Saturday, December 01, 2007

China Adoptions to U.S. Down by Over 1000

Not a real surprise, but now the numbers are out for FY 2007:

Foreign Adoptions in U.S. Drop
NEW YORK (AP) — The number of foreign children adopted by Americans has dropped for the third year in a row, a consequence of tougher policies in the two countries — China and Russia — that over the past decade have supplied the most children to U.S. families.

Figures for the 2007 fiscal year, provided by the State Department on Friday, showed that adoptions from abroad have fallen to 19,411, down about 15 percent in just the past two years.

It's a dramatic change. The number of foreign adoptions had more than tripled since the early 1990s, reaching a peak of 22,884 in 2004 before dipping slightly in 2005, then falling to 20,679 in 2006.

"A drop in international adoptions is sad for children," said Thomas Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption. "National boundaries and national pride shouldn't get in the way of children having families."

Adoptions from China, the No. 1 source country since 2000, fell to 5,453. That's down by 1,040 from last year and well off the peak of 7,906 in 2005. Two main factors lie behind this: an increase in domestic adoptions as China prospers and tighter restrictions on foreign adoptions that give priority to stable married couples between 30 and 50 and exclude single people, the obese and others with financial or health problems.


The tighter restrictions didn't take effect until May 2007, but those dossiers haven't even been reviewed yet, much less referred a child.

1 Comments:

Blogger Rosie said...

Good point.I think we will see less adoptions in 08 aswell.I think the CCAA are trying to get the figure down each year from abroad.In the UK we only have 180 adoptions from China per year!!! Can you imagine.We have quite a big population aswell.Its quite a contrast to Spain and France who have 4,000 per year! If you compare to their population..thats quite alot!
So us Brits are rather peeved by it all as we hardly make a difference in the grand scheme! I find your articles interesting.Happy New Year!

4:51 PM  

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