“Hi Abby, this is Angie from Children’s Home Society. Could you give me a call back before our meeting tonight?” I called her back. I was thinking she was going to cancel our meeting to update our homestudy. (She has 2 kids at home, it was December, I was assuming sick kid.) It was 10:20 am and since I didn’t have to pick my class up from computers until 10:30, I decided to give her a quick call.

A really perky voice answered the phone.

“Hi Abby! I’m so glad you called me back. I’ve got some news for you! (at this point I was trying to unlock my classroom door, dropped my keys twice and was desperately trying to get to my computer) We have a referral for you to look over.” Now she read me all the details of the referral. But she still hadn’t given me a name, age, boy or girl, etc. I was pretty impatient at this point. I cut in to the details with “I need to know if it’s a boy or a girl! I have 8 minutes left to call Kevin with the news, look at the pictures on the computer and pick up my class from computers.” She laughed and said “It’s a boy. His name is Rahimeto Keyredin and he’s 5 1/2 weeks old.”

I called Kevin and at the same time checked my e-mail. When my slow (ridiculously slow) computer finally opened the file I saw this:

and this:

I hung up with Kevin and went running down the hall at school, interrupted about 6 classes to announce “It’s a BOY!” on my way to pick up my class.

We got back to the room and I briefly explained what was going on. I told them they could color or play with toys or read books or basically do whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t hurt anyone or break anything. (not one of my finer teaching moments, I’ll admit it.) And I spent the next half hour pouring over his referral paperwork.

I printed off his picture and carried them around in my pocket for the next week at least, showing them to anyone who walked past me.

The two pictures above are Milo Rahimeto Hendricks – 5 1/2 weeks old.
Here’s Milo over the next year:
We didn’t get any more pictures until he was 4 months old

We met him in Ethiopia when he was 5 months old.

6 months

7 months

8 months (hanging out with friends from Ethiopia. Harry was at the Care Center with Milo. We met Claire on the plane ride home.)

9 months

10 months

11 months

12 months

13 months

Every child is entitled to:

Love and full membership in her family.

Have his culture embraced and valued.

Parents who know that this is a race conscious society.

Parents who know that she will experience life differently than they do.

Parents who are not looking to “save” him or to improve the world.

Parents who know that being in a family doesn’t depend on “matching.”

Parents who know that trans racial adoption changes the family forever.

Be accepted by extended family members.

Parents who know that, if they are white, they benefit from racism.

Parents who know that they can’t transmit the child’s birth culture if it is not their own.

Have items at home that are made for and by people of his race.

Opportunities to make friends with people of her race or ethnicity.

Daily opportunities of positive experiences with his birth culture.

Build racial pride within her own home, school, and neighborhood.

Have many opportunities to connect with adults of the child’s race.

Parents who accept, understand and empathize with her culture.

Learn survival, problem-solving, and coping skills in a context of racial pride.

Take pride in the development of a dual identity and a multicultural/multiracial perspective on life.

Find his multiculturalism to be an asset and to conclude, “I’ve got the best of both worlds.”

I was going to post about this a little later but since it’sNational Adoption Day, I decided to post it a few days early.

So in honor of National Adoption Day, here’s a recap of how Milo joined our family.

August 10th, 2007 – we made the annoucement that we had decided to adopt. And at that point we really had no idea what that meant.

September 20-21, 2007 – we attended PAC (pre-adoption class) required by our agency. It was two very intensive days filled with an amazing amount of information regarding adoption.

November 2007 – We complete our home study, meet with social workers for interviews and complete our dossier.

December 21, 2007 – we are put on the official waiting list, approved to adopt a child up to 18 months old. And we begin to wait.

April 26-27, 2008 – we held a rummage sale of monsterous proprotions. It was windy, rainy, snowing, sleeting. Pretty much the complete opposite of a good day for a rummage sale. We moved the entire thing into our front porch, kitchen, living room and gararge. And in two days made close to $2100 to put towards our adoption.

June 15, 2008 – Kevin offers to shave his head if we get $2000 towards the adoption costs. We got close to $4000.

Then there is a very long stretch of just waiting. We kept ourselves busy by getting the room ready, organizing the house, work, and answering the question “Have you heard anything yet?” about a million times.

November, 2008 – we are now around #10 on the “unofficial” waiting list. I’ve started checking my cell phone obsesively. I printed out the list and was crossing off names as the referrals came in.

December 2, 2008 – we had an appointment to meet with our social worker. Our homestudy was about to expire and we needed to get it updated. At 10:20 my cell phone rang. I let it go to voice mail because I was at work but checked it when I saw the number was our adoption agency. It was our social worker telling me to call her before our appointment that evening. My first thought was that she needed to cancel the appointment. When she answered the phone she was chatty and after what seemed like forever said, “well, I have a referral for you. It’s a boy.” And then continued to chat with me. I had to cut her off and ask for the details quickly because I had to pick my class from computers. I had about 6 minutes left to get the details, call Kevin and pick up my class. I picked up my class, returned to the classroom and told them to color while I downloaded his referral information and looked at pictures.

February 19, 2009 – we recieved a social report. An update on Milo about his eating habits, sleeping, daily routine, health and about 12 new pictures of him.

February 20, 2009 – court date in Ethiopia. We passed. Milo was officially ours and we were his.

February 25, 2009 – we recieved Milo’s Ethiopian birth certificate but better than that, we recieved a travel date.

Packing, planning, and to-do lists went into full swing.

March 19, 2009 – we boarded a plane to Ethiopia.

March 20, 2009 – we walked up 4 flights of stairs and met our son.

March 29, 2009 – we landed in Minnesota and met Lexi at the airport. Our family was finally together.

October 22, 2009 – our re-adoption hearing. It was a formality to finalize Milo’s adoption.

Great.

Before people jump to the conclusion that I am against search for birth family. I’m not. I believe in open adoption and keeping the connection to a child’s birth family is extremely important.

What bothers me is the tagline and language used to sell this show. The tag-line reads:

Some people have spent their whole lives searching for the one thing that matters most… Their wish will now come true. Let’s find your family.

“Let’s find your family”? Are you kidding me? As an adoptive parent, that’s just a slap in the face. Like I somehow don’t count as family. I feel like they are saying, “Let’s find your real family.”

Just like any reality show, it’s a good guess to say the show will focus on the most extreme examples. And now I wonder, what assumptions will the general public be making about my family? Are people going to start assuming they know Milo’s wants and desires? Do they feel they understand the questions he may have or the personal feelings he has surrounding his adoption?

This is a good perspective on the damage a show like this can cause:

For years, the adoptive community has sought to rectify the past vilification of birth-parents as people who gave away their children. Birth parents are now widely recognized as the First Parents of children, deserving of love, respect, and understanding. It is in no one’s best interest to turn the tables and begin to portray adoptive families as second-class, or less-than’ a family created biologically. This new series is a step back for everyone. (RainbowKids.com)

And yes, the show does use terms like “gave away” and people who “are adopted” (Milo was adopted, not is adopted. It happened once, just like birth. Lexi was born, not is born.) And let’s face it because the show will be filled with drama, raw emotions, heavy editing and extreme circumstances, it will take a while before it’s canceled.

They are closing the program simply because there is not a need for parents in this age range. Once upon a time when the Ethiopia program was new (about 5 years ago) it was considered a long wait if you waited a week. Most people heard back within a day or two after submitting their dossier. But the program took off. It got big very, very fast and homes were quickly found for infants and toddlers.

There are people who will say that the program is closing because the “demand” can’t be met. And there are accusations about unethical practices happening. Personally, I don’t beleive that is what is happening with our agency. Has it happened elsewhere? Yes. It’s a tragic side to both international and domestic adoption that corruption and “blackmarket” practices exist. Do your research when looking for an agency. Be careful and cautious. At the same time know that there are plenty of agencies who are working to provide homes for children who need them. But the “whys” are not what this post is about.

This is about what we now need to think about. We really liked our agency. We had a good experience with them. We know that while Milo was in their care they truly loved him and took excellent care of him. The information we have about his background is priceless and the opprotunity to meet people who were a part of his life before us was amazing. And, all of that we have on DVD for him to watch when he is ready. We don’t want to switch agencies because we don’t want our next child to not have the same amount of information. I would have a hard time explaining to a child that Milo has a lifebook with pictures of his village in Ethiopia but he or she doesn’t because we switched agencies because we wanted a baby.

So that leaves us with some decisions to make.

Do we switch agencies? I doubt it.

Do we wait and see if the infant program opens back up? Well, that would put a lot of years between Milo and the next child.

Do we adopt an older child or sibbling group? I’d like to. I’d love to actually. But Milo is only one. We want the next child to be younger than him. So that would mean waiting until Milo was 3 or 4 before starting the process again.

Do we adopt a child from the Waiting Child List? That’s a possibility.

Lots of things to think about. But, one thing is for sure, it makes me grateful that we to the leap and applied to adopt when we did. I can’t really imagine our family without Milo.

These are the most recent and reliable statistics on the global orphan situation.

* The most recent estimate is that there are approximately 145 million orphans in the world (UNICEF 2008). For this number, an orphan is defined as a child who has lost one or both parents.

* More than 15 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, over 11.6 million of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa.

* In 2007 67.5 million Children in South Asia and East Asia had lost one or both parents due to all causes.

* Included in the 2008 estimate of 145 million orphans are more than 92 million that have a surviving mother—-with whom they most likely live.
* Another 38 million have a surviving father.

* Approximately 15 million children are “double” orphans—growing up without either mother or father. That’s about ten percent of the whole 145 million.

* The UNICEF orphan numbers (145 million) are only for deceased parents. If you were to factor in single parents in general, we’d be talking a number many times higher.

* The UNICEF orphan numbers DON’T include abandonment (millions of children) as well as sold and/or trafficked children. Are the millions of kids abandoned in China not orphans?

* The UNICEF orphan numbers DON’T include many non-reporting nations (namely, Middle Eastern Islamic nations) where shame and divorce abandonment are rampant. 200,000 + orphans in Iraq, for instance, are not part of the count.

* I think we’re looking at a number quite higher than 15 million “double orphans.” We often communicate that the real number of kids that fall into our care categories is somewhere around 40 or 50 million.

* According to data released in 2003 as many as eight million boys and girls around the world live in institutional care. Some studies have found that violence in residential institutions is six times higher than violence in foster care, and that children in group care are almost four times more likely to experience sexual abuse than children in family based care.

* As of 2002 in Europe and Central Asia, over one million children lived in residential institutions.

* Worldwide an estimated 300 million children are subjected to violence, exploitation and abuse, including the worst forms of child labour in communities, schools and institutions, during armed conflict, and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage.

* In the US there are approximately 500,000 children in foster care (Based on data submitted by states as of January 16, 2008)

* 130,000 of those children in foster care are waiting and available for adoption. Children waiting to be adopted include children with a goal of adoption and/or whose parental rights have been terminated. Children whose parental rights have been terminated, who are 16 years old and older, and who have a goal of emancipation are excluded from the “waiting” population. An individual child is included in the count for each year that he or she has these characteristics on the last day of the year.

* Approximately 51,000 children are adopted from the foster system each year.

* That leaves 79,000 children annually in the US needing an adoptive family.

* Each year, an estimated 20,000 young people “age out” of the U.S. foster care system. Many are only 18 years old and still need support and services. Several foster care alumni studies show that without a lifelong connection to a caring adult, these older youth are often left vulnerable to a host of adverse situations:

Outcomes
Earned a high school diploma 54%
Obtained a Bachelor’s degree or higher 2%
Became a parent 84%
Were unemployed 51%
Had no health insurance 30%
Had been homeless 25%
Were receiving public assistance 30%

What Does the Bible Say About Orphans?

The Bible is full of references to orphans, the fatherless, and adoption. God’s heart and passion for them is clear. Here are just a few references:

God Adopts
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ (Romans 8:15 KJV)

You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance. (Galatians 4:5 The Message)

How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (Eph 1:5 The Message)

God Commands
Make sure foreigners and orphans get their just rights. Don’t take the cloak of a widow as security for a loan. Don’t ever forget that you were once slaves in Egypt and God, your God, got you out of there. I command you: Do what I’m telling you. . (Deuteronomy 24:17 The Message)

Learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Reprove the ruthless,
Defend the orphan,
Plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:17 NASB)

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27 NIV)

God Promises He Knows Them
For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made . . . When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. (Psalm 139:13-15)

He Sees Them
But you know all about it—
the contempt, the abuse.
I dare to believe that the luckless
will get lucky someday in you.
You won’t let them down:
orphans won’t be orphans forever. (Psalm 10:14 The Message)

He Has Compassion on Them
Father of orphans,
champion of widows,
is God in his holy house.
God makes homes for the homeless. ( Ps. 68:5-6a. The Message)

He Defends Them
You stand up for those whose fathers have died
and for those who have been beaten down.
You do it so that no one made of dust
may terrify others anymore. (Psalm 10:18 NIRV)

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. (Psalm 68:5)

He Will Come to Them
I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. (John 14:18 NIV)

(HT: Jason Kovacs)

When we first started our adoption process this book, Children Just Like Me, was recommended to us by several people. And I totally lucked out, I found it for $5 at a used book store.

It’s a great book. It has a wide variety of countries covering major parts of the world. It is pictures of real children and their families and their homes or schools, a few of their toys and descriptions of all the pictures. Except for Ethiopia. Every child in the book is shown with their family. Except the Ethiopian children. For the section on Ethiopia, the children featured are orphans.

Did the authors/photographers really have that difficult of a time finding one family in all of Ethiopia to interview and photograph?

I had one person say “Well, it really is kids just like Milo.” And true, Milo was an orphan in Ethiopia but this simply perpetuates the stereotype of Ethiopia that it is a country unable to care for their children. That’s not how I want my son to view his birth land. That’s not how I want anyone to view Ethiopia.

Am I calling for a boycott of the book? Do I want it removed from libraries? Not used in schools?

No. The rest of the book is extremely valuable and beautifully done.

I think what I am asking for is two things.

1. For people to realize that how they represent a country or people group may be the only small information some people may read on that particular topic. And, personally, I don’t want the world just assuming that Ethiopia is a country full of orphans because it’s not. It’s much, much, more than that.

2. For parents, teachers, grandparents, baby-sitters, anyone who reads books to kids to look carefully at the books they are reading to children and the message the book is sending.

Just to clarify, we do own this book. But for now, it will be put away until I can find enough other books that show real kids in Ethiopia with their families to balance out the picture.

It also means that children with HIV who are waiting to be adopted do not have to wait any longer than their peers. They no longer have to wait for their parents to jump through all sorts of paperwork hoops and red tape just to bring them home.

As of January 1, 2010, a medical condition that cannot be transmitted by casual contact, will no longer slow down the visa process for those hoping to travel to the US.

Open Letter to the Adoption Community
July 31, 2009

As an adoptive Mother, the President and Founder of Equality for Adopted Children, and a former senior legislative aide on Capitol Hill, I would like to address some questions that have been raised about the newly introduced Foreign Adopted Children Equality Act (FACE Act). These questions have caused some to suggest the bill should not be supported. This is unfortunate, because the FACE Act will bring significant improvement to the adoption process and will, if signed into law, provide equality for our internationally adopted children as well as save adoptive parent’s time, money and regulatory hurdles. I know because I was deeply involved with its predecessor.

The FACE Act was introduced to amend and improve upon the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA), a bill introduced by Senator Don Nickles and Senator Mary Landrieu. At the time the CCA was introduced and passed, I was Legislative Counsel to Senator Nickles and was responsible for shepherding the CCA through Congress. The bill was conceived after my husband and I adopted three siblings from Eastern Europe and I discovered that despite the fact that my husband and I were both American citizens, our citizenship did not transfer to our foreign adopted children as it would have if they had been born to us abroad. As a lawyer I found this disturbing because I knew that under adoption law, once a child is adopted, that child is entitled to all the same rights, duties and responsibilities as a biological child. The law says they are to be treated as if they were the “natural issue” of the adoptive parents. CCA was drafted to remove discrepancies between the treatment of children born abroad versus children adopted abroad to U.S. citizens. In short, to bring adoption practice into line with the law and in the process ease a number of procedural burdens unnecessarily borne by adoptive parents.

The CCA began the process of addressing a primary inequality: If an American gives birth to a child overseas the child is considered a citizen from birth and is given a U.S. passport and a Consular Report of Birth (which acts as the child’s birth certificate). The child is allowed to enter the United States as a citizen with documentary proof of citizenship. In other words, the child does not have to go through an immigration process. Not so for an adopted child who must obtain an immigrant visa, go through a very different (and more costly and cumbersome) process even though they are every bit as much the son or daughter of American citizens. Unfortunately, the United States is one of the few developed countries that still treat internationally adopted children of their citizens as immigrants and force adoptive families to go through an immigration process to bring their children home.

U.S. Court decisions have established adoption laws that recognize that adopted children are entitled to full equality of treatment as biological children. Yet despite the passage of CCA, not all inequalities have been addressed. The FACE Act would align U.S. adoption laws with U.S. statutes by recognizing all children of U.S. citizens as equal, whether biological or adopted. The FACE Act would rectify inequities both past and present. Regrettably, as I know is often the case with legislation, some have misunderstood the contents of the legislation.

Protecting Safeguards and Meaningful Procedures

Some allege that by removing adopted children from the immigration process the bill removes the safeguards that protect adopted children, their biological families and their adoptive families. This is a completely incorrect assertion. This bill absolutely upholds current requirements in regard to approval of parents to adopt a foreign born child, preserves current safeguards, and maintains current regulations related to intercountry adoption. Here’s how:

Upholding Requirements and Procedures.

The FACE Act continues to require that before citizenship attaches to an internationally adopted child, adoptive parents must be approved by the U.S. government as fit to adopt, just as under current law.
Adoptive parents will still need to meet the same requirements currently submitted for approval of an I-600A or I-800A including an approved home study, criminal clearances and all other documents that are now part of the approval process.
Preservation and Maintenance of Safeguards and Investigations.
The FACE Act continues to uphold and require all immigration safeguards currently in place to ensure that a child has been adopted legally without fraud or trafficking.
Conditions required to fulfill an I-600 or I-800 form will continue unchanged including an orphan investigation as mandated under current law.
The U.S. government will continue to affirmatively determine that a child has been adopted appropriately and that the child meets the adoption requirements of U.S. adoption law for international adoptions.
A welcome change in the FACE act would be the elimination of the paperwork, procedures and costs required to file for an immigration visa after an adoption has been completed and the child has been approved by the U.S. government as having complied with U.S. adoption law governing international adoption.
Put simply, American adoptive parents abroad would take their documentation of a legal and appropriate adoption and follow the same process as American biological parents who gave birth abroad. The entire process would be simplified and standardized for both sets of parents and most importantly, would apply equal treatment to the children as established in U.S. adoption law. Time and travel costs for adoptive parents would be reduced lowering further the barriers to international adoption.

The FACE Act makes no changes to current regulations related to intercountry adoption. Current adoption law language does not detail what must be done to approve a family to adopt or what paperwork must be filed to get an immigration visa. Rather, the details are found in the regulations implementing the law. This bill and subsequent regulations would do the same. The FACE Act merely sets the parameters of how the law would be implemented and the subsequent regulations would provide the specifics of how it would be implemented.

Establishing Equality for All and Respecting Heritage

Another unfortunate misunderstanding of the FACE Act arises from a section of the bill that amends Section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which defines who is a U.S. citizen at birth. Currently, this section of law provides automatic U.S. citizenship to children born to U.S. citizens abroad, but not to those adopted abroad by U.S. citizens. The practical effect is that under the status of an immigrant instead of a citizen at birth, the adopted child could never be President of the United States even though a child born in the same foreign country at the same time to American citizens could. Amending this section of law to include our internationally adopted children as citizens from birth will finally correct one of the major remaining inequalities that our children suffer under federal law.

Some have erroneously concluded that this provision will strip adopted children of their birth country’s citizenship and erase their birth history. In actuality, the FACE Act will help support adoptees who seek to learn more of their original birth history and reconnect with their country of origin. The FACE Act includes provisions that state:

“It is the sense of Congress that the government of each foreign country from which children are adopted by citizens of the United States should provide documentation of the adopted children’s original birth history to the adoptive family in accordance with the laws of such country.”

“Nothing in this Act, or in any amendment made by this Act, may be construed to abrogate any citizenship rights provided to an adoptee by the adoptee’s country of origin, or nullify the facts of the adoptee’s birth history.”

Granting of citizenship from birth cannot eliminate the fact of where a child was born, or to whom that child was born, or deprive them of their original citizenship rights any more than what occurs now when U.S. citizenship is granted to them under the CCA.

To the extent a foreign country allows dual citizenship and the privileges that accompany that citizenship, that child will always have those privileges as a citizen of that country in the eyes of that country. No legislation passed by the U. S. Congress can change citizenship laws of other countries. If a country chooses to negate the citizenship rights of a child born in that country because they become a citizen of the United States, there is no law that the U.S. Congress can pass to rectify that decision.

Further, although Congress cannot pass laws ordering other countries to provide original birth documentation to adoptive families or to change their citizenship laws, these provisions mark significant steps towards establishing U.S. policy in these regards and would strongly encourage countries from which children are adopted by American citizens to provide such documentation and maintain such rights.

Protecting U.S. Citizenship and Preventing Family Separation

The FACE Act also improves the current citizenship process for international adoptees with a provision that rectifies the damage that is done when adoptive parents fail to take the necessary steps under past and current law to acquire U.S. citizenship for their child. Prior to the CCA, internationally adopted children had to go through a naturalization process to attain citizenship. Many parents wrongly assumed that their adopted child was a citizen because they themselves were citizens. Unfortunately, this was not the case and there are many adult adoptees who found out much later in life that they are not citizens.

Even after the CCA was passed, the problem remains due to the way the law is implemented. Currently, only adopted children who arrive on IR3 visas (where both parents, if married, saw the child during the adoption process) receive automatic U.S. citizenship upon entry into the United States. Adopted children who arrive on IR4 visas (where only one parent, if married, saw the child during the adoption process) must be readopted in their new home state (whether required by state law or not) before citizenship attaches. If the child is not readopted prior to his or her 18th birthday, they lose the right to automatic citizenship.

Over half the international adoptees enter this country on IR4 visas and risk losing their citizenship rights if their parents fail to readopt them. Many children do not find out they are not citizens until they apply for a passport or for college scholarships. A number of adoptees have been deported back to their country of origin due to minor crimes they have committed because their parents failed to take the necessary steps at the time to acquire citizenship status for their child. The FACE Act rectifies this for all future international adoptees by conferring citizenship upon completion of the adoption and the U.S. determination that the child was adopted according to law. Citizenship is conferred with no further action required of the adoptive parents. This is a significant improvement over current law and will eliminate the tragic stories of adoptees deported to their country of origin with no knowledge of their original language, no support structure and no ability to return to the United States.

For deported adoptees, The FACE Act allows these adoptees to file for and receive U.S. citizenship if U.S. citizens adopted them under the age of 18.

In summary, the changes made by the FACE Act are significant but easily implemented. The FACE Act would:

Remove internationally adopted children of American citizens from the immigration process saving time, money and, for many, travel costs;
Confer U.S. citizenship upon internationally adopted children immediately upon completion of all the necessary steps without requiring readoption within the U.S.;
Improve upon the current system by encouraging foreign countries to provide original birth documentation; and
Provide the added benefit of making our internationally adopted children eligible to run for President.

The sponsors of the FACE Act – Senator Mary Landrieu, Senator Jim Inhofe (S.1359) and Representative Diane Watson and Representative John Boozman (H.R. 3110) are great friends and supporters of the adoption community and have crafted a bill that will provide equality under the law for our internationally adopted children and allow them to benefit in all ways from full American citizenship.

In closing, I recommend that all read the relatively short FACE Act bill in its entirety. It can be found at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.1359:/ In addition, I invite you to read a detailed section by section explanation of the bill as well as answers to Frequently Asked Questions that can be found at the following link: http://www.equalityforadoptedchildren.org/legislation/face.html. Once you do so, I believe, like me, you will find this bill worthy of your wholehearted support.

For the sake of our internationally adopted children,

McLane Layton
President, EACH