptions–deserves far more depth in media coverage.

If we are ever going to have genuine critical thinking on adoption policy, adoptees and their birth parents must be included equitably in these media reports and in policy-making.

Washington Post: “China shut down foreign adoptions. This family doesn’t want to give up.” No Chinese adoptees or birthparents are quoted.

New York Times: “China Stops Foreign Adoptions, Ending a Complicated Chapter.” A Danish-Korean adoptee is quote, along with non-adopted Chinese scholars and researchers. No Chinese adoptees or birthparents are quoted.

New York Times: “An Era of Chinese Adoption Ends, and Families Are Torn Over Its Legacy.” Adoptive parents and Chinese adoptees are quoted in the article; Chinese birth parents re mentioned.

CNN: “China is ending foreign adoptions of its children. That leaves hundreds of American families in limbo”

The Guardian: “China says it is ending foreign adoptions, prompting concern from US–US diplomats seeking clarity for hundreds of families in the process of international adoption.” No Chinese adoptees or birthparents are quoted.

Chinese adoptees have been speaking out, and they have a variety of perspectives. I wrote about some of them here.

One article not included in my post is a New York Times opinion piece by Cindy Zhu Huijgen, described as “a Dutch journalist based in China and a former adoptee.” (I don’t know what “former adoptee” means here.) She wrote I Was Adopted From China as a Baby. I’m Still Coming to Terms With That. An excerpt: “On Sept. 5, at the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s daily press briefing, conflicting emotions swirled inside me as I nervously raised my hand to ask a government spokeswoman about reports, then still unconfirmed, that international adoptions would be stopped. When she announced that what had essentially become a legalized form of child trafficking was indeed now over, it felt cathartic.

But any relief I feel is tempered by knowing that China’s government will probably never fully acknowledge the system’s abuses. I’m still angry — at the fraught legacy of the adoptions, at the enduring focus on prospective parents’ feelings instead of the children’s and when people imply that I should be grateful for having been adopted.”

Hearing from adopted adults and from birth/first parents is critical to reframing adoption and to thinking critically about it. Then genuine change can occur, and the needs of vulnerable children and families can be met in a transparent, effective, fair way,


China Officially Ends International Adoptions

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According to the Nanchang Project‘s Facebook page, China has officially ended international adoptions. Historically, China has been the source of some 30% of all international placements to the U.S.

The Associated Press confirmed the decision, citing a China Foreign Ministry spokesperson who said the only exception for foreign adoptions would be “full blood relatives adopting a child or step child.” No further information was provided, except that the decision “was in line with the spirit of relevant international conventions.”

There does not yet appear to be an official public announcement from the U.S. State Department, but State did send out emails to waiting families and to adoption agencies. The Nanchang Project shared screen shots of the emails.

Source: The Nanchang Project
Source: The Nanchang Project

China now joins Russia, Guatemala, and Ethiopia among others in closing international adoption programs.

Since 1999, almost 83,000 children were adopted to the U.S. from China. The total number of intercountry adoptions between 1999 and 2023 was 284,088, according to the State Department. The number of adoptions from China has declined dramatically in recent years, according to State Department statistics.

In 2005, China placed 7,903 children in the U.S.; in 2023, the number was 16.

International adoptions have declined dramatically in recent years. There are many reasons for that: changing political climates, more in-country adoptions, slowdowns in processing during the pandemic, concerns about fraud and corruption, increased attention focused on adult adoptees’ experiences, and other reasons. Read more here:

Intercountry Adoption: The Beginning of the End

Uncovering the Truth About Intercountry Adoption’s Decline

Lamenting the Decline in International Adoptions? Take Action

Power is shifting dramatically in the adoption community. The once robust adoption industry has been overtaken by concerns around trafficking and commodification of children. The notion and nuance of abolition of adoption will increase in coming years. That said, vulnerable children and families around the globe need support and safety. Adoption may fade; the needs of children will not.

A Tough Topic, An Important New Book: Adoption and Suicidality

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A valuable, vital new book is being released today: Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Health Care Professionals, and Allies.

Congratulations to the editors and contributors. I hope the book gets widespread distribution, as it tackles an often overlooked subject in the adoption community.

I’ve had the privilege of reading the book. I am deeply moved by each essay and poem. While I know several of the contributors, I did not know all the powerful stories. The voice of each writer and contributor—whether an adopted person, a birth/first parent, or an adoptive parent—brings deeply valuable insights.

Thank you to Beth Syverson and Joey Nakao, the team that has brought the book into publication. Beth hosts the podcast Unraveling Adoption. Beth (an adoptive parent) and Joey (her son, adopted from Japan) have shared their journey together for years, in the hope that they can help other families understand and cope with the challenges of addiction, adoption, and suicidality.

The book will be available on Amazon and other sources. There will be a Book Launch event on August 24, featuring “several of the book’s 17 authors who will share their experiences and insights on adoption and its impact on mental health.”

May this new book continue the important and hard conversations ended in the adoption community. May all those struggling find resources, healing, and understanding.

Who Decides What “Adoption Competent” Means?

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A general consensus these days is that adoptees are the experts in adoption, that their lived experience is a (if not the) most valid and valuable construct for understanding adoption. I agree. I may have my own insights and perspectives as an adoptive parent, but only adopted people know the depth and breadth of the reality of being adopted.

What, then, does it mean to be “adoption competent”?

It is a term mostly applied to therapy and therapists.

According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway of the U.S. government, “Children and youth who are adopted often have experienced trauma and need help sorting through complicated feelings stemming from their adoption and past experiences. Rather than being a one-time event, adoption is an ongoing process that requires continuous support long after papers are signed. To provide that support, child welfare professionals and other service providers should have adoption competence—the specific knowledge, skills, and values required to meet the complex, unique needs of adopted children and youth and their families.” (I added the emphasis.)

The notion of therapists and others to be “adoption competent” has been around for a while, including via the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Adoption (NCWRCA)’s Guide to Developing an Adoption Certificate Program for Mental Health Practitioners, published in 2007.

In 2013, the Donaldson Adoption Institute funded a policy paper, “A Need to Know: Enhancing Adoption Competence Among Adoption Professionals.”

Fast forward to the relative present time. The program that shows up most in a search for “adoption competence” is from the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.): “The Training for Adoption Competency (TAC) Curriculum is the nation’s premiere assessment-based certificate program for training mental health practitioners and developing adoption competency skills…TAC has 19 training centers across the country, over 1,800 graduates (and growing) and received accreditation from the Institute of Credentialing Excellence (ICE), making it a recognized top-tier program dedicated to public protection and excellence in practice.”

It was offered for free to practitioners in Washington state in 2022-2023, where I live, as part of the Coordinated Care health insurance program. Costs currently seem to vary nationally from $900 to $3500, according to my brief search for the numbers.

I’d like to suggest that the TAC program be offered free to adult adoptees who are eligible as therapists, and would otherwise be charged for the program. That would be a powerful acknowledgment to the value of adoptee voices, a gesture of not charging them nor requesting free labor from them.

While there is a charge for TAC, C.A.S.E. also offers three NTI courses for free, as part, I’d guess of the $9 million grant they were awarded. “NTI was developed by the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) and funded through a $9 million cooperative agreement with the Children’s Bureau (Administration on Children and Families, US Dept of Health and Human Services) with the goal of providing free access to NTI in all U.S. states, tribes and territories.”

The three courses are geared toward child welfare workers (case workers), child welfare supervisors, and mental health professionals.

I recently completed the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training for Child Welfare Professionals. As an adoptive parent, as someone who worked in adoption professionally, as a consultant now for Adoption Mosaic, I was curious about the course. It took me well over 20 hours lol. I will share my thoughts on the course, as well as on “adoption competent therapists,” in a separate blog post.

I would urge others to take the course, as a way of seeing what current thinking appears to be around adoption competency.

It is an evolving concept at best. And I wish my adoption agency social workers and I had some of this information when I adopted my children some 35+ years ago. We keep learning.

Full disclosure: I worked with C.A.S.E. some 25 years ago, including helping with the writing of the W.I.S.E. Up! book and of a foster care-related grant, the exact name of which I cannot recall now. This post is not meant as an advertisement or endorsement or criticism of the TAC program or C.A.S.E. courses. Indeed, there are mixed reviews from a number of practitioners, inevitable when thousands of folks have undergone the training. That said, TAC from C.A.S.E., for whatever combination of reasons, is what shows up in volume on Internet searches.

Another Adoption Agency Closes—and Charges Adoptees for Their Own Records

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Dillon International, a 51-year-old U.S. international adoption agency based in Oklahoma, having placed for adoption some 7000 children from a dozen countries, “will no longer provide adoption services, home study services, and post-placement/post-adoption supervision services” as of September 30, 2023.

Why? According to Dillon: “The ever-declining number of intercountry adoptions combined with the increasing costs of maintaining Hague accreditation were primary factors considered in the decision.”

The closure does not surprise me. It’s been a bit of a trend for international adoption agencies in recent years.

What if an adoptee wants their own adoption file from Dillon?

“Adoption file contents will include all adoptee background information, legal documents, and referral pictures (if available) provided by the birth country to Dillon International. In most cases, all of these records should have been received by the adoptive family.”

Ok—but wait:

“There will be a $50 service fee to aid in the retrieval of the file, digitization of the content and emailing to the recipient.”

That is outrageous. It is disrespectful to adoptees to have to pay for their own information from an adoption agency. No agency should be able to withhold an adoptee’s own documents unless the adoptee pays up.

Yet another barrier for adoptees to acquire their own information.

Mila Konomos, aka @the_empress_han, is an adopted/displaced person from South Korea, and she created an adoptee-led petition asking Dillon to do the following:

  1. Remove the $50 fee required to access our adoption files.
  2. Schedule meetings between Dillon’s Board of Directors and adoptees to discuss a long-term plan for accountability.
  3. Guarantee that every person adopted through Dillon receives their complete adoption file and all relevant information without unnecessary delays or restrictions.

Those seem reasonable goals. It is unfortunate at best that these items must be requested. I have signed the petition, and I hope that others do as well.

Thank you for creating the petition, Mila.

Adoptees (or their parents, if the adoptees are minors) have until December 31, 2023, to request the files, which could then take some six months to receive.

Also, “Per Dillon policy, we are only able to provide digital copies rather than original documents.”

When an adoption agency closes, the records and files must be carefully preserved: they hold adoptees’ identities and incredibly important information, including original documents.

According to this news story from KTUL ABC 8, this is where “Lifeline Children’s Services comes into the picture. Lifeline is newly licensed in Oklahoma for both domestic and international adoption and was recruited by Dillon to help families with the transition.”

Lifeline appears to be based in Alabama, has many offices (including this new one in Oklahoma), provides adoption services in the U.S.and in 19 other countries, and is accredited under The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions.

I hope adoptees can find a way to access their own original documents, as well as the digitized version, via Lifeline or otherwise.

I did not see anything on Dillon’s page that talks about any services that will be provided to the international birth/first parents in follow-up with this closing. They do have a list of Support Groups and other services for adoptees and adoptive families, but nothing for first/birth parents.