Grant over over on the China Adoption blog got a great question today and I thought I'd research it a bit.

I've paraphrased the question:

Do other parents from other countries come to the USA to adopt children?

Actually I had heard that some older foster children had gone to Canada to be adopted, as we can't get them placed here in the USA.

It's hard to find research to support this fact - I've been all over spending waaaay to much time trying to figure out how many waiting foster children are adopted into Canada.

However, I did find several great articles about Canadians adoping from the USA - and other countries as well.

Here's something from 60 minutes news and the subsequent article:

With an estimated 2 million American families looking to adopt, it may surprise you where these babies are ending up. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.

British Columbia, in Northwest Canada, is best known for its vast wilderness, where blacks are point .65 percent of the population. And some of that minority are children adopted from the United States.

Hummm..


And then this from the same article:

There are now at least 300 families with African-American children in British Columbia. The parents there have organized a monthly gathering so their kids can get to know each other. It’s a kind of support group where the parents get help from each other.

It’s not just Canadian families adopting African-American babies. You can find them all across Europe, from Italy to Norway, even in Peru. One Florida adoption agency sent more than half its black infants out of the country last year. No one keeps count, but 60 Minutes was told it could involve as many as 500 children a year. Many adoption professionals we talked to were shocked when they heard that the United States was, as they put it, “exporting” black babies.

I'm not sure I like the sound of this. We are 'exporting' our children? I know this rings of Madonna type discussion. Oh geez.

Then in the other article from the Christian Science MontitorI found:

Since 1995, US State Department records indicate that international adoptions by Americans have increased more than 140 percent. Couples often cite the lack of American babies as the reason for adopting from abroad.

But the US is now the fourth largest "supplier" of babies for adoption to Canada. Adoption by Shepherd Care, an agency in Hollywood, Fla., places 90 percent of its African-American babies in Canada. One-third of the children placed through Adoption-Link in Chicago, which specializes in adoptions for black babies, go to people from other countries.

Both of these articles stress that finding parents for African American children are difficult in the USA and that they would prefer to keep the children here if possible.

Neither of the articles talks about foster children, but I know I've heard that they sometimes go to Canada.

Read the articles for yourselves. Lots of great info in there.

Gotta go Trick or Treating now! HH!

I'll keep researching and keep you posted.