[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 171 (Monday, December 31, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8590-S8592]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS

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SENATE RESOLUTION 628--EXPRESSING THE DEEP DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE SENATE 
   IN THE ENACTMENT BY THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT OF A LAW ENDING INTER-
  COUNTRY ADOPTIONS OF RUSSIAN CHILDREN BY UNITED STATES CITIZENS AND 
 URGING THE RUSSIA GOVERNMENT TO RECONSIDER THE LAW AND PRIORITIZE THE 
  PROCESSING OF INTER-COUNTRY ADOPTIONS INVOLVING PARENTLESS RUSSIAN 
 CHILDREN WHO WERE ALREADY MATCHED WITH UNITED STATES FAMILIES BEFORE 
                        THE ENACTMENT OF THE LAW

  Ms. LANDRIEU (for herself, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Durbin, Mrs. 
McCaskill, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Warner, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Grassley, Ms. 
Mikulski, Mr. Lugar, Mr. Lautenberg, and Mr. Menendez) submitted the 
following resolution; which was submitted and read:

                              S. Res. 628

       Whereas United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates 
     that there are 740,000 children in Russia living without 
     parental care;
       Whereas the Ministry of Science and Education of Russia 
     estimates that 110,000 children live in state institutions in 
     Russia;
       Whereas the number of adoptions by Russian families is 
     modest, with only 7,400 domestic adoptions in 2011 compared 
     with 3,400 adoptions of Russian children by families abroad;
       Whereas on December 28, 2012, Russian Federation President 
     Vladimir Putin signed into law legislation entitled ``On 
     Measures Concerning the Implementation of Government Policy 
     on Orphaned Children and those without Parental Care'', which 
     includes language that permanently bans adoptions of Russian 
     children by United States citizens;
       Whereas a spokesman for President Putin, Dmitry Peskov, 
     announced that the law is to take effect on January 1, 2013, 
     thereby abrogating the bilateral agreement between Russia and 
     the United States that entered into force on November 1, 
     2012, and requires both countries to provide one year notice 
     of intent to terminate the agreement;
       Whereas 46, and possibly more, inter-country adoptions of 
     Russian children by United States families have already 
     received a final adoption decree from the Russia judicial 
     system, and hundreds of other United States families are in 
     the process of adopting Russian children;
       Whereas United Nations Children's Fund released a statement 
     urging the Russia Government to ensure that ``the current 
     plight of the many Russian children in institutions receives 
     priority attention'' and that the Russia Government consider 
     alternatives to institutionalization including ``domestic 
     adoption and inter-country adoption'';
       Whereas the United Nations, the Hague Conference on Private 
     International Law, and other international organizations have 
     recognized a child's right to a family as a basic human right 
     worthy of protection;
       Whereas the Christian Alliance for Orphans reports that 
     United States families have opened their homes to more than 
     179,000 orphans from overseas in the last 20 years;
       Whereas after China and Ethiopia, Russia is the third most 
     popular country for United States citizens who adopt 
     internationally;
       Whereas adoption, both domestic and international, is an 
     important child protection tool and an integral part of child 
     welfare best practices around the world, along with 
     prevention of abandonment and family reunification: and
       Whereas more than 60,000 Russia-born children have found 
     safe, permanent, and loving homes with United States families 
     over the last two decades: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) affirms that all children deserve a permanent, 
     protective family;
       (2) values the long tradition of the United States and 
     Russia Governments working together to find permanent homes 
     for unparented children;
       (3) disapproves of the Russia law ending inter-country 
     adoptions of Russian children by United States citizens 
     because it primarily harms vulnerable and voiceless children; 
     and
       (4) strongly urges the Russia Government to reconsider the 
     law on humanitarian grounds, in consideration of the well-
     being of parentless Russian children awaiting a loving and 
     permanent family, and prioritize the processing of inter-
     country adoptions of Russian children by United States 
     citizens that were initiated before the enactment of the law.

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to join my 
colleague, Senator Landrieu from Louisiana, to talk about Russian 
adoptions and the decision by the Russian Duma and the President, 
President Putin, to sign a law that includes a provision that bans 
adoption of Russian children by American families. This ban is going 
into effect tomorrow--tomorrow. This is a ban which would go into 
effect tomorrow with four dozen American families in the process of 
bringing a child home from Russia.
  My wife Abby and I adopted our son Charlie from Russia a number of 
years ago now. After visits to Russia and as we were leaving the 
courthouse the day the court procedures were accomplished, we were in 
the car with people who had helped us with that adoption who 
represented an organization here in the United States--in this case, 
the Gladney organization in Texas--and they got a call that four of 
their fellow organizations had just been decertified in Russia. They 
were decertified for some technical reason with their papers. All of 
the adoptions they had done were reviewed, and at least one error was 
found in one paper somewhere. Over the course of the next 12 months, as 
every single agency came up for review--and this was about 6 years ago 
now--every one of them had a problem that wound up with their being 
disqualified.
  At the end of that year, there wasn't a single American organization 
that could be helpful to an American family with a Russian adoption 
because that was the policy the government decided at that time. They 
were going to somehow penalize American families who wanted to adopt 
Russian kids in ways that made that virtually impossible.
  At that time, there were families who had met a child, who had bonded 
with that child, who had taken pictures home, who had talked to doctors 
in Russia and the United States, and who had done everything a family 
needed to do, and who had even gotten ready to go to court. I think at 
that point, if you had gone to court, you probably took your child home 
with you, but that is not the case right now. But they all were caught 
in a situation where in some cases it was 2 or 3 more years before that 
adoption was allowed to be completed, if it was ever allowed to be 
completed.
  Now the Russian Government has decided once again to use Russian kids 
in orphanages as political pawns to help create some international 
dispute with the United States. This is not behavior that is worthy of 
the credit that, frankly, we just gave the Russians whenever we entered 
into a trade agreement that said: We want to accept you further into 
the relationships we have.
  By the way, I have talked to parents in the last few days who have 
adopted children from Russia. These are parents who, like every one of 
us in this room right now on the floor of the Senate, grew up at a time 
when the Soviet Union was seen as a great adversary. But suddenly the 
bonding that occurred between our two countries because of this 
opportunity for Russian kids to become American kids made a big 
difference in the way Americans looked at Russians and the way Russians 
looked at Americans. But this is a difference that somehow the Russian 
Government wants to do away with as they take offense because we--
appropriately, I think--put in the Russian trade agreement penalties 
for people who were involved in the imprisonment and death of Russian 
attorney Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. We were pretty specific about the 
narrow group to which this applied. And they are very specific about 
the 110,000 kids in orphanages in Russia today who cannot be adopted by 
American families because they have decided to use these kids as a 
political tool. It is the wrong thing to do.
  Russia and the United States have had a tradition now that goes back 
to the end of the Cold War of working together to find permanent homes 
for children without parents in our country. As recently as November 1 
of last year, we signed a bilateral agreement to strengthen the 
procedural safeguards for this process so that families who got 
involved wouldn't get way

[[Page S8591]]

down the line or get into the line at all and find out they were not 
going to let this happen.
  We have one family in St. Louis who has adopted, they have gone to 
court, have been to Russia multiple times, and the court has said they 
are now the adoptive parents--the Russian court--of this child, but 
under the new requirement, they have to wait another 30 days before 
they can come back and take this child home. And now the Russian 
Government says they can never take this child home. That is totally 
unacceptable.
  Last week Senator Landrieu and I, along with at least a dozen other 
Senators, sent a letter to President Putin urging him not to violate 
the agreement by signing the law. Mr. President, I ask unanimous 
consent to have printed in the Record the letter to his Excellency 
Vladimir Putin.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                Congress of the United States,

                                Washington, DC, December 21, 2012.
     His Excellency Vladimir Putin,
     President of the Russian Federation, The Kremlin, Moscow, 
         Russia.
       Dear Mr. President: We respectfully ask you to veto the law 
     ``On Measures of Coercion on Persons, Involved in the 
     Violation of the Rights of Russian Citizens,'' which includes 
     language that permanently bans adoptions of Russian children 
     by American families. We are deeply saddened by the events in 
     the Duma over the past few days which have led to the passage 
     of this law, that would abrogate the bilateral agreement 
     between our two countries that you signed earlier this year 
     and which entered into force on November 1, 2012. We fear 
     that this overly broad law would have dire consequences for 
     Russian children.
       If the law takes effect, thousands of Russian children 
     living in institutions may lose an opportunity to become part 
     of a family. As you know, our two countries have a long 
     tradition of working together to find permanent homes for 
     unparented children. At any given moment, based on the 
     statistics of the past few years, there are at least 1,000 
     Russian children in the process of finding supportive and 
     protective families in the United States. They and those who 
     would follow them would become the real victims of a 
     misplaced legislative effort. We share in your desire to 
     ensure the wellbeing and safety of all adopted children and 
     remain steadfast to the commitments we made in the bilateral 
     agreement.
       Nothing is more important to the future of our world than 
     doing our best to give as many children the chance to grow up 
     in a family as we possibly can.
       We hope that your spirit of compassion for voiceless 
     children will prevail so that this sad turn of events will 
     not lead to harm to so many innocent children.
         Mary L. Landrieu,
         John Boozman,
         Maria Cantwell,
         Roger F. Wicker,
         Jim Inhofe,
         Karen Bass,
         John Sarbanes,
         John Cornyn,
         Joe Lieberman,
         Frank R. Lautenberg,
         Roy Blunt,
         Chuck Grassley,
         Dave Camp,
         Daniel Lipinski,
         Amy Klobuchar,
         Jeanne Shaheen.

  Mr. BLUNT. He signed the law anyway. Senator Landrieu and I are going 
to have a resolution that she is going to talk about, asking not only 
that this position be reversed but that immediately we do whatever is 
necessary to unite these families who have already bonded with children 
who are in orphanages in Russia.
  I talked to a number of parents just yesterday. Bob and Sandy Davis 
of St. Louis have been very involved in the efforts for adoptive 
children from Russia and the Ukraine.
  I talked to a young man this morning, Sergei Quincy, from Branson, 
who is 22, who was adopted by the Quincys in Branson when he was 14. At 
14, he came to the United States, didn't speak any English, started the 
ninth grade, learned English, and at 22 he is now happily married with 
a couple of young children. He told me the moment of his adoption was 
the moment that made his dreams possible. He had a bad family 
situation, institutionalized with his brother and his sister in three 
different orphanages, and his brother was adopted by the same family 
who didn't know about his sister.
  I talked to Senator John Lamping of Missouri, who adopted a son who 
is now 14 who had never gone to school. He was adopted at 8 or 9 years 
old, and he had never been to school anywhere.
  I would hope the Senate speaks strongly and that we work as 
effectively as we can with the Russian representatives in this country 
to help them right this wrong--the immediate and unbelievable wrong for 
almost 50 families who know the child they are about to bring into 
their family and emotionally and psychologically already have.
  For all the kids in Russia, the country that is No. 3 in foreign 
adoptions for the United States--all those kids who are likely to spend 
their growing-up years in an orphanage and at 15 or 16 be put out of 
that orphanage with no support system there are families in the United 
States of America who want to make them part of their family.
  I would like to close by saying I continue to appreciate the great 
leadership on all these adoption issues that Senator Landrieu has shown 
and look forward to working with her and others as we try to help right 
this tragic wrong.
  I would be glad to yield to my good friend from Louisiana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I am proud to join my friend, the 
Senator from Missouri, on the floor to add voice to this travesty that 
has recently occurred.
  The Senator from Missouri described the situation accurately; that a 
country that claims to be a powerful nation on the Earth has decided to 
take powerful action against the weakest, most vulnerable individuals 
on the Earth, and those are children without families.
  It makes no sense whatsoever for the country of Russia to take the 
action they did because they are in a disagreement with us in America--
and maybe others around the world--about human rights violations 
regarding adults.
  The Russian Government, in front of the whole world, has taken their 
anger and frustration out on their own children--their own children who 
are orphans, their own children who are sick, their own children who, 
in some cases, are disabled. It makes no sense in the world.
  I was trying to think, I say to the Senator from Missouri, of what 
would ever possess the United States of America or any country to take 
their anger and their frustrations out on children. That is what the 
Duma did.
  They are hurting their own children, and we would like to urge them 
strongly in this resolution--which I am going to submit for its 
immediate consideration on my behalf and Senator Blunt and Senator 
Inhofe. We would like to ask the Russian Government to please 
reconsider--there might be other actions they could take to make it 
clear they are unhappy with some things we have done, but damning their 
children should not be one of them, causing children to not have an 
opportunity for a family or an education or health care or enough 
food--and to please be considerate of their needs.
  The 50 or so families who are in the very end of the process, we also 
want to ask the government to understand that just as birth parents 
anticipate the birth of their child, adoptive parents anticipate the 
coming of that union to their family. Most important, many of these 
children are not infants. Some of them are, but some of them are older 
children who know they are about to be adopted, who understand that a 
mother or a father has already agreed to take them to the United 
States. It is going to crush their hopes and their dreams and their 
spirit.
  We are hoping the Russian Government will reconsider.
  This resolution, I hope, will be joined by our colleagues in a strong 
vote of support. I know that with the Senator from Missouri, he and I 
will continue to work in every way we can to see if we can find a 
better resolution.
  But there are a couple other things I wish to say about this quickly. 
I want everyone to be clear that in the United States of America--and I 
am very proud of our country in this regard--we adopt over 100,000 
children a year. We have 350 million people-plus, but we adopt 100,000 
children. Most of those children are American children adopted by 
American parents, children who have lost their parents, children who 
have been abandoned by their parents, children who have been grossly 
abandoned or neglected by their parents and the courts have stepped in 
and terminated those rights and we immediately

[[Page S8592]]

find relatives or people in the community to adopt because we believe, 
as Americans--and many people around the world--that children shouldn't 
raise themselves. Every child belongs in a family, in a permanent, 
loving, supportive, protective family, and it is our job as a 
government and our job as a faith-based community and our 
responsibility as a community to make sure there is no parentless child 
in the world.
  So we work very hard, not just government to government but in the 
churches, in the faith-based communities, working with nonprofit 
organizations, to make the rules and regulations and systems strong to 
protect children and also to protect fragile families from 
disintegrating, reconnecting children with families, trying our very 
best to do that.
  We want to work with Russia to strengthen their internal child 
protection system. We work on strengthening ours every day. It is not 
perfect, but it is one of the best in the world. We still make terrible 
mistakes, but we do want to continue to work to improve our child 
welfare system. But adoption, both domestic and international--kinship 
adoption included--is a very important tool of child protection. We 
want to do a better job in the United States. We want to continue to 
keep avenues of adoption open for children from Russia, from China, 
from Romania, et cetera.
  Some people may be wondering: Senator, you are so bold speaking about 
this. Are children from America adopted overseas? The answer is yes--
not many, but under the international treaties of the rights of a child 
to a family, we need to be open to have American children--if they 
can't find an adoptive home here--to be able to go to other countries.
  But the most important thing is to know that Americans step up every 
day to adopt American children, both infants, teenagers, and I have 
even known of adoptions of children who were 22 and 23 years of age. 
When are you ever too old to need a mother and a father?
  But the action the Russian Duma has taken is a travesty, and it is 
incomprehensible that any government would take their anger out on 
another country against the children of their own country. We hope they 
will reconsider. We hope the people of Russia will rise and tell their 
government: Absolutely not. Take out your anger and frustration in 
another way, not on our own children, and allow these adoptions to be 
processed.

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