This bill needs to be passed to help adopted children be able to join their families sooner. The current need for an immigrant visa causes many delays and costs a lot of extra money. Some children are dying in orphanages because people can’t afford all the extra fees and their emotions can’t handle all the extra delays in waiting for a child to come home. Our son has been in an orphanage in Haiti for almost 2.5 years now. He has been legally ours for over 8 months and still can’t come home because we are waiting on a Haitian passport in order to get his visa to bring him home.

When there are so many children in this country that need to be adopted, why make it so hard on the prospective parent(s) that they go out of the country to find a child? Granted, there is a great need for investigations and home studies to be sure that the child is not going to be going from an institution to a place where there may or may not be abuse or neglect. Also, When social services take away custody of the child’s natural parents, why do they not take away their parental rights so that the child(ren) are not constantly being subjected to a relationship they do not really want with the parents? That could lead the way for a child to be adopted into a home that would truly love the child(ren) and it would also be in the best interest of the child.