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Hague Convention on private international law #33, which relates to international adoption, has one set of requirements for all countries that agree to ratify it. These requirements are designed to protect children, their birthparents, and their adoptive families, and to ensure that prospective parents are well-informed about the challenges of parenting an internationally adopted child. However, in order to be eligible to ratify, a country must put in place an adoption system that both fits with its own legal system and conforms to the Hague principles and requirements. Because every country has its own legal system and culture, the actual implementation of the Hague Convention will be slightly different in each. As an example, some countries, once they ratify the Hague, no longer allow any adoptions from non-Hague countries; others, like the U.S., do permit non-Hague adoptions from countries that haven't ratified, but urge those countries to adopt Hague-type procedures over time. Vietnam has been preparing to ratify the Hague Convention, and ratification is expected to occur within the next year or so. However, once ratification is complete, countries that place children from Vietnam will still have the right to decide not to work with the country, because their own requirements are more strict than Vietnam's, or because they are not completely convinced that Vietnam's system will truly have the effect of keeping unethical practices out the adoption process. The U.S. intends to scrutinize the new Vietnamese system very carefully before allowing adoptions to resume, because of all the problems that occurred previously, despite Vietnam's efforts to root out corruption. Do remember that adoption is actually composed of two separate sets of activities -- adoption and immigration. The adoption of a child, itself, must take place under the laws of the CHILD's country of citizenship. (This could include, of course, countries like Korea, where the legal system sends the child to its new home under a decree of guardianship, rather than a decree of adoption, so that the child is actually adopted in his/her new home state.) Unfortunately, some parents look only at the adoption part, and forget about the immigration part. In some cases, though rarely with strongly Hague-compliant receiving countries, a person can adopt a child and then discover that the laws of their home country do not permit the family to immigrate a child because of problems with the homestudy, etc., or do not consider the child eligible for immigration because of the child's age or orphan status. Immigration must be done according to the laws of the PARENTS' country of citizenship. In the U.S., if you adopt a child who does not meet various requirements or if you do not go through the mandatory paperwork with the USCIS, the only way to get an adoption visa for him/her is to live outside the U.S. for two years with the child, and then apply for a regular dependent visa. Your country may have other immigration requirements. Adopting from a foreign country, when one spouse is a citizen of that country and one is a citizen of the country in which the child will be raised after adoption can get complicated. As an example, just because your wife may be able to do a domestic adoption from Vietnam without going through Hague procedures because she is a citizen does NOT guarantee that UK immigration will consider that the adoption is legal for immigration purposes. It may accept only Hague compliant adoptions, where a UK citizen is involved. Since most Hague countries require the use of a licensed adoption agency and prohibit independent adoptions, except sometimes in the case of relatives, you should talk with a licensed agency (or with the appropriate government bureau that serves as an agency) in the UK before beginning an adoption. It will tell you what needs to be done in order to ensure that you will be able to immigrate your child when you decide to move back to the UK from Hanoi. You can also contact a respected immigration/adoption attorney in the UK. As to citizenship, your child will generally hold the citizenship of his/her country of birth, at the time you plan to bring him/her home to the UK. He/she will travel to the UK on a passport issued by his/her country of birth. Once you bring him/her to the UK, you can begin whatever processes your country requires to grant him/her citizenship. In the U.S., many children are eligible to become U.S. citizens as soon as they go through the immigration lines at the airport, because we have a law called the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, that grants automatic citizenship under certain specific conditions. However, that is probably not the case in the UK. The world has not gone mad. You just have to understand that sovereign nations make laws regarding who may adopt, who may enter their borders, and who may become citizens. Sharon
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