[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 461-463]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HAITIAN ADOPTIONS

  Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank my colleague from Illinois for his passionate 
and coherent and convincing arguments about the issue of how to detain 
terrorists and knowing that we can do that very well in the United 
States, and also his explanations about the financial situation and 
some of the things the President is doing to correct that situation.
  But I came to the floor this morning in morning business to talk 
about a different subject, and one that is quite troubling to Americans 
as we watch the unfolding horror in Haiti. As we stand ready and 
willing to do everything we can, not only as leaders in the Senate and 
Congress, our constituents are leaning forward wanting in every corner 
of this country to do everything they can to help.
  It is very frustrating to see, again, some of the similar, almost 
eerily similar scenes from having lived through Katrina and Rita, 
Gustav, and Ike along the gulf coast. Whether those scenes were from 
New Orleans, as we remember, or Plaquemines Parish or St. Bernard or 
Galveston or Gulfport or Biloxi, those scenes are still quite fresh in 
the minds of Americans.
  I think people are thinking the same way I am, which is, when will we 
ever get this right? We know sometimes things happen that are 
unpredictable, but this is not one of those cases either. Just like 
some parts of the Katrina disaster were quite known and predictable, 
this too, and that is a story for another day.
  But as we struggle through this situation, I want to thank the 
administration, not only ours but administrations around the world, for 
what they are trying to do, and say I know we can do better and 
everybody watching this knows we can do better and one day we will. We 
are going to do what we can as quickly as we can. I am going to stay 
focused, with many of my colleagues here, on one aspect of this 
response and recovery; that is, the aspect of children and particularly 
orphan children.
  I have been very proud to be the leader of the coalition in this 
Congress of over 220 Members. We are completely united and completely 
nonpartisan in

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our advocacy for orphans in America and around the world. This is a 
moment where I would like to spend, although my time is short, saying 
this is a good time for us as a country and as Members of Congress to 
try to understand the magnitude of the challenge before us.
  Let me begin, before I go into the situation, to personally and by 
name thank the Members of the Senate who have stepped up to date 
quickly and forcefully to join this effort. Your name, Madam President, 
is at the top of the list, the junior Senator from New York. We thank 
you for your extraordinary leadership. I also thank the Senator from 
Colorado, Mark Udall; the Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry; the 
Senator from Michigan, Carl Levin; Chris Bond from Missouri; Arlen 
Specter from Pennsylvania; Bob Casey from Pennsylvania; Herb Kohl from 
Wisconsin; Mark Warner from Virginia; Senator Barrasso; Senator 
Johnson; Senator Bennett; Senator Stabenow; Senator Bill Nelson from 
Florida; Senator Lautenberg; Senator Thune; Senator McCain; Senator 
Menendez; and Senator Hutchison; and my cochair in all of this, 
obviously, Senator Inhofe.
  We are a bipartisan group. Our numbers are growing every day, numbers 
of Senators who say we want to focus on the welfare of children and 
particularly orphans and come up with a better plan to respond to this 
humanitarian disaster as it relates to them. We are committed to the 
fundamental--almost a concept that I do not know how anyone could 
argue, but people do, that all of us understand that children actually 
belong in families. I know this is a difficult concept for some people 
in our country and the international community to grasp. But children 
do not do well alone. Children do not do well in orphanages, no matter 
how well they are run. Children do not want to grow up in group homes 
of which we have thousands of children in our own country in group 
homes.
  Actually, children want to grow up in families. This may be a 
startling concept for some but not for us. That is why we advocate for 
child welfare policies that at its beginning, middle, and end advocate 
the basic fundamental truth that children are best raised in a family 
with one responsible parent if not two. We do not think there should be 
any argument about that. So we are puzzled as to why we have so many 
difficulties sometimes explaining that in situations like Haiti or in 
America or in places in Africa or Central America around the world. 
There are so many barriers to adoption. It breaks our hearts. It just 
breaks our heart. One barrier after another.
  We think this is quite simple. We think these barriers have to come 
down, and we are determined to pull this out.
  I want to give some numbers to you that will be startling to you 
because they are to me.
  In America we have 320 million people approximately. We have 100,000 
orphans. There are a lot of orphans in our own country. They are 
invisible to people. We try to bring their pictures to the Senate floor 
sometimes and tell people there are 100,000 magnificent children of all 
races, shapes, and sizes who are in need of a family right here at 
home. We do our best to promote domestic adoptions and have been doing 
a much better job.
  Americans adopt about 120,000 children a year, mostly from our foster 
care system, some infant adoptions in America, and, happily, 20,000 
international adoptions. But when you hear this number, you would fall 
down if you were not sitting down. Haiti has 9 million people. 
Remember, we have 320 million, they have 9 million. They had 380,000 
orphans before the earthquake struck.
  I am going to repeat that. They have 9 million people. They had 
380,000 orphans before the earthquake struck. We cannot begin to 
estimate how many orphans there are today, but I promise you that 
number has at least doubled.
  Now, I am not going to be part of a system that says, with those 
numbers and that truth, our job is to find those children, dust them 
off, fix their broken limbs, heal them physically, try to help them 
emotionally, and then stick them in orphanages for the rest of their 
lives. I am not going to support that. I am hoping the Members on this 
side will not support that either.
  That is what we have had for the last 50 and 100 years in terms of 
policy all around the world, even in Haiti. We cannot have that 
anymore. The international treaty that we have all been a part of 
trying to help says this: It says every child should stay in the family 
to which they were born with the parents who brought them into the 
world. When they are separated from those parents, through death or 
disease or famine or war, they are then to be placed, as quickly as 
possible, with a relative who is willing and able to raise them.
  If I passed away, the Presiding Officer knows my sisters or one of my 
brothers would step in. If my husband and I died, my sisters and 
brothers would step in to raise our children. That is normally what is 
done all over the world. It is no surprise. But when there is no family 
member to take in a child, then the treaty says you shall find a home 
for that child somewhere in their country, in their community, which 
makes sense. Culturally, that makes sense.
  While I am a big believer in cross-cultural adoption and biracial 
adoption--I am a huge supporter of that--but I understand we want to 
try to place children as close to their initial beginnings as possible. 
When that becomes impossible, it is our job to find them a home 
somewhere else in the human family because, after all, we are one human 
family. If anybody would like to come to the Senate floor to disagree 
with me, I look forward to debating that with them. I do not think I 
will find any arguments here among Senators, from the very conservative 
to the most liberal. It is just a basic moral tenet that we are one 
human family. So it makes me so angry when I see governments, sometimes 
even our own, sometimes even our own bureaucracy, sometimes even our 
own embassy fighting that concept. They throw up their hands and say: 
We just cannot. It is overwhelming. We cannot find a way to do it. 
Every excuse in the world to keep these children from the one thing 
they need most, which is a parent, someone to love them.
  If anyone thinks that just feeding children and clothing children is 
what God is calling us to do, I would beg to differ. Yes, we have to 
keep them alive. Yes, we have to give them care. But what most 
importantly little human beings need are bigger human beings to raise 
them. If they do not get that, they end up not growing up in a strong 
way. They end up in our prison systems. They end up in homes. They end 
up sick. Not that every child that is in a family in America, even with 
the most loving parents ends up always wonderfully, but they most 
certainly have a better opportunity.
  So I am just putting a line in the sand here and saying to my 
colleagues that I am proud of the 40 Members of Congress, House and 
Senate Members, who sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary 
Clinton, who all of her life has been a leader on this subject. We are 
so grateful she is there as Secretary of State. We sent this letter to 
Secretary Napolitano. I am going to put this letter in the Record.
  I am pleased the letter we just sent 3 days ago has already been 
responded to. The Departments have issued humanitarian parole for the 
orphans who were in the process of being adopted, and there were a 
couple hundred. Parents here have been desperate. They have already 
been matched with their children. They have pictures of their children. 
They were in the process of adopting those children. You can imagine 
how desperate they are. That process is underway.
  We are going to continue to press to make sure that not just the 
green light was held up, but that our government at every level, from 
Defense to Homeland Security to Transportation, is doing everything 
they can to execute the swift and safe removal of these children in 
Haiti to American families who will nurture them and support them.
  Then the next step--I see my colleague from Utah here--I am going to

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end in just a moment. The next step will be to work with a broad 
coalition of faith-based communities in our country and around the 
world, with private sector corporations, large and small, with 
individual Americans who want to contribute and be a part of this 
effort.
  I intend to lead and set up a framework so that thousands and 
thousands, hundreds of thousands of orphans in Haiti can find the 
family to which they were born. We are going to try very hard. If not, 
a relative in Haiti, if not someplace in Haiti for them to live in the 
joy and comfort of a supporting and loving family, and then if not 
here, then somewhere in the world where these hundreds of thousands of 
orphans--and I hope not to say this, but potentially 1 million; but 
let's hope that number does not ever reach this--find families.
  This is not going to happen in the next 24 hours or 48 hours. But 
with our concerted help and vision and leadership, it can happen not 
just in Haiti but around the world, including right here in the United 
States of America.
  So I want to thank my colleague, Jim Inhofe, who is the cochair of 
the Adoption Caucus. I want to thank the Members of the Senate and the 
House, particularly Jim Cooper, Michele Bachmann, and others who have 
stepped up so quickly.
  We will be speaking on this floor quite a few times in the future as 
we get updates about this issue. I thank Americans for the outpouring 
of support for children in Haiti, for all people of Haiti, but 
particularly the children and particularly the orphans who need our 
help.
  I yield the floor.

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