[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 133 (Wednesday, September 17, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Page S5694]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ADOPTING CHILDREN FROM NEPAL

 Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I comment today on an issue of 
tremendous concern to a number of Pennsylvania families who in recent 
years adopted children from Nepal.
  In August of 2010, the State Department suspended the authorization 
for American families to adopt children from that nation with the 
exception of those families, some from Pennsylvania, who were already 
in the process of adopting Nepali orphans. The State Department and 
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told these ``pipeline'' 
families that their cases would be processed to completion, but that 
they should anticipate significant delays and possibly negative 
outcomes, since their cases were suspected of being heavily tainted by 
fraud, corruption, and illegal or unethical practices. In response to 
U.S. government requests for additional evidence substantiating the 
legality and morality of these adoptions, these families had to 
undertake extensive investigations on their own to provide such 
evidence.
  Since these families were already completely bonded with their 
adoptive children, each of them eagerly undertook its investigation, at 
great financial and emotional expense. Meanwhile, most of the children 
were forced to languish for an additional 6 months in orphanages. While 
due diligence is appropriate for all adoptions, I am deeply troubled 
that in this case not a single instance of fraud or corruption was ever 
found. In fact, the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and 
Immigration Services ultimately allowed all these American pipeline 
families bring their children home to the United States. Despite this 
ultimately successful outcome, the State Department continues to 
suspend adoption of desperate Nepali children by American families. I 
ask that the Department reevaluate its policy with the recent 
experience of the pipeline families as a major consideration.
  With an eye towards the future of the children who were adopted by 
the pipeline families, I am concerned that the public record on these 
adoptions from Nepal is still replete with references to fraud and 
trafficking. We need to set the record straight and to make it clear 
that each of the Nepali pipeline adoption cases in progress at the time 
of the suspension was ultimately approved and was devoid of any 
findings of malfeasance. Every child deserves a family and no child 
deserves to be needlessly haunted by clouds of doubt about his or her 
origin. These American families deserve to have a positive public 
record created showing that their adoptions were completely legal and 
ethical. I wish to personally begin that record today.

                          ____________________