When Nisha Grayson was in second grade, her school class in California, US, put up a performance. “Don’t come!" Nisha told her mom on the day of the event. Stephanie Grayson went anyway. When she walked into the classroom and a child shouted “Whose mommy are you?" Nisha just hunched up, blushed and kept silent.

“She didn’t want anyone to know I was her mom," Stephanie says.

“I’m tired of explaining to everyone why you’re white and I’m black," the seven-year-old told her mom after the performance.

Nisha, now a petite 26-year-old with a quick smile, was adopted from Goa by an all-white family at the age of six months and raised in “the white part of America", as her father Randy puts it. The couple never taught Nisha anything about her birth country or culture, though they did retain her name and abided by one request the birth mother had made: never to cut Nisha’s hair. She didn’t cut it until she went to college. Stephanie says she figured “everyone would love each other" and that would be enough for Nisha to adjust to her adopted life in the US.

It wasn’t, though. After spending a few weeks with Nisha and her friends in southern California, it’s evident that she’s surrounded by love, and always has been. She herself is a caring, kind woman, working with adults with disabilities at United Cerebral Palsy in San Diego. But there is a sorrow about her, an insecurity and vulnerability that lurks just beneath her dark chocolate brown skin.

When thinking of child migration, certain forms of mobility come to mind: children seeking refuge, child soldiering, or trafficking in children. Who would think of international adoptees as migrants? Yet, they are. An overview of U.S. adoption history.

Deutsche Version des Artikels

International adoption from foreign countries to the United States officially began right after World War II. A new phenomenon, U.S. citizens adopted an estimated 35,000 children from overseas from 1947 to 1975. Although numbers were low compared to those of domestic adoptions that occurred in this period, these adoptions were widely publicized and highly visible. Zur Auflösung der Fußnote[1] Over this era, children came from a wide variety of nations in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, with most adoptees arriving from South Korea, South Vietnam, Germany, Greece, and Italy. Wars in Europe and Asia had left thousands of children orphaned, many the offspring of American soldiers. Fearful that communist powers would frame the crisis as a failure of democracy, U.S. policymakers relaxed immigration laws for these largely nonwhite orphans and allowed them into the United States as refugees. Zur Auflösung der Fußnote[2] War orphans and “GI babies”—the offspring of U.S. soldiers and foreign women—received the most press in the United States. Yet from the onset American couples were eager to adopt all types of foreign children, regardless whether they had surviving parents or connections to the military. While Western European countries and Australia did conduct some foreign adoptions from Korea and Vietnam, the numbers were small compared to the U.S. program.

Factors Leading to Increase in Adoptions

International adoption’s rise was the result of many factors. Relief organizations and private citizens first considered the adoption of French and Belgian orphans to the United States during and after World War I, but restrictive immigration laws and isolationist foreign policies quickly stymied such efforts. Zur Auflösung der Fußnote[3] Unlike policies during World War I, Cold War foreign policy enforced a domestic cultural mandate to embrace other nations, especially those vulnerable to communist takeovers. Destitute young children pricked the collective conscience of post-World War II America. In the view of many lawmakers and politicians, orphans made ideal immigrants and citizens because “of their youth, flexibility, and lack of ties to any other cultures.” Such traits bolstered officials’ conviction that children could be transplanted with great public success, since “a child in need does not know or care about national boundaries,” as one social welfare official commented. Christened “the best possible immigrants” by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, international adoptees were so highly desired by American families that U.S. immigration law would broaden the definition of orphan in 1948 to include children with two living parents. Zur Auflösung der Fußnote[4]

Myths and facts about the 'state kidnappings' after the allowance affair: this is what it really is - Follow the Money - Platform for investigative journalism

Myths and facts about the 'state kidnappings' after the allowance affair: that's how it really is

MARGOT SMOLENAARS

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DES MOINES, Iowa - An Iowa teenage sex trafficking victim who stabbed her rapist to death was sentenced by a judge on Tuesday to five years of closely supervised probation and must pay $150,000 restitution to her abuser's family.

Pieper Lewis, 17, stabbed her abuser, 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, more than 30 times in June 2020. She was initially charged with first-degree murder.

Last year, Lewis pleaded to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury, both of which were punishable by up to 10 years in prison. However, Polk County District Judge David Porter deferred those prison sentences on Tuesday, meaning Lewis could serve 20 years if she violates her probation.

Porter said he ordered Lewis to pay restitution to Brooks' family because the court was "presented with no other option." He explained that the restitution is mandatory under Iowa law.

Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment. Officials have said Lewis was a runaway who was seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother and was sleeping in the hallways of a Des Moines apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in before forcibly trafficking her to other men for sex.

SURVIVORS OF MOTHER and baby homes and other institutions have called for the Government’s redress scheme to be extended to include all people who spent time in the system.

Several survivors and campaigners held a protest outside Leinster House in Dublin this afternoon.

In recent months there has been much criticism of the fact the planned scheme excludes people who were boarded out, a precursor to fostering, and those who spent less than six months in an institution as a child.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Oireachtas Children’s Committee are among the high-profile groups calling for the scheme to be extended.

People who receive redress under the scheme will also have to sign a waiver saying they will not take future legal action against the State.

Sold as a baby, Jessi Fraud is now on a mission to expose the truth about the market in Romanian babies.

Jessi, a vibrant young Canadian journalist, is travelling the world to expose the post-communism practice of selling Romanian babies to adoptive parents by exploring the fate of Romanian children born to families too poor to care for them.

According to the vision of former President Nicolae Ceau?escu, babies should be born to boost the communist state’s decrepit economy.

As we become absorbed in Jessi’s journalistic quest, we slowly come to realise that it is more than a professional investigation. Jessi herself was sold as a child to an adoptive family in Canada.

An estimated 30,000 children were sold to adoption brokers in post-communist Romania. International buyers and local sellers met in hotel lobbies around Romania and negotiated prices that ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 for new-born Romanians.

The United Nations said that accusations that Moscow's forces had taken children from Ukraine to Russia for adoption were "credible". Ilze Brands Kehris, the assistant UN secretary-general for human rights, expressed concern that the Russian authorities had adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children without parental care and these children would be eligible for adoption by Russian families.

Geneva: The United Nations on Wednesday said that accusations that Moscow's forces had taken children from Ukraine to Russia for adoption were "credible", reported AFP. Russia allegedly took children from Ukraine for adoption as part of larger-scale forced relocations and deportations.

"There have been credible allegations of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian occupied territory, or to the Russian Federation itself," Ilze Brands Kehris, the assistant UN secretary-general for human rights, told the Security Council, as quoted by the news agency.

Brands Kehris expressed concern that the Russian authorities had adopted a simplified procedure to grant Russian citizenship to children without parental care and these children would be eligible for adoption by Russian families. She also accused Russia of running a "filtration" operation as Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territories were subjected to human rights violations.

The UN assistant secretary-general for human rights told a Security Council meeting that during filtration, Russian forces subjected people to body searches and sometimes even forced nudity. Brands Kehris further alleged that during filtration procedures, their mobile devices were searched and their fingerprints were taken.

MHB police personnel have been caring for a day-old infant found in a garbage dump, plan for her future as they try to trace parents

A call from the Control Room in the morning of September 5 led MHB Colony police to Shivaji Nagar, Borivli West to find an abandoned newborn at an auto stand, whom they now refer to as “MHB ki beti”. The girl is currently undergoing treatment at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital, Kandivli. The cops, apart from filing a case against unknown people for abandoning the child, have also taken it on themselves to ensure their “beti” gets education and financial support.

A bakery owner near an auto rickshaw stand at Shivaji Nagar had heard the cries of a baby and called the police control room, which in turn relayed the information to MHB police. When cops reached the spot they found the crying newborn wrapped in a white towel. The baby had blood all over and her umbilical cord was also intact.

Assistant Sub-Inspector Shobha Yadav and PSI Vanita Katbane who were deputed on mobile van rushed the baby to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital in Kandivli where she underwent a medical check up which concluded that she was in good health. Police officers now take turns to visit the hospital to check up on her every day.

Looking at the baby, Assistant Inspector Suryakant Pawar decided to take responsibility for the baby’s future education. Other cops have started crowdfunding and the amount will be kept as a fixed deposit in a bank so that she won’t have to suffer in future for money.

Haryana human trafficking case: Police have arrested three people, including two women for trying to sell a nine-day-old baby to a couple. The accused had got the baby from her mother on the promise that they would ensure that she had a bright future. One of the arrested women is part of the Delhi based NGO run by her family.

Faridabad: The Haryana chief minister's flying squad busted a human trafficking racket in Faridabad and arrested three people, including two women in this regard. One of the women arrested is associated with an NGO based in Delhi, which is run by her family.

The arrests were made after the CMs flying squad received intelligence inputs about three people allegedly trying to sell an infant in Badarpur area of Faridabad.

According to the police the intelligence input in this regard was received by the CMs flying squad on September 8. After which two of the squad members posing as a couple got in touch with the accused. After negotiating with them a deal was finalised for Rs 4.5 lakh and they decided to meet in a hotel in Badarpur, Times of India reported.

As per the agreement one of the women arrived at the hotel where the "couple" was waiting. Soon the other woman arrived with the nine-day-old girl. After exchanging sweets, the "couple" handed over the cash to the accused containing marked currency notes.

Nearly three hundred Korean adoptees abroad, including eleven from Belgium, are going to court in Seoul. They are suing that their adoption was fraudulently committed.

Sixteen years ago, Yung Fierens (46) met her first parents, two sisters and a brother, while visiting South Korea. 'I knocked on the door of the adoption service and was shown my original file,' she says. 'It contained all the information about my origin. Surprising, because my adoption file in Belgium didn't contain them.'

Later, when she requested a copy, Fierens was lied to that the original file did not exist. 'I was one of the first to search. Last month I was in Seoul again, this time with a friend who wants to find her first mother. We're sure the Korean government kept that record, it did in almost all cases. But she doesn't want to release them anymore. She let almost all the children leave under the guise of being orphaned or abandoned.'

'Accidentally discovered that there are also images of our suffering'

Nearly 300 Korean adoptees from around the world yesterday filed a complaint with the Seoul Reconciliation and Truth Commission over past fraudulent adoption practices. Among them also Fierens and ten other Belgians. The initiative comes from Danish fellow sufferers.