Adoption News

Congratulations to the adoption agencies that have worked to receive accreditation from Russia! As of last week, Russia granted accreditation to several United States based adoption agencies. These agencies may begin submitting dossiers and continuing with adoptions through Russia.

On July 30, 2007 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will be raising the fee for petitions and applications. The new fee schedule will affect all applications and petitions that are postmarked or otherwise filed on or after July 30, 2007. The new fee schedule was announced last month.
The forms I-600 (Orphan Petition) and 600A(Advanced Processing for Orphan Petition) will be the following:

The Dave Thomas Foundation has a signature program called “The Adoption-Friendly Workplace”. This program celebrates employers who offer adoption benefit to their employees.
The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption has listed the Top 100 Adoption-Friendly workplaces in the United States.

Fraud Warning: If you receive an email from a person claiming to be the parent of a child that they would like for you to adopt please be on alert. This type of activity is fraudulent. We advise you to report the sender to your local FBI and DO NOT send money to the sender!

If you are an adoptive parent traveling to Guatemala during the week of July 2- July 7 please be aware that the Central Adoption Authority in the United States has issued a notice regarding lodging.

On May 22, 2007 the U.S. Central Authority Department of State announced that the Congress of Guatemala has passed legislation that confirms the country’s membership into the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. Guatemala is now committed to creating standards that will protect children during the adoption process.

Although the number is not an exact, there are an estimated 26,000 orphan children in India that are available for adoption. The Indian Government has been impressed with the care and education provided to children that have been adopted out of India through international adoption. However, the government has noticed that the number of children [...]

There is currently a delay in adopting from Russia. The length of time this delay will occur is predicted to be two months, however this is not certain. It is, however, not the first delay to occur in the recent history of Russia’s international adoption program….

On March 15, 2007 The First Lady of Guatemala, Wendy de Berger, met with Assistant Secretary Maura Harty to discuss adoption reform in Guatemala. Both parties were in agreement that Guatemala is in need of adoption reform which would include implementing the Hague Convention on International Adoption.
Guatemala is in need of additional resources in order [...]

This article appeared in USA TODAY on Monday, March 18, 1996.
Adoption advocates across the country, working to find permanent homes for thousands of hard-to-place U.S. and foreign children, are trying a new marketing tool. They’re going on the Internet. This trend started in late 1994, when a Waco, Texas, homemaker became the first [...]