[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
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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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