The U.S. Adoption Snake Pit

In our tumultuous times, there are smaller matters too. They burn with fury just beneath the headlines. This is one of them. It has caught my attention because the sensibilities of a group of children are involved. Their place in our society has been called into question, needlessly so. And tens of thousands of good-hearted people are alarmed, angry and downcast.

It also caught my attention because I have a personal stake in the matter.

Today, I write directly to those people who feel wronged, and indirectly to those many others who reflexively assume the worst from our government.

This is all the doing of a faceless man in Washington who sits atop one of our most coldblooded bureaucracies. He is Commissioner James Ziglar of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Four days before Christmas, he demeaned thousands of abandoned and orphaned children and their would-be parents.

He issued a press release. He worked until 9 p.m. to get it written. It spoke to the 20,000-plus Americans who are in line to adopt children from abroad this year. And the 20,000 more behind them, and so on.

The statement said that U.S. officials were concerned about baby-stealing and brokering by Cambodian adoption facilitators. He announced that he was approving pending adoptions from that country through February for the sake of families who were caught in the middle, but no more until Cambodia can prove that its system is honest.

Then he stuck his nose into business that was none of his official business. “I would like to take this opportunity,” he said, “to remind families considering adoption that there are many deserving children who are U.S. citizens that are in need of loving homes.”

This is, for a fact, the truth. There are perhaps 117,000 such children at this very moment. But his words landed like a slap. They disparaged families who have reached abroad to many countries for children who are also deserving of love and homes. The nation’s ambassador to immigrants stirred the pot of xenophobia. Adoptive parents, wound tight with emotion, exploded in dismay.

I called and confronted Ziglar 10 days after his press release. He said this, “I never meant to offend. Xenophobia is not one of my problems.” He said he hasn’t been sleeping so well.

“I stick by what I said. There are children here who need homes. But I am not against international adoptions,” he said.

At this moment, we have a choice. Believe the worst or hope for the best? I’ll take the risky path. Ziglar’s response to criticism was not to back away but to listen. I heard heart in his voice. I think he deserves encouragement. And either way, Ziglar turns out to have done something important. He stumbled into a subject that is too touchy for others.

Ziglar has learned in short order what tens of thousands of Americans have discovered by bitter experience: The U.S. adoption process is a mess. The adoption of infants outside the foster care system can be a snake pit of lawyers, money, wheeling and dealing, conflicting and ever-changing laws state by state. At least sometimes, it is wholly unsavory, profit-motivated and fraught with disappointment. Adoptions from the foster care system go more smoothly in general but parents usually must forgo the chance to raise a child from infancy.

Ziglar summed up the process: “It stinks.”

The commissioner said he understands. What motivates many Americans to look abroad is that many countries provide the administrative certainty that the U.S. system cannot. That, and the fact that love should know no borders.

I am familiar with China, which, in contrast to Cambodia, has a respected and straightforward national agency for adoption. The yearlong process weighs the character and maturity of would-be adoptive parents. U.S. officials understand this system and would do well to establish a similar one here, eliminating private lawyers and deal-making and putting the needs of children foremost.

Ziglar put it in these words: “This is a democracy. Americans ought to rise up and raise hell and demand better.”

It is easy to demonize those in government. It’s harder to extend them our trust. In this case, why not take the chance and meet Ziglar halfway?

When I travel to China in a few months to pick up my baby daughter, I expect my country’s immigration service to welcome a new U.S. citizen with a smile. And meanwhile, I’ll join him in agitating to fix things here at home. If he’ll stick with it and we make progress, I promise: We’ll add on a bedroom for my daughter’s new brother.