Adoption Bonanza

An article in yesterday's New York Times titled "After Haiti Quake, the Chaos of U.S. Adoptions," has left me nauseous and heartsick. I've attached a link to this very important update on the Haitian situation. Some particular verbiage heightened my reaction to the article...

Phrase 1: "Adoption bonanza," describing the explosion of supposedly orphaned/"adoptable" children and the American flurry to seize opportunity.

Phrase 2: "Humanitarian parole," which is categorized as being "a sparingly used immigration program". Apparently this classification was used to facilitate the expediting of adoptions of children regardless of whether the children were in immediate peril or actually orphaned in the first place.

Predicaments of prospective adoptive parents are also touched on. One couple will be appearing in a Haitian court to testify to the identities of their two, yet to be officially adopted, children. (One child has highly suspicious documents, the other has none at all.) The adoptive mother states that "As things stand, I'm basically going to show up in court and tell a judge, 'These kids are who I say they are,' and hope that he takes my word for it, because if he asks me to prove it, I can't."

The couple's Haitian children are now named "Owen" and "Emersyn".