There has been a lot of talk in the past few days about children separated from their parents at the US border. According to one article written by NPR which can be found here, “since early May, 2,342 children have been separated from their parents after crossing the Southern U.S. border, according to the Department of Homeland Security“.
As adoption professionals, we don’t feel like we are qualified to understand the political motivations and practices in accordance to immigration law as to what this situation is all about.
We are not making a political statement about this situation.
However, we it is making us wonder how upset some people are about the fact that children are being separated from their parents for some period of time. The article says that ORR says children remain at these shelters for “fewer than 57 days on average.” (Quote taken from same article quoted above, can be found in its entirety here.)
As adoption professionals we know that any separation from the love of a parent can be devastating to both parties and particularly the child. That is our evaluation from an emotional perspective. From a legal perspective, we can’t comment because we know very well that in adoption, we have to follow every applicable law very carefully – or we would be in trouble. So we can’t comment on the legality of this situation as this isn’t our expertise.
However, we wish people would be this upset that there are thousands of orphans worldwide who are not just temporarily separated from their parents, but in fact, have no parents whatsoever.
These children don’t know what “mommy” and “daddy” even means. Growing up without parents and the love and care that parents provide is truly devastating.
Devastating also, are the declining numbers in international adoption.
Over the past decade international adoptions has declined by more than 80%. From nearly 22K international adoptions in 2007 to less than 4K in 2016.
This is a lot more children who are permanently not receiving the love of parents. We wish people would be more upset about that terrifying statistic.
We wish they would shine light on that issue as hard as they are shining light on this one.
We wish those numbers of declining adoptions were in the news. We wish we would see more heartbroken people for those children.
We wish every news station in the world was reporting on that permanent separation from parents the same way they are reporting about this separation at the border.
To learn how you can make a difference, reach out to us or go to SaveAdoptions.com to learn more about what adoption advocates are doing to help fight for the orphans.
Below is graph that shows the decrease in international adoption.
