Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 15, 2009
Over the past year, I have learned a lot about adoption and the worldwide orphan problem. I have read articles where people claim that there is no orphan problem. They use the statistic that there are more than 2 waiting families for every child eligible for adoption in the US and that the average wait time to be matched with a child is over two years. Everything that I have read confirms this statistic. Yet, I claim that there is still a problem.
In a future post I will get into some statistics when I have a chance to cite my sources. In the meantime, I want to break out the types of adoption that are available. Before I began this journey, I was unaware of the significant distinctions. The first distinction is between foreign and domestic adoptions. The second distinction is between domestic private and domestic public. So, who ends up in each category? Foreign should be obvious. However, it is not so obvious who falls into each of the two domestic categories.
Let’s start with the domestic public system. How does a child end up in the system? A child ends up here because the child has no relatives that can take the child and the parents either have been deemed unable to provide a safe home for the child or are no longer around. If a woman is pregnant and has decided not to parent, she will be directed to the private system.
Those children that end up in the private system are, generally speaking, healthy infants that come from a variety of mothers that have decided, for whatever reason, not to parent their child.
So, why are there so many waiting parents? The vast majority want healthy Caucasian infants. This process can be very expensive for waiting couples. There is no problem getting healthy newborn Caucasian infants adopted.
What I realized after writing my last post regarding the Adoption tax credit is that I did not draw a distinction among these types of adoption. In my next post, Part II, I will expound upon the domestic public and foreign adoption problems. In Part III, I will lay out numerous statistics that blew my mind regarding the extent of the problem.
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 14, 2009
I can’t help but look for those things that could be better in pretty much any situation. It’s a bit of a curse as I never seem to be content. However, on the other side, it’s a blessing as I usually have an idea as to how to make it better. The adoption process that we’ve been going through over the past year is no exception to the rule. There are very few aspects to it that I don’t think could be better.
For the sake of this post, I am going to limit my “complaining” to a couple aspects of the governmental process. To be even more specific, as that topic could take up an entire book, I am going to limit it to the financial perspective.
Problem:
The government tries to be nice by offering a $12,000 tax credit to help offset the cost of adopting a child. A tax credit for $12,000 is wonderful, but it’s not the right solution.
First, it’s not quite enough. Simply by having a tax credit of this size indicates that the government believes that adoption helps the common good. Yet, the least expensive foreign adoption (I will address foreign vs. domestic in a later post) is around $20,000. This leaves a minimum of $8,000 to come from somewhere. Where does this come from? It often comes from credit cards, home equity loans, friends and family. For some people, it’s not an issue as they are rolling in dough, but then they don’t need the tax credit to begin with. The amount should be larger.
Second, it should not be a tax credit. I’ve already stated that the people with money are not the issue; it’s the people who need the money in order to adopt. Let’s just use the phrase “lower income.” First, they need to front the $12,000 that they don’t have and wait for the adoption to be finalized. So, let us pretend for a second that a “lower income” family wants to adopt a child and give him a loving home. They begin the adoption process in 2007 and it takes two years before they get the child. The child arrives in July 2009. They then wait for 6 months to finalize the adoption in January of 2010. They then have to wait until February 2011 at the earliest to claim the tax credit. That’s a four year waiting process in which a low income family must float $20,000. To make it worse a low income family may not owe that much in taxes. Let’s pretend that the family only owes $2,000 per year. They have five years in which they can roll over the tax credit. This family will never receive the full benefits and it will take them longer. Lower income families have fewer resources to begin with and get less back in a longer time because it is a tax credit.
I’m not going to even mention the funny money involved as you have to pay thousands to the government to process the immigration paperwork. (Oops…. did I just mention that)
To summarize the problem: The amount is not enough and the people who need it don’t get it all and what they do get they don’t get when they need it.
Solution:
There’s a solution to these problems. There are several possible solutions in fact. I will give one simple one: $20,000 Grants. If a couple uses a licensed agency for the adoption, let the money be available to the agency and let them administer the funds. Of course you need some rules behind it all. For instance, it will only cover incurred expenses. In addition, couples are not allowed to be seeking fertility treatments while in the adoption process. Perhaps a few others to ensure that the money actually gets kids adopted.
Please feel free to comment. I would love to hear other peoples opinions and ideas!