Families need state government to be a reliable partner in the international adoption process
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What will the Minnesota state government shutdown mean for children who live in Third World countries halfway around the globe?
It might be hard to imagine that it will mean anything. But for the children who wait in orphanages to join a family -- and for countless Minnesota families in the midst of the adoption process -- a shutdown has the potential to affect their lives significantly.
After six years of failed infertility treatments, we are in our third year of the international adoption process. My husband and I have taken a loan out against our retirement. We have asked family and friends to contribute financially to help meet the enormous expense for the chance to do what comes naturally for most of our peers: to be parents, to create a family.
Out of necessity, many families turn to international adoption. Whether they have struggled to become parents, as my husband and I have, or they are empty nesters not ready to be finished raising children, adoptive families rely on these government services.
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International adoption is a daunting experience in which social workers and governments hold the fate of your family in their hands. We endure the invasive process because we understand the importance of ensuring that children who are vulnerable be placed with families who can meet their needs. Government procedures and processes have been put in place facilitating international adoptions and protecting children from exploitation. While these procedures and processes are not perfect, they work, and they evolve over time to meet the changes and challenges of our increasingly global world.
International adoption is not for the faint of heart. It is a complicated orchestration between the U.S. federal government, the Minnesota state government and the foreign country's government.
Foreign countries often require that every official document be "apostilled" by the secretary of state. (An apostille is a way to certify formal documents to provide authentication for forms that will be used overseas.) Whether families are completing their "dossier" (paperwork that must be apostilled) for a foreign government for the first time, or renewing it for the second or third year, or anxiously awaiting their final trip to complete their adoption and bring their child home, any lack of ability to complete these time-sensitive documents will stop international adoptions in their tracks.
There is no way to know what the long-term impact of this shutdown will be. Will foreign governments understand that it is by no fault of our own that we cannot complete these documents? Will families lose the referrals to the child they believed would become a member of their family? Will foreign governments allow families who have invested thousands of dollars to retain their place in the process if yearly paperwork expires?
These are questions I cannot find answers to because Minnesota has never experienced a government shutdown of this magnitude. Having to explain to a foreign official that our state government has shut down diminishes the image of our nation and lessens the credibility of our state as a partner in any international activity.
It is easy to think we are separate from "the government," but let us remember that we are our government. While partisan politics may make it difficult to agree on how we spend our valuable tax dollars, let us not lose sight of the bigger picture: We cannot possibly create effective, meaningful change in how we operate our government if that government is shut down. The real cost of this shutdown will ripple around the world; it will change Minnesota, altering the course of our lives and possibly the lives of our children, or even who our children will be.
Neither political party can justify the immediate and long-term costs to the state and its people -- robbing children who live in extreme poverty of a chance to find a family, and taking from my husband and me the opportunity to become parents.
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Laura Jean is a prospective mother and a graduate student at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She is a source in MPR's Public Insight Network.
