Wherever they are: Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, or Oklahoma City lawyers, social workers, and even adoptive parents all over the country are taking a backseat in the adoption process — to bureaucrats.  I’m talking about the adoption of children from Haiti.  Adopting from Haiti has been a time-consuming prospect for years, but the bureaucratic red tape has become more obviously ridiculous over these last couple of weeks.

In the wake of the earthquake, getting adopted Haitian children who are already matched with American adoptive families home to these families seems like a win-win situation.  The children are united with their parents, they are safe and provided for, the burden on the nation of Haiti to make available sufficient food and water is relieved a little bit, and on the list goes.  So one would think that one obvious part of the solution to the chaos in Haiti would be to bring these children home.  And, for a little while, that seemed to be what the governments (ours and Haiti’s) were attempting to do.  Some adoptions were moved along, rather than dragging under the weight of bureaucracy.

Then came UNICEF.  They started screaming and yelling about the risk of  “human trafficking,”  and influenced the Haitian government to put all of these adoptions on hold.  Now, I’m not saying that human trafficking is not a valid concern, in general. But there is no reason to believe that sending children who were already matched with families prior to the earthquake to live with their new families  is in any way, shape, or form a “human trafficking”  risk.  In the meantime, these children who have families here are in an unstable situation where even food, water, and shelter are hard to come by.  I guess it’s a good thing that the UN and the government of Haiti (a signatory to the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child — the UNCRC) have these children’s “best interest” in mind.  (Little bit of sarcasm there.  Just in case you missed it.)

To add insult to injury where our own government is concerned, there is a certain group of children who were brought here from Haiti last week.  My understanding is that all of them had previously (previous to the earthquake, I mean) been cleared for U.S. adoption (so the issue of exporting them from the country for adoption only to find that they aren’t actually orphans isn’t an issue), and that some, but not all, of them were matched with families.  The government — our government — is insisting that these children — all of them, including those who are already adopted — go into the foster care system.  The reasoning is similar — something about not wanting to adopt out children who were thought to have been orphaned by the earthquake but haven’t been, really — but the implementation is absurd.  Some of these children are already adopted!  Their parents are being deprived of their children over a matter of politics.

If you haven’t already, please visit ParentalRights.org and read more about the Parental Rights Amendment.  Call your Senators and Representative and ask them to support the Parental Rights Amendment and to oppose the UNCRC.  Call your state representatives and ask them to sponsor resolutions at the state level showing support of the Parental Rights Amendment and opposition to the UNCRC.

And pray for Haiti.  Not just for food and water and stability, although those are all important, but pray for soft hearts and rational minds to truly do what is best for these children.  And pray for the mamas and daddies here in the U.S. who are still waiting for their children to come home, and who are heartbroken that they aren’t physically present to provide for their needs.