No rubber-stamp court for int'l adoptions

By Jane Jeong Trenka

For 60 years, Korea has been sending children to the U.S. without fully understanding how exactly the immigration authorities there process the necessary paperwork. The mismatch between the two systems has resulted in forced deportations of adoptees without U.S. citizenship, as well as an alarming situation in which Korean adoption agencies did not receive the naturalization papers of 18,000 Korean children sent for adoption to the U.S., even though this paperwork is required under Korean law.

Although the U.S. Child Citizenship Act has remedied many problems, Korean adoptees sent today are still at risk of not getting naturalized and therefore being deported, a problem which starts with the type of visa issued to Korean adoptees by the U.S. government.

IR-3 and IR-4 visas are issued to children who come from countries that have not ratified the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption. The IR-4, issued to Koreans, is less desirable than the IR-3 because it does not guarantee automatic citizenship to the adoptee.

Of the 1506 IR-4 visas that the U.S. issued to children worldwide in 2012, 628 went to Koreans, making Korea the top receiver of this type of visa. The other top countries were Uganda, with 226 cases, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (211), Ethiopia (114), and Morocco (57).

However, Korea now has the chance to secure the better IR-3 visa, and therefore automatic U.S. citizenship, for its children. This is because under the amended Special Adoption Law, adoptions are now required to be finalized in court. The IR-3 is given to children when a “full and final adoption is completed abroad” and when “the parents physically see the child prior to or during the adoption proceedings.” Usually countries that make a "full and final adoption" require parents to physically come to court.

However, the American branch of MPAK (Mission to Promote Adoption in Korea) has been campaigning online since the end of February to allow parents not to have to attend court. On March 12, MPAK announced on its English-language blog that Korean family court judges have decided that most American parents will not have to appear in court. MPAK acknowledged that if parents do not come to court, the U.S. might have to issue IR-4 visas.

One might think that if children were issued the old IR-4 visas, things would simply go on as they always have. Some adoptees’ parents would forget to re-adopt them in the U.S., and therefore they would not get citizenship, and more adoptees would be deported, as they already have been. This would be business as usual.

However, because of the new Korean system, the situation has changed and new complications could arise. That is because the IR-4 is for children whose adoptions must be completed in the U.S. But Korean adoptions will now be completed in Korea, not the U.S.

Yet the child with an IR-4 visa has to be adopted again in order to get citizenship. This could potentially cause confusion in the U.S. courts. The judges could say, "Why are you trying to adopt this child again? The adoption was already completed in Korea.”

A better way to get citizenship is automatically, through an IR-3, but for this, the adoptive parents have to be present before or during the adoption process. Therefore, neither the IR-3 nor the IR-4 completely matches the conditions being lobbied for by MPAK.

In the best interests of the child, the Korean family court should compel American adoptive parents to fully and clearly meet the requirements set by the U.S. government for IR-3 visas. Although most parents will probably complete the steps necessary to secure U.S. citizenship for their children if they get IR-4 visas, it is now possible for the family court to shape its regulations in a way that can systemically prevent the worst-case scenarios. We have already seen through the eyes of approximately 10 deportees living in Seoul that cases of extreme negligence exist, even though these may be a minority.

Moreover, one three-week visit to complete the court procedure is not unreasonable considering that other countries have far stricter requirements. For example, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, and Honduras require two trips to their countries in order to adopt a child. Before Russia closed adoptions to Americans, it required three trips. Moreover, China, Colombia, Burundi, Costa Rica, India, and Hong Kong also have travel requirements that range up to seven weeks. In other words, it is standard to travel and wait. People who are entrusted with a life should not consider a stay in their child’s country of birth to be an inconvenience, but rather an opportunity to learn about their child’s heritage and culture.

The family court should open clear communication with foreign embassies to request cooperation and learn the laws and regulations of each country where Korean children are sent. In addition, those of us already affected by adoption would welcome information from the court. How does a court ensure that mothers and fathers have been contacted before their children are sent for adoption? What are the qualifications of the employees who counsel parents? How can we ensure that the court investigation is an objective process with true substance, not a rubber stamp for the adoption agencies, which have admitted to falsifying adoptees’ social histories in order to meet their interpretation of U.S. visa regulations, or in order to not “ruin the child’s chances of being adopted”?

Even if ensuring ethical adoptions is a burdensome, time-consuming, and expensive process, adoption should always serve the best interests of the child, not the convenience of adults. The family court should faithfully work to uphold this principle as the children’s final protector in Korea, as many adult adoptees and our families have already witnessed the permanent damage resulting from recklessly speedy, industrialized, and unethical adoptions.

Jane Jeong Trenka volunteers as president of TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community) while studying for her master’s degree in public policy at Seoul National University. She is author of the memoirs "The Language of Blood and Fugitive Visions’’ and co-editor of "Outsiders Within."