China and Russia have now eclipsed South Korea as the top two sources of foreign adoptions in the United States, with Guatemala a close fourth. Hundreds of new agencies have sprung up to meet this increased demand. But foreign adoption, even if it avoids some of the complications of domestic adoption, brings its own difficulties. Two countries' legal requirements must be met, two bureaucracies assuaged. This was much more paperwork.
All adoptions require a home study.
Going international requires a dossier of documents for the foreign country and approval by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Deanna Hodgin and Philip Dworsky have waited four months for INS approval of their petition to adopt an infant girl from Kazakhstan. The most daunting, and potentially devastating, hurdle in international adoption is assessing a child's health in the face of incomplete or faulty medical information. Nobody wants to go through what Debbie and David Crick of Apison, Tenn., have. They adopted a boy they thought was 10 years old from the Republic of Georgia in 1996, only to find out he was actually 14 and seriously mentally ill.