American citizens should be banned from adopting children internationally because currently there is great need for adoption domestically.

After WWII, United States citizens began adopting children from other countries in large numbers. Between 1971 and 2001, America has adopted far more children internationally than any other country, more than 265,000. According to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, international adoptions have more than doubled over the past 11 years. [[http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/FactOverview/international.html]] Adopted children come from countries all around the world. However, Guatemala, China, Russia and S. Korea make up a large majority. At the same time, the USA is faced with a very serious problem. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services between 1999-2006, an average of 129,884 children are in public foster care every year waiting to be adopted. [[http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/waiting2006.htm]] In 2008, American couples adopted 17,229 children from abroad. This presents our government with a very grim reality. Despite the fact that literally hundreds of thousands of American born children are in need of basic care from real parents, over 17,000 couples ignored this fact and made the decision to adopt children from other counties. We firmly believe that we have a right to help all American citizens, orphans included, before we take into account problems of other nations. At this point, we feel the context is sufficient to state our opening argument. American citizens should be banned from adopting children internationally because currently there is great need for domestic adoption. Nowadays, there are far too many unwanted children domestically in American that need parents to adopt them. As the federal government of the USA, we have the constitutional responsibility to protect the basic rights of our citizens with a higher priority than those of other nations. As we will show below, children in foster care in America are being deprived of their basic rights of equal opportunity and pursuit of happiness. Until this problem is remedied, we cannot justify allowing American couples to meet their adoption needs abroad. As full citizens of the USA, we are determined to do everything within reason to provide these children with an equal opportunity to life a full and happy life. We also believe that adopting internationally has negative and unintended effects and may not be in the best interest of the child. We will discuss this argument in greater detail in our rebuttal. The foster care system in America is under critical stress and in desperate need of more couples willing to adopt. In 2004, ABC news conducted a special report on the nation’s foster care system. Here are some of their findings: 520, 000 kids end up in foster care every year, costing taxpayers $40,000 a head and 22 billion dollars total every year. 40,000 infants are placed in foster care every year. 20% of these kids end up in the system for 5 years are more. But, despite these revealing statistics we saved the most important one for last: “Thirty percent of the homeless in America and some 25 percent of those in prison were once in foster care.” “ [[http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/FosterCare/Story?id=2017991&page=2]] These are the forgotten and neglected children of America. Being in foster care, they are deprived of a loving family, an essential element to living a balanced and stable life. They end up in the system for years, taken care of by adults whose only qualifications are that they can provide them with the very basic care of food and shelter. It is not surprising then that they are much more likelihood than any other demographic to end up homeless or in jail. I ask the opposition, how can we allow a single couple to adopt a baby from another country as long as this current problem exists? With such a supply of children needing parents to adopt them, many would wonder why so many American couples choose to adopt kids from overseas in the first place. This is, of course, is at the heart of the issue. If there is any strong opposition, it must be able to give a compelling reason why people should be allowed to adopt internationally. Based on our research, we have listed the most common reasons why people adopt as follows: There is less chance the birth parent will change their mind and try to reclaim the child legally; Less chance the biological parents will try and find their children later in life; There are too many restrictions to adopting domestically and it takes longer. While we do sympathize with these reasons, we do not find any of them compelling. The fact remains that in 2008 there was potentially 17,000 couples who could have adopted domestically but chose to go abroad instead. That means there are 17,000 kids still in the foster care system in American that doesn’t need to be. All 17,000 of those adoption cases would likely not have happened in America. The main reason being that adoption requirements domestically are often stricter than those in other countries. These strict laws regulate and help orphans to find much more qualified parents. Many times, before adopting kids, training classes are required. For example, the state of Kansas requires that prospective parents attend Model Approach to Partnership in Parenting (MAPP) classes. [[http://adoption.about.com/od/adopting/a/domint.htm]] So to deal with the current number of over 1 million children in foster care, the government proposes to have international adoption banned and put our own national domestic problems as the number one priority.