NYHOMESTUDY BLOG

by Miriam Vieni L.C.S.W.

When we adopted our daughter in 1974, the field of international adoptions was on the verge of blossoming into an exciting range of opportunities for homeless children and would-be adoptive parents. Up to that point, there were a very few large agencies (perhaps three or four) involved in facilitating the adoptions of children, mainly from Korea and more recently from Vietnam. The large, more traditional agencies were uncomfortable about international adoptions because less was known about the health and backgrounds of the children, than what was known about the health and backgrounds of children born in the U.S. Some of the agencies and groups that were helping families adopt children from Vietnam during the war, were new and small and they were operated by enthusiastic people who had, themselves, adopted children from Vietnam. When adoptions from Vietnam ceased in April 1975, the people who had been involved in helping children from that country, find families, turned to other countries with populations of homeless children and they instituted programs in those countries. Suddenly, a field that had been limited to a few agencies arranging adoptions from two countries, expanded into large numbers of agencies and parent groups, facilitating the adoptions of children from many countries. Families were able to adopt children from Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, and India. Then, in the late 1980’s, there was a trickle of direct adoptions from China which, expanded and was formalized over the years, until thousands of Chinese babies were being adopted. In the early 1990’s, the field expanded to several countries in Eastern Europe, and Russia, as well as a few African countries. Little by little, the number of direct adoptions decreased while the number of adoptions arranged by agencies, increased. Many of the agencies were small and were operated by adoptive parents. They were flexible and they were committed to the children and families whom they served. The majority of adoptions had good outcomes. A very few had problems. The majority of agencies and facilitators were honest. A minority were not. Larger, more traditional agencies turned to international adoptions because the supply of healthy Caucasian infants in the U.S. had decreased as more single mothers either chose to keep and raise their children or turned to abortion. In order to stay in business, these larger agencies needed to attract adoptive parents and they discovered that in the 1990’s, middle class Caucasian couples were interested in adopting children of a variety of races and cultures from many foreign countries. Middle class African American families also began to turn to international adoptions as it became more and more difficult for them to find healthy African American babies in the U.S.

In 1993, we learned of a plan to impose an international treaty on the field of international adoptions. The ostensible goal of the treaty was to protect the children by regulating the adoptions to minimize black market adoptions and to ensure that adoptions would be carried out in a professional manner so that the welfare of children would be protected. The two people who set out to sell international agencies and adoptive parent groups on the treaty were Peter Fundt from the Department of State Office of the Assistant Legal Advisor for Private International Law, and Bill Pierce (now deceased), the executive director of the National Council on Adoptions (an organization of private adoption agencies). He was also on the board of the National Council on Accreditation (a private organization which accredited private multi-service social service agencies. Bill Pierce was a vocal opponent of non-agency adoptions. In a letter to the member organizations of NCFA, he stated that he hoped the framework for agencies developed in the Hague regulations, would eventually be expanded to all adoptions.

Some of us, attorneys, adoptive parents, social workers, and agency people, believed that the framework of regulations that was being proposed by the State Department, would be harmful to international adoptions as a whole. We believed that it would cause small agencies to go out of business, cause countries to develop bureaucracies that would interfere with efficient adoption processing, and would add requirements and costs that would eliminate many prospective adoptive parents. We believed that the government’s proposed implementing legislation (greatly influenced by Bill Pierce) would not actually protect children but would, rather, promote the primacy of large agencies. It was difficult to communicate with others about our feelings because people were not using email and internet service at that time and because the State Department recruited people to travel throughout the country and to sell the Hague Treaty to adoptive parents and agencies. They promised that Immigration requirements for children entering the U.S. would be made more flexible and they threatened that countries would refuse to send their children to the U.S. if the U.S. didn’t ratify the treaty. However, we were able to initiate debate on the subject and to put pressure on the powers that be to hold public meetings in Washington D.C. on the treaty. We developed our own proposed implementing legislation for the treaty which, we hoped, would satisfy the wish for more regulation while setting up procedures which would allow small and medium sized agencies to continue to function in the international adoption field. The State Department people, however, were uninterested in our suggestions and our visits to senators and congressmen, during which we tried to explain the potential problems with the State Department plans, were ineffective. The meetings proceeded, and promises were made to keep the fees low and to take the needs of all stake holders into account. Committees were formed to provide feedback to the officials who were developing the implementing legislation for the treaty and the regulations connected to them. Many of the people who were initially very concerned about the impact of the treaty, were reassured by all of this that the treaty would not impact negatively on international adoptions.

The Hague Treaty went into effect in the U.S. on April 1, 2008. Following, is what I have observed. Our State Department has made demands on countries that did not initially sign on to the treaty, that they do so. The U.S. State Department has indicated that adoptions from countries that resisted, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Guatemala, were flawed and unacceptable and these adoptions by U.S. citizens, have by and large ceased. The adoption processes from countries that haven’t signed on and that have continued, have been negatively affected by new procedures imposed by our government. In many cases, home study agencies and placing agencies are insisting on Hague requirements for non Hague adoptions. These requirements make the adoption process more complicated and expensive. Many agencies are applying the regulations across the board because they feel that this will protect them from criticism from COA.

Adoptions by U.S. citizens from countries that have signed on, have decreased in number and are slower to complete. U.S. Immigration procedures for potential adoptive parents adopting from Hague countries are more difficult and complicated than they are for those adopting from non Hague countries. Home studies for people adopting from Hague countries are more complicated and difficult to conduct. Although the legislation allows exempt providers (non accredited agencies and independent social workers) to perform them, in practice, accredited placement agencies are reluctant to use exempt providers.

The National Council on Accreditation (one of two accrediting bodies and the accrediting body responsible for accreditation of most U.S. agencies), is charging large fees to accredit agencies. It has recruited volunteers to make judgments as to whether or not agencies may be accredited. Some of the volunteers have worked in international adoptions previously and some have not. The regulations are new and difficult for everyone to understand. Therefore, the volunteer accreditors have received brief training on how to implement the accreditation requirements from people who do not completely understand them. So, the accreditation standards are being applied differently to different agencies. Many small and medium sized agencies have been refused accreditation, and some of them have gone out of business altogether. Some of our best small agencies have opted out of accreditation completely because they cannot afford the process and they, therefore can no longer provide international adoption services to families and children. The actual regulations have little or no connection with the quality of services provided to families and children, but on paper, they satisfy the accrediting officials.

So, the fears that we had back in 1993 have been justified. Fewer people are able to adopt. Fewer agencies are arranging international adoptions. The agencies that have survived, tend to be the larger, wealthier agencies. Children are arriving from fewer countries, and they wait longer in institutions before they can be adopted. Most of the children seem to be coming from Russia, Korea, and a few African countries. These are not Hague countries. The wait for children and adoptive parents is longer. In the guise of improving the quality of international adoptions, our government has systematically been doing away with them.

All Rights Reserved by Miriam Vieni L.C.S.W.

By MIREYA NAVARRO, March 31, 2008

Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.

“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.

“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”

Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears.
They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.

They recalled the friends, as in Ms. Bratter’s case, who thought they were not black enough. Or the people who challenged them to label themselves by innocently asking, “What are you?” Or the relatives of different races who can sometimes be insensitive to one another.

“I think Barack Obama is going to bring these deeply American stories to the forefront,” said Esther John, 56, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington, who identifies herself as African-American, American Indian and white.

“Maybe we’ll get a little bit further in the dialogue on race,” Ms. John said. “The guilt factor may be lowered a little bit because Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”

Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Mr. Obama, with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is “too black” or “not black enough,” as the candidate himself brought up in his speech on March 18, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories.

“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,”
said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”

The old categories are weakening, however, as immigration and the advancing age of marriage in the United States fuel a steady rise in the number of interracial marriages. The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the Census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races, a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or about 3 percent of the population.

Many people still stick to a one-race label, even if they are of mixed descent, researchers say, sometimes because of strong identification with one racial group, and occasionally because of a conscious effort not to dilute the numbers of the group they most identify with.

In interviews, people of mixed race said their decision about how to identify themselves was deeply personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity.

James McBride, 50, who described growing up in a Brooklyn housing project with his white mother in a memoir, “The Color of Water,” said that, like Mr.
Obama, he identified himself primarily as a black man of mixed race. As a child whose father was black, he said: “I really wanted to be like all the other black kids. It was the larger group around me.” And through life, because of his brown skin, society has imposed its own label. “If cops see me, they see a black man sitting in a car,” he said.

But being proud to call himself African-American, Mr. McBride said, does not negate his connection to his “Jewish part,” his mother’s heritage. Asked which part of him was dominant, he said, “It’s like grabbing Jell-O.”

“But what difference does it make?” he added. “When you’re mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.”

Mr. McBride and other mixed-race Americans said they took pride that Mr.
Obama was presenting his biracial identity as an asset for the presidency.
Even if he calls himself black, and has made a central element of his campaign biography the quest to claim that identity after his father left him, Mr. Obama is seen as giving equal weight in his story to his white mother and grandparents.

“He’s really having to play the field and know his audience really well,”
said Phillip Handy, 21, a junior at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., whose mother is white and father is black. “In the end, when I hear his message, I don’t think he’s bailing out on any of us.”

While many mixed-race people say they see their heritage as a plus, they also say they often face pressure from others who want to pigeonhole them.
Mr. McBride said his books invariably were shelved in the African-American sections of bookstores. “Why can’t I be a white author?” he said. “I’m half white.”

Shafia Zaloom, 36, a teacher in San Francisco who is Asian and white, said she was often asked if her two children, who look like her white husband, were adopted. “Sometimes, when I’m at the playground, people think I’m the nanny,” she said.

Ms. Zaloom, who gets her looks from her Chinese mother, said she had been on the receiving end of insensitive racial remarks and gestures about Asians.
But she fully identifies as mixed race.

“It’s really unfair to expect people to choose,” she said. “It’s like asking to be loyal to one parent or the other.”

Although still small, the mixed-race population is increasingly visible among the young. The 2000 Census found that 41 percent of the mixed-race population was under 18. Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past. Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant who runs a blog on race and popular culture, racialicious.com, said she doubted that the uproar that greeted Tiger Woods when he described himself as “Cablinasian” (for heritage that includes Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) in 1997 would be as strong today.

“When you’re multiracial, you can be several things at the same time,” said Ms. Van Kerckhove, 30, who is white and Asian and has endorsed Mr. Obama on her blog for moving the race debate away from “who’s black and who’s white, or who’s a victim and who’s an oppressor.”

Unfortunately, Ms. Van Kerckhove added, suspicions persist about the motivation of people who identify themselves as mixed race. Many people, she said, wonder, “Are multiracial people trying to be multiracial as a way to escape racism?”

The mixed-race terrain is full of such bumps and tricky balances. But at least, many multiracial Americans say, they are no longer seen as oddities.
Ms. Zaloom expects that her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son will experience a different journey to self-identity than she did. At times while growing up, Ms. Zaloom recalled, she struggled with questions about whether she was white enough or attractive. She rebelled against Chinese language lessons, her mother’s Chinese food and eating with chopsticks.

But when her daughter was born, she named her Mei Lan, like her maternal grandmother, to honor her Chinese roots. Then she named her son Kyle in deference to her paternal Irish side. Her wish for her children, she said, is that they realize that the benefits of a mixed identity outweigh any challenges.

“Ultimately,” she said, the goal is “to not have to check a box.”

by
Miriam Vieni, L.C.S.W.

Now that the U.S. is implementing the Hague Treaty on International Adoptions, adoptive parents are being required to take courses to prepare them for the adoption experience. For many, this seems like one more burden added to an arduous adoption process. Having been through the experience of international adoption myself, I understand why people may be feeling negative and resistant about having to take the courses. However, having been involved in conducting adoption home studies since 1974, I see how taking the courses may help potential adoptive parents better understand the issues they may encounter when their newly adopted child joins the family.

Competent social workers have always included the discussion of adoption issues in the home study process, even before such discussion was first required by our Immigration Service back in 1994. We’ve always talked about medical issues, emotional and adjustment issues, and trans-cultural and trans-racial issues. But these discussions haven’t always had the kind of impact for which we’ve hoped. This is probably partly because families are feeling so anxious during the home study process. When people are worried about gathering all the necessary documents for their home studies and their dossiers, and feeling threatened by the evaluative nature of the home study, it’s hard to concentrate and its educational content. So the fact that the educational courses help people focus on issues important in international adoption, in a process that feels more neutral and is separated from direct interaction with the social worker conducting the home study, helps people begin to absorb important information.

Most people adopting internationally, are adopting children who have been living in orphanages. The courses help families understand the impact of institutionalization on children. What does it mean, for example, to live in an institution in which individual attention barely exists, nutrition is limited, stimulation may be non existent, and independence and curiosity are discouraged? How is a child’s ability to make healthy and enduring connections to other people affected by a changing array of care givers? What is the impact on intellectual development of the absence of toys and a minimum of verbal communication? How can one differentiate between behavior caused by neurological damage and that caused by lack of stimulation? What are the affects on family relationships and interaction of the introduction of a new child to the family? How does age impact on the newly adopted child’s behavior, personality, and adjustment? What kinds of help will be needed as the adopted child enters the school system?

All of the questions noted above are concerns for new adoptive parents, and the many courses available to them, help with answers and provide techniques for handling problems. There are a variety of on-line courses as well as those provided by agencies and organizations to help you deal with the complexities of international adoption. So embrace the numerous opportunities for learning that will help you with the wonderful new challenges that await you.

Miriam Vieni, L.C.S.W.
www.nyhomestudy.com
www.nyhomestudy.com/miriam-vieni.htm
www.nyhomestudy.net
miriamvieni@optonline.net
(516) 333-4999
Fax (516) 876-8246

by Andrea Troy

Race in America is forefront in the news. With Barack Obama, a man who is black and white and running for president, it is here with renewed vigor. His candidacy would be even more surprising if we weren’t a country so full of contradictions.

Interracial unions and the biracial offspring they produce have a long, tortured history, from master/slave “relationships” to laws banning miscegenation (the “mixing” of races.) Marriage between blacks and whites was once illegal and statutes remained on the books in some southern states until the very recent past, keeping the stigma alive and well.

It has never been easy or simple to be biracial or part of an interracial family. It complicates life. It raises the potential for emotional dissonance, stress and discomfort. As Obama said, he suffered from unintended racially insensitive remarks his own (white) grandmother who adores him made. But I am sure he’s also heard discriminatory remarks from blacks and people of every race and hue, as we all have.

No “group” is free from stereotypical thinking and prejudice. Not his. Not mine. Not yours. That is important to remember if you are considering transracial adoption.

The term ‘transracial adoption’ used to refer mostly to white parents adopting black children or biracial children, who are also considered black, but over time has become more inclusive.

Controversy arose in the 1970’s and 1980’s in the aftermath of the heady, liberated, ‘let’s love one another 60’s’, when it became apparent we are not all considered equal “under the skin” in cultural currency. Black children who had been adopted by progressive white parents and raised in race neutral environments felt alienated. Society was not race blind, and hearing their parents say it was didn’t make it so. Many of the children were growing up discontented, disconnected, and resentful.

The Association of Black Social Workers decided it was racial genocide to strip black children of their racial heritage—their birthright—by placing them with white families who were not equipped to raise them. They also felt not enough outreach was done to find black families for them. Their assessment and accusation of genocide may have been extreme and politically skewed, but their concerns were valid.

Over time, our ideas about adoption have changed and expanded.

We have come to recognize the needs and rights of birthmothers. We have come to recognize the needs and rights of children and the special needs of children of color. And we have come to recognize that an adult’s view and experience of family are not the same as those of the child’s.

Identity is tidier if you are in the majority within society and/or your own family, and when you can recognize yourself in those around you.

If you are the zygote of the same race egg and sperm you don’t have to choose what to call yourself. If you grew up in a same race household and weren’t adopted or “different” in any way, you don’t know what it’s like to be a minority in your own home.

You need to be aware that as a parent you will never fully understand your child’s experience.

Of course this race stuff is nonsensical because we are all ape descendants. But historical social structure and stricture forces identity based on observable physical characteristics and genealogical lineage. In other words, on how we look.

No one can deny we live in an appearance-oriented, race conscious, inconsistent, and incongruous world.

And here’s the perfect proof: despite this country’s record of slavery and segregation and an intact hierarchical social system that highly values and still favors whites, the son of an African father and white American mother has a chance to win the highest office in the land. What’s more, his good looks and tall stature and light skin are part of the picture.

When interracial families are formed not through intermarriage but via adoption, the dynamic is different. The choice is purely intentional. Transracial adoption has expanded to other countries and includes Asian, Hispanic, Latino, and indigenous children the world over.

Each adoption route carries a unique parental commitment and responsibility. All require effort and sensitivity and knowledge.

We in the adoption field have come to realize families need to consider carefully and prepare well when they adopt a child of a race not their own. They need to incorporate, honor, integrate, and accommodate their child’s racial heritage and birth culture. They need to understand their status will change forever once they become an interracial family. And they need to be willing to relinquish their sense of white middle class entitlement they take for granted.

The concept of race is emotionally laden; socially, psychologically and economically complex; and a great influence in the adoption process. For example, a family may want a child from China but not from Brazil. Another may favor a Guatemalan child over an Ethiopian one. Yet another may shy away from any but a Russian.

Adoption is not the time to be politically correct.

You are allowed to exercise your personal preferences. If you parent the child you desire things will be better for all involved. But you need to understand that adopting a Korean, Vietnamese, or any child who is not Caucasian also makes your family interracial.

And if you are willing and honest enough to admit how your choice is a reflection of broader social values, you will better understand the world that awaits your child.

Living in a diverse neighborhood, availability of resources, having neighbors, friends, and associates who share your child’s race and heritage, are some important factors to take into account.

Think long and hard and examine your feelings. Learn as much you can. And be aware that your child might not always appreciate the choice you made.

Transracial adoption is multifaceted and knotty but can also expand, fulfill, enrich, and bring pleasure to your life. Before you travel across racial lines, make sure it is what you want. Make sure you embrace it for sound reasons. Above all, make sure you feel good and comfortable and secure about your decision.

And then, enjoy the journey!

Copyright 2008 by Andrea Troy. For information, contact relatedarticles.com

* * *

John Stossel is an award-winning news correspondent and author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel–Why Everything You Know is Wrong.

By ELIZABETH OLSON

WASHINGTON — Eyes like black pearls, the softest skin and little tufts of hair made it totally easy to fall in love at first sight. And that is what Julie Carroll — and Jewel McRoberts and Tommi-Lynn Sawyer — did when they saw the three tiny girls at a Vietnamese orphanage. They adopted the babies after months of waiting and then had to leave them behind because they could not obtain entry visas to bring them back to the United States.

That was almost four months ago, and the families last week began a public campaign to press the State Department to let them bring Madelyn Grace, Eden and Anabelle to the United States. Enlisting the help of the senators from California, where two of the families live, the adoptive parents argue that they have been unfairly caught in diplomatic wrangling between the American and Vietnamese governments over concerns about corruption in the adoption process that led to the suspension of Vietnamese adoptions from 2003 to 2005.

“What has happened to us is completely unconscionable,” said Mrs. Carroll, who, along with her husband, Steve, and her three other children, traveled from their Camarillo, Calif., home to campaign for a 10-month-old sister, now in foster care in Vietnam.

“We don’t have a problem with them investigating the adoption,” she said, “but we have proved there is not a shred of corruption involved in it.”

The State Department, which issued a warning on adoptions in Vietnam last month, maintains that the lack of controls on “baby finders” and unregulated payments — the average adoption cost is about $25,000 per family — are fostering baby buying. Six years ago, similar accusations led Vietnam to tighten controls on foreign adoption. At the end of 2005, Vietnam and the United States signed an adoption agreement, and nearly 1,100 Vietnamese children have been adopted by Americans since.

However, in advance of talks on renewal of the accord, which expires Sept. 1, families note that there has been a sudden increase in the federal government’s investigations of adoptions in Vietnam, preventing some babies from returning home with their adoptive parents.

Twenty-one entry visas for children have been rejected in the last two years, according to the State Department. More than half the denials have come since last October, prompting complaints that the department is singling out individual cases to embarrass the Vietnamese government into changing its adoption process.

“Everything we know now says the State Department is, frankly, using these babies as a tool in a battle that has nothing to do with these families or the children themselves,” Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, told the three families who met in her office last week.

The State Department says it is making sure babies are legitimately available for adoption.

“It would be unforgivable for us to look at a case and think something is wrong, then to let it go,” said Michele T. Bond, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for overseas services. Ms. Bond said Vietnam had never posted a schedule of adoption fees, as required in the bilateral agreement, and said documentation on how some babies came to be orphaned “is unreliable.”

The State Department warning said that embassy personnel had seen “an increase in the number of irregularities appearing in orphan petitions and visa applications,” and “significant increases in the number of abandoned children” in two provinces, including Thai Nguyen, where the three contested babies were adopted.

The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington did not return a call for comment.

Adoption agencies say they are not steering people away from Vietnamese adoptions, but some, like Children’s Home Society and Family Services of St. Paul, are not accepting new applications for Vietnam so they can handle their existing clients.

“We are encouraging people to list a second country they prefer,” said Kristine Huson, the agency’s spokeswoman, “because we don’t know what delays there might be if the agreement isn’t renewed in Vietnam.”

Under a program begun by the State Department in November, adoption agencies are telling clients to acquire their babies’ visa clearance before they arrange travel to Vietnam and complete the adoption formalities. The Orphans First program, the department said, alerts parents to problems earlier in the process. In the past, parents who legally adopted a child in Vietnam but then could not obtain an entry visa to the United States were faced with either staying indefinitely in Vietnam to resolve the problem or leaving the child there.

That is what the McRoberts family, of Seaside, Calif., faced. They adopted two little girls last September, under the previous system in which immigrant visas were the last step. Jordan, now 8 months old, received her entry visa to the United States, but Eden, also 8 months, was denied her visa on the grounds that there were discrepancies in her file.

“We were told that this denial is never reversed, and to take Eden back to the orphanage,” Mrs. McRoberts said. “It was absolutely devastating to leave her,” she said. “But I had to get Jordan back home. And I have two boys, and I hadn’t seen them in four weeks.”

She and her husband, Claude, a naval officer, paid to leave Eden in foster care instead and paid Vietnamese investigators to ascertain that she had been truly abandoned at a hospital — which, including travel, housing and other costs, could add as much as $20,000 to their costs.

The Carrolls had adopted two baby girls from the same orphanage. They were able to travel with Lillian Rose, 8 months, but Madelyn Grace, 10 months, had to be left behind in foster care.

“We’re missing out on four months of her life, all those milestones in her development,” the Carrolls told Ms. Boxer as their sons, Jeremy, 6, and Grayson, 5, played outside her office.

The McRobertses and Carrolls hired a Vietnamese law firm to investigate, as did Ms. Sawyer, a single mother from Millville, N.J. And in each case, they said, investigators found the children were legally eligible for adoption. Last month, the federal immigration agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, approved Madelyn Grace for a visa, but the couple said that the State Department had yet to act on that and that they had received no explanation why — so they asked Ms. Boxer and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, to help.

Ms. Boxer said she planned to lobby the State Department to approve the visas. Her aide, Sean Moore, said he had noticed the spike in visa denials since October. Thirteen of the 21 denials occurred after Oct. 1, he said. All but seven of those have been resolved.

Among those seven families are Tom and Wendy Mills of Los Angeles, who are finding their lives upended in their effort to keep their baby. Mr. Mills, a character actor and freelance writer, stayed in Hanoi to care for Julie, 8 months old, after her visa was denied, while his wife travels back and forth keeping her accounting practice alive.

It has been “an emotional strain and a financial struggle,” Mr. Mills wrote by e-mail. “I came to Vietnam expecting to stay here for two, maybe three weeks, and now it’s been five months.”

The State Department does not comment on individual cases, but Ms. Bond said the current agreement with Vietnam needed to be reshaped to curb exploitation with, among other things, a more transparent fee structure, and to meet international standards set out in the Hague Convention, an adoptions pact. On April 1, the United States’ membership in the pact begins. Vietnam has not signed the Hague agreement.

“The goal of international adoption is to find a home for each orphaned child,” Ms. Bond said, “not to ‘produce’ a child for a family. It’s not a market.”

copyright NYTIMES, originally appeared at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/us/11adopt.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin