DeWet Moolman

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Wall Comment: #362

DeWet Moolman July 3, 2016 3:32 pm

I’m afraid that the previous poster does not understand international adoption very well. International adoption has two components – the adoption, itself, and immigration of the child to the country in which you reside. In terms of adoption, you must follow the procedures set out by your country of citizenship, as well as the procedures set out by the child’s country of citizenship. In the case of families where the spouses are citizens of different countries, or in case of people with dual citizenship, they need to choose the route to adoption that is easiest or most possible for them. In your case, that may be South Africa, which tends to have more liberal requirements than South Korea. The biggest issue you may face is finding a country from which to adopt that has an adoption agreement with South Africa. In general, you cannot adopt from a country unless it allows people from your country to adopt and allows agencies from your country to conduct adoptions. I am not South African, so I don’t know the laws of your country, but I’d suggest that you talk with the Hague authority for South African adoptions, which is: Department of Social Development Registrar of Adoptions Private Bag X901 Pretoria 0001, South Africa Tel: 27-12-312-7592 Fax: 27-12-312-7837 It should be able to tell you whether Russia or Kazakhstan has an adoption agreement with South Africa, and what special rules these countries may have for citizens of South Africa, including whether it allows adoptions by people where one spouse holds one citizenship and one holds another. A few countries are sticky on this issue, because of issues that can arise with child custody and citizenship if the parents divorce. If South Africa has an adoption agreement with one of the countries, or with another country that may interest you, you will generally have to use a Hague accredited agency in South Africa to oversee the adoption process. That’s usually not a problem, at least in my country, where American expats often adopt internationally, using the U.S. process. It may make things slightly more complicated and time-consuming, however. There are occasional countries that do not permit adoption by its citizens who live abroad but, thankfully, they are rare. The placement agency you choose will guide you through the steps in the adoption process, ensuring that the adoption conforms to the laws of South Africa and the foreign country from which you choose to adopt, as well as to South Korea’s immigration laws and Hague requirements. Be aware that, as South Africa is Hague-compliant, you will probably NOT be allowed to do an independent (non-agency) adoption, and you may not be allowed to adopt from non-Hague countries. To kick off your adoption process, you will need a homestudy by an agency or social worker authorized to conduct homestudies for South Africans and willing to do them for South Africans living abroad. To find a homestudy provider, if your placement agency does not know of one that can help, and the Department of Social Development does not know how to find one, you may be able to get information from the South African Embassy in South Korea. In addition to getting homestudy approval, you may need to get pre-authorization to immigrate a child to South Korea, once you have adopted. Again, if your placement agency can’t help, you should contact the Department of Social Development in South Africa, as well as the South Korean agency that oversees immigration. Be aware that most countries have specific requirements for the immigration of adopted children from overseas. In the U.S., for example, residents can’t immigrate a newly adopted child unless one spouse is a U.S. citizen and completed certain pre-approval activities. NEVER finalize an overseas adoption without being absolutely sure that you will be able to immigrate the child to your country of citizenship, or to the country where you are currently residing. Otherwise, if you adopt but fail to get permission to immigrate the child, you will have legal, financial, and moral responsibility for a child that you cannot bring home, and may need to overturn the adoption. In most cases, once you have an approved homestudy and preliminary approval to immigrate the child to your place of residence, your agency will have you complete a dossier of documents that the country from which you are adopting requires. These are usually things like birth and marriage certificates; records of any divorces you have had; a statement from your employer verifying employment and salary; a financial statement showing assets, liabilities, all sources of income, and all of your regular expenses; a medical exam with content specified by the country from which you are adopting; information on any arrests you may have had and their disposition; child abuse clearances for every place in which you have lived, police clearances from ever place you have lived, and so on. The documents will need to be collected for each spouse, regardless of his/her country of citizenship. In some cases, the documents will be the same ones needed for your homestudy. In most cases, each document will need to be authenticated to international standards. Russia, for example, requires an authentication process known as the apostille, which is relatively simple. However, other countries, which have not ratified the treaty allowing apostille, use a more complex process involving notarization, verification of the notary’s signature by the local/provincial government agency issuing such verifications, verification of the local agency’s seal by either your federal government or the foreign embassy in your country, etc. Once all the documents are provided and authenticated, the placement agency will send everything to the adoption authorities in the country you have chosen. At that point, it becomes a waiting game. Wait times vary considerably among countries, but in most cases will be over a year. At that point, the foreign government or orphanage will choose a child for you and send you a “referral”, which includes the name of the child, the orphanage or province in which he/she resides, a brief medical report, sometimes a brief developmental history, sometimes a notation of the reason for the child’s coming into care, and one or two photos or a video. In general, the referral will match the criteria for which your homestudy approved you, such as a specific age range, a health status or specific medical issue, and a gender. While many countries that have children of more than one race or ethnicity may let you choose race, others may not. Be aware that, in Eastern Europe, many of the children in care are of Roma (Gypsy) ancestry, which is stigmatized in those countries, so domestic adoption rarely occurs. These children will usually have olive skin that tans easily, black hair, and dark eyes, because the Roma are believed to have origins in India. You will be given a few days to review your referral. It is suggested that you share it with an international adoption medicine specialist, as well as with your local pediatrician, to see if it raises any “red flags.” Be aware that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, which are very common in Russia because of the high rate of alcohol abuse, are rarely mentioned in the medical report, but may sometimes be identifiable by facial features; in some cases, FASD cannot be diagnosed until a child is of school age, and has learning or behavioral problems, such as difficulty with quantitative reasoning or poor impulse control. Also, Russia tends to use diagnostic categories that are not based on Western medical concepts, and may sound very scary, even when they are meaningless. As an example, “oligophrenia” is often used to describe a birthmother who is poor and on public assistance or a child who is orphaned, even if otherwise normal. Unless there are other indications of problems in the report, the statement should not be taken as a sign of mental retardation or mental illness. If you accept your referral, you will begin a new waiting period, until you are authorized to travel. There will also be additional paperwork to complete, to satisfy Hague requirements. If you decline a referral, the country may or may not issue a new one. A new referral is likely to be issued if a doctor indicates that there are clear signs of a significant special need that you aren’t equipped to handle – for example, if the child clearly appears to have severe cerebral palsy or spina bifida, and is unlikely to learn to walk or to achieve bowel and bladder control. A new referral is unlikely if you “don’t feel connected” to the child, if the child is too dark-skinned, etc. The goal of adoption is finding homes for children, not finding “designer babies” for parents. Some countries require only one trip, during which you meet your child and complete your adoption, or receive the child under a degree of guardianship so that you can bring the child home to finalize. Other countries require two, three, or more trips. Russia has tended, in recent years, to require from two to four relatively short trips, some of which are designed to ensure that you get to know the child and feel confident that you can parent him/her, as many dissolutions of Russian adoptions have occurred. Up until recently, Kazakhstan tended to have very long stays – two months or more. It is not clear how this will change, now that Kazakhstan has ratified the Hague Convention, as it is still approving relatively few adoptions. Both Russia and Kazakhstan have required both parents to travel, at least for part of the process. Some other countries make provisions so that one parent can travel and finalize, and a few countries allow proxy adoptions, where a lawyer in the country handles the finalization, and the child can be escorted to the U.S. or picked up by one or both parents. Once you are authorized to travel, your agency will normally help you make travel arrangements, at least from the time you arrive in the child’s country. In general, you will have a guide/translator and driver who will shepherd you through the various required activities, and help you do some sightseeing during down time. You will usually stay in a hotel, though in Russia and a few other countries, people may choose to take a short-term rental apartment or live with a host family. My recommendation is that you find the most comfortable accommodations that you can afford, as parenting a new child in an unfamiliar country is going to be challenging. You will visit your child, go to government agencies, and possibly go to court to complete the adoption. While ordinary people in some countries have been very supportive of international adoption, families adopting from Russia have sometimes been exposed to verbal hostility, and keeping a low profile may be desirable. Once you have custody of your child, and go out and about with him/her, be sure to carry your child’s adoption paperwork with you at all times. Always contact your agency immediately if someone tries to charge you extra fees that were not disclosed to you in advance, or if the child appears to have serious medical issues that were not disclosed to you. However, do remember that newly adopted children often exhibit scary shutdowns because they are overwhelmed and grieving; these will often pass within a week. They may have multiple minor illnesses, such as intestinal parasites or respiratory infections. And they may be very angry and show hostility by trying to escape from your hotel room, hitting you, and so on; remember that they have been taken away from everything familiar, and often from much-loved caregivers. When you complete activities in your child’s province or state, you will usually have to travel to the country’s capital, to obtain a visa for your child so that he/she can enter the country where you are living. If you have used a good agency and followed its instructions to the letter, you should have few problems getting the visa. However, there have been situations in some countries, where the embassy of the country that issues the visa has a concern about the authenticity of the child’s adoption documents, about whether the child meets requirements for immigration, etc. In that case, you may have to delay your trip home until an investigation is conducted; hopefully, it will conclude positively. Once you are back in South Korea, you will need to discuss getting your child citizenship. Remember that, until you do so, he/she is a citizen of the country in which he/she was born. You will need to discuss options for your child – South African citizenship, South Korean citizenship, or dual citizenship. Do remember that, just because you are the adoptive parents, citizenship in one or both of your countries is not necessarily automatic. While many countries from which people adopt remove a child’s citizenship when he/she is adopted by foreigners, so that he/she can truly become a citizen of his/her parents’ country(ies), some Eastern European countries do not see things that way. With Russia, for example, the government has consistently said that a child is considered a Russian citizen forever, or until he/she turns 18 and formally renounces his/her Russian citizenship at a Russian Embassy. If you wish to visit Russia with your minor child at some point, he/she will usually need to carry two valid passports – his/her Russian passport to enter Russia, and the passport of the country where you have acquired his/her citizenship, to allow re-entry into the place where you are living. If you are living in South Korea, and your child gains citizenship in South Africa, you will probably need to get him/her a visa to return to South Korea. All in all, international adoption involves complex legal processes. And international adoption, when it involves expats and people with dual citizenship, can often be even more complicated. But if you work with a good agency, and do a LOT of research, you will be successful. I’d also recommend finding Internet forums and chats for internationally adoptive expats, so you can ask about issues that may puzzle you. I wish you well in all your efforts. If you want to contact me, send me a private message, and I will give you my email address and phone number. Sharon A. Kaufman Mom to Rebecca Joy Chufang Kaufman Born 10/95 in Xiamen (Fujian province), China Adopted 5/97. I’m afraid that the previous poster does not understand international adoption very well. International adoption has two components – the adoption, itself, and immigration of the child to the country in which you reside. In terms of adoption, you must follow the procedures set out by your country of citizenship, as well as the procedures set out by the child’s country of citizenship. In the case of families where the spouses are citizens of different countries, or in case of people with dual citizenship, they need to choose the route to adoption that is easiest or most possible for them. In your case, that may be South Africa, which tends to have more liberal requirements than South Korea. The biggest issue you may face is finding a country from which to adopt that has an adoption agreement with South Africa. In general, you cannot adopt from a country unless it allows people from your country to adopt and allows agencies from your country to conduct adoptions. I am not South African, so I don’t know the laws of your country, but I’d suggest that you talk with the Hague authority for South African adoptions, which is: Department of Social Development Registrar of Adoptions Private Bag X901 Pretoria 0001, South Africa Tel: 27-12-312-7592 Fax: 27-12-312-7837 It should be able to tell you whether Russia or Kazakhstan has an adoption agreement with South Africa, and what special rules these countries may have for citizens of South Africa, including whether it allows adoptions by people where one spouse holds one citizenship and one holds another. A few countries are sticky on this issue, because of issues that can arise with child custody and citizenship if the parents divorce. If South Africa has an adoption agreement with one of the countries, or with another country that may interest you, you will generally have to use a Hague accredited agency in South Africa to oversee the adoption process. That’s usually not a problem, at least in my country, where American expats often adopt internationally, using the U.S. process. It may make things slightly more complicated and time-consuming, however. There are occasional countries that do not permit adoption by its citizens who live abroad but, thankfully, they are rare. The placement agency you choose will guide you through the steps in the adoption process, ensuring that the adoption conforms to the laws of South Africa and the foreign country from which you choose to adopt, as well as to South Korea’s immigration laws and Hague requirements. Be aware that, as South Africa is Hague-compliant, you will probably NOT be allowed to do an independent (non-agency) adoption, and you may not be allowed to adopt from non-Hague countries. To kick off your adoption process, you will need a homestudy by an agency or social worker authorized to conduct homestudies for South Africans and willing to do them for South Africans living abroad. To find a homestudy provider, if your placement agency does not know of one that can help, and the Department of Social Development does not know how to find one, you may be able to get information from the South African Embassy in South Korea. In addition to getting homestudy approval, you may need to get pre-authorization to immigrate a child to South Korea, once you have adopted. Again, if your placement agency can’t help, you should contact the Department of Social Development in South Africa, as well as the South Korean agency that oversees immigration. Be aware that most countries have specific requirements for the immigration of adopted children from overseas. In the U.S., for example, residents can’t immigrate a newly adopted child unless one spouse is a U.S. citizen and completed certain pre-approval activities. NEVER finalize an overseas adoption without being absolutely sure that you will be able to immigrate the child to your country of citizenship, or to the country where you are currently residing. Otherwise, if you adopt but fail to get permission to immigrate the child, you will have legal, financial, and moral responsibility for a child that you cannot bring home, and may need to overturn the adoption. In most cases, once you have an approved homestudy and preliminary approval to immigrate the child to your place of residence, your agency will have you complete a dossier of documents that the country from which you are adopting requires. These are usually things like birth and marriage certificates; records of any divorces you have had; a statement from your employer verifying employment and salary; a financial statement showing assets, liabilities, all sources of income, and all of your regular expenses; a medical exam with content specified by the country from which you are adopting; information on any arrests you may have had and their disposition; child abuse clearances for every place in which you have lived, police clearances from ever place you have lived, and so on. The documents will need to be collected for each spouse, regardless of his/her country of citizenship. In some cases, the documents will be the same ones needed for your homestudy. In most cases, each document will need to be authenticated to international standards. Russia, for example, requires an authentication process known as the apostille, which is relatively simple. However, other countries, which have not ratified the treaty allowing apostille, use a more complex process involving notarization, verification of the notary’s signature by the local/provincial government agency issuing such verifications, verification of the local agency’s seal by either your federal government or the foreign embassy in your country, etc. Once all the documents are provided and authenticated, the placement agency will send everything to the adoption authorities in the country you have chosen. At that point, it becomes a waiting game. Wait times vary considerably among countries, but in most cases will be over a year. At that point, the foreign government or orphanage will choose a child for you and send you a “referral”, which includes the name of the child, the orphanage or province in which he/she resides, a brief medical report, sometimes a brief developmental history, sometimes a notation of the reason for the child’s coming into care, and one or two photos or a video. In general, the referral will match the criteria for which your homestudy approved you, such as a specific age range, a health status or specific medical issue, and a gender. While many countries that have children of more than one race or ethnicity may let you choose race, others may not. Be aware that, in Eastern Europe, many of the children in care are of Roma (Gypsy) ancestry, which is stigmatized in those countries, so domestic adoption rarely occurs. These children will usually have olive skin that tans easily, black hair, and dark eyes, because the Roma are believed to have origins in India. You will be given a few days to review your referral. It is suggested that you share it with an international adoption medicine specialist, as well as with your local pediatrician, to see if it raises any “red flags.” Be aware that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, which are very common in Russia because of the high rate of alcohol abuse, are rarely mentioned in the medical report, but may sometimes be identifiable by facial features; in some cases, FASD cannot be diagnosed until a child is of school age, and has learning or behavioral problems, such as difficulty with quantitative reasoning or poor impulse control. Also, Russia tends to use diagnostic categories that are not based on Western medical concepts, and may sound very scary, even when they are meaningless. As an example, “oligophrenia” is often used to describe a birthmother who is poor and on public assistance or a child who is orphaned, even if otherwise normal. Unless there are other indications of problems in the report, the statement should not be taken as a sign of mental retardation or mental illness. If you accept your referral, you will begin a new waiting period, until you are authorized to travel. There will also be additional paperwork to complete, to satisfy Hague requirements. If you decline a referral, the country may or may not issue a new one. A new referral is likely to be issued if a doctor indicates that there are clear signs of a significant special need that you aren’t equipped to handle – for example, if the child clearly appears to have severe cerebral palsy or spina bifida, and is unlikely to learn to walk or to achieve bowel and bladder control. A new referral is unlikely if you “don’t feel connected” to the child, if the child is too dark-skinned, etc. The goal of adoption is finding homes for children, not finding “designer babies” for parents. Some countries require only one trip, during which you meet your child and complete your adoption, or receive the child under a degree of guardianship so that you can bring the child home to finalize. Other countries require two, three, or more trips. Russia has tended, in recent years, to require from two to four relatively short trips, some of which are designed to ensure that you get to know the child and feel confident that you can parent him/her, as many dissolutions of Russian adoptions have occurred. Up until recently, Kazakhstan tended to have very long stays – two months or more. It is not clear how this will change, now that Kazakhstan has ratified the Hague Convention, as it is still approving relatively few adoptions. Both Russia and Kazakhstan have required both parents to travel, at least for part of the process. Some other countries make provisions so that one parent can travel and finalize, and a few countries allow proxy adoptions, where a lawyer in the country handles the finalization, and the child can be escorted to the U.S. or picked up by one or both parents. Once you are authorized to travel, your agency will normally help you make travel arrangements, at least from the time you arrive in the child’s country. In general, you will have a guide/translator and driver who will shepherd you through the various required activities, and help you do some sightseeing during down time. You will usually stay in a hotel, though in Russia and a few other countries, people may choose to take a short-term rental apartment or live with a host family. My recommendation is that you find the most comfortable accommodations that you can afford, as parenting a new child in an unfamiliar country is going to be challenging. You will visit your child, go to government agencies, and possibly go to court to complete the adoption. While ordinary people in some countries have been very supportive of international adoption, families adopting from Russia have sometimes been exposed to verbal hostility, and keeping a low profile may be desirable. Once you have custody of your child, and go out and about with him/her, be sure to carry your child’s adoption paperwork with you at all times. Always contact your agency immediately if someone tries to charge you extra fees that were not disclosed to you in advance, or if the child appears to have serious medical issues that were not disclosed to you. However, do remember that newly adopted children often exhibit scary shutdowns because they are overwhelmed and grieving; these will often pass within a week. They may have multiple minor illnesses, such as intestinal parasites or respiratory infections. And they may be very angry and show hostility by trying to escape from your hotel room, hitting you, and so on; remember that they have been taken away from everything familiar, and often from much-loved caregivers. When you complete activities in your child’s province or state, you will usually have to travel to the country’s capital, to obtain a visa for your child so that he/she can enter the country where you are living. If you have used a good agency and followed its instructions to the letter, you should have few problems getting the visa. However, there have been situations in some countries, where the embassy of the country that issues the visa has a concern about the authenticity of the child’s adoption documents, about whether the child meets requirements for immigration, etc. In that case, you may have to delay your trip home until an investigation is conducted; hopefully, it will conclude positively. Once you are back in South Korea, you will need to discuss getting your child citizenship. Remember that, until you do so, he/she is a citizen of the country in which he/she was born. You will need to discuss options for your child – South African citizenship, South Korean citizenship, or dual citizenship. Do remember that, just because you are the adoptive parents, citizenship in one or both of your countries is not necessarily automatic. While many countries from which people adopt remove a child’s citizenship when he/she is adopted by foreigners, so that he/she can truly become a citizen of his/her parents’ country(ies), some Eastern European countries do not see things that way. With Russia, for example, the government has consistently said that a child is considered a Russian citizen forever, or until he/she turns 18 and formally renounces his/her Russian citizenship at a Russian Embassy. If you wish to visit Russia with your minor child at some point, he/she will usually need to carry two valid passports – his/her Russian passport to enter Russia, and the passport of the country where you have acquired his/her citizenship, to allow re-entry into the place where you are living. If you are living in South Korea, and your child gains citizenship in South Africa, you will probably need to get him/her a visa to return to South Korea. All in all, international adoption involves complex legal processes. And international adoption, when it involves expats and people with dual citizenship, can often be even more complicated. But if you work with a good agency, and do a LOT of research, you will be successful. I’d also recommend finding Internet forums and chats for internationally adoptive expats, so you can ask about issues that may puzzle you. I wish you well in all your efforts. If you want to contact me, send me a private message, and I will give you my email address and phone number. Sharon A. Kaufman Mom to Rebecca Joy Chufang Kaufman Born 10/95 in Xiamen (Fujian province), China Adopted 5/97.

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