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Dear Friends, Happy 2012! We hope your New Year is starting out well. Here at Ethica, we finished out 2011 very quietly as we contemplated our positioning for 2012. In 2011, we decided to shift our focus from crisis intervention to policy advocacy on a national level, and we worked diligently with officials in Washington [...]
Update from Washington: Both good news and bad
Dear friends, Thank you for all that you’ve done to call and email the Senate offices in Washington to ask them to include this small, but critical amendment in the TVPRA 2011. We are so grateful to have such enthusiastic and committed supporters. I’m writing with some updates, both exciting and a little disappointing. First, [...]
Adoption Alerts
USCIS Public Engagement: “Grandfathered” Adoptions Engagement
From U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Dear Stakeholder, USCIS invites interested parties to participate in a national stakeholder teleconference on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 @ 2:00 PM EDT. The purpose of this engagement is to discuss changes to the process of “grandfathering” certain adoption cases as orphan cases when the U.S. and another country [...]
Nepal: USDOS Adoption Notice – U.S. Department of State Continues to Recommend Against Adopting from Nepal
From the US Department of State: Nepal January 19, 2012 Notice: U.S. Department of State Continues to Recommend Against Adopting from Nepal On August 6, 2010, the U. S. Department of State and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suspended processing of new adoption cases from Nepal involving children claimed to have been found [...]
Kazakhstan: USDOS Adoption Alert – Update Ministry of Education plans to match families with pending adoption dossiers
From the US Department of State: According to the Government of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Education (MoE), all pending adoption dossiers that were not matched with children by December 15, 2010, will be returned and will have to be re-filed as Hague Convention cases once the Hague Convention is fully implemented. The Department of State will [...]
Kazakhstan: US DOS Adoption Notice – Kazakhstan New Family and Marriage Code Signed into Law
From the US Department of State: U.S. Mission Kazakhstan has reported that President Nazarbayev signed into law the new Family and Marriage Code on December 26, 2011. The Ministry of Education now awaits government approval of its new policies to accredit agencies and process adoptions. The Department will post information on the new accreditation process [...]
In The News
Mexican baby-trafficking ring operated for 20 years
From The Irish Examiner: An alleged baby-trafficking ring in Mexico, which sought to sell babies to 11 Irish couples, has been in operation for more than 20 years, authorities have claimed. Blanca Barron, of Jalisco state attorney general’s office, told AFP that the operation may have been in existence for over two decades and sent [...]
Mexico authorities unravel child trafficking ring
From Fox News: Life seemed to give Karla Zepeda a break when a woman came to her dusty neighborhood of cinderblock homes and dirt roads looking for babies to photograph in an anti-abortion ad campaign. The woman asked to use the 15-year-old’s baby girl in a two-week photo shoot for $755, a small fortune for [...]
Sri Lanka: Call for re-opening ‘Prem Nivasa’ illegal adoption cases
From The Asian Tribune: Executive Director LHRD, Kalyananda Thiranagama said that his organization had issued a report on illegal sale of children to foreigners after investigating the matter during a period of five years – from 2000 to 2005. The probe had revealed there were eight state-run children’s homes and 223 privately run institutions and [...]
South Carolina: Supreme Court to hear adoption challenge case
From The Charlotte Observer: The South Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving a 2-year-old girl whose adoptive parents had to turn her over to her biological father on New Year’s Eve. The (Charleston) Post and Courier reported (http://bit.ly/zf38xt) that Matt and Melanie Capobianca turned over the girl to her biological father, [...]
Washington: State officials investigating several cases of abuse of adopted children
From The Daily News Online: An alleged child starvation case near Longview is one of more than a dozen cases — including one death — that have state officials reviewing how adopted children are placed and treated. The number of abuse cases is small compared to all adoptions. But a string of high-profile child starvation [...]
Ireland: Warning over illegal private adoptions from Mexico
From The Irish Times: The Chairman of the Adoption Authority of Ireland has warned prospective adoptive parents not to enter into any private arrangements in Mexico. Geoffrey Shannon said while some individual states within Mexico allow private adoption, none sanction private inter-country adoption. The warning comes after Mexican police said they were planning to question 11 [...]
Articles and Resources
USCIS Public Engagement: “Grandfathered” Adoptions Engagement
From U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Dear Stakeholder, USCIS invites interested parties to participate in a national stakeholder teleconference on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 @ 2:00 PM EDT. The purpose of this engagement is to discuss changes to the process of “grandfathering” certain adoption cases as orphan cases when the U.S. and another country [...]
Nepal: USDOS Adoption Notice – U.S. Department of State Continues to Recommend Against Adopting from Nepal
From the US Department of State: Nepal January 19, 2012 Notice: U.S. Department of State Continues to Recommend Against Adopting from Nepal On August 6, 2010, the U. S. Department of State and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suspended processing of new adoption cases from Nepal involving children claimed to have been found [...]
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