Why are orphans being brought to Canada for adoption?

Are the Canadian children being adopted out by agencies who are more choosy, like they are in the United States? Perhaps it’s easier, with less red tape, to adopt from overseas.

@laureth – That may be true. I’m just talking about the ethics of it though. It just doesn’t seem right.

People feel more pity for children from poor third world countries. Thoughts of local children never enter people’s minds when nightmare images of bone and skin African kids are flashed before their eyes. Or, people may reason that orphans in Canada have meals to eat everyday, education etc and are not as needy as children from other continents.

They’re trying to spice up Canada.

@eponymoushipster – Canada is spicy enough. Lol.

@Oxymoron – it’s only “not ethically right,” I think, if the Canadian children are worth more than the other children. I’m certain that some people would view all human lives being ethically equal.

@laureth – I think every country needs to look out for its own people and problems before taking care of other countries problems. It’s stupid that Canada took the orphans, they should have been left there. Not everyone in Haiti died, someone could adopt them.

@Oxymoron It’s chilly in here ~

@Spinel – Just saying. I think people are to politically correct sometimes.

@Oxymoron canada is as spicy as a boiled potato. covered in margarine.

@Oxymoron While that is a statement I can agree with, I don’t know if it applies here. My view is this: Haiti found itself in a dire situation, with thousands of kids with no option but to die of starvation, etc. Here, on the North American Continent, we are pretty rich when compared to the rest of the world. We can afford to help Haitian children more at the moment then many countries in the world, so it seems ethical to take them in.

However, I do agree with your general thesis: a country should take care of it’s own first before trying the help the rest of the world. We’re still learning that in the USA. Ha ha. But due to Haiti’s code red emergency, I think the rapid adoption of Haitian orphans is justifiable.

The “population” of local orphans is consistent and manageable. However, Haiti’s “orphan population” has boomed and Haiti is not prepared to handle that. We can either watch those kids die or step in and help.

Then there’s the old sayin’: “If you don’t do it, who will?”

@Oxymoron – Peter Singer, a Utilitarian, wrote an interesting article about famine relief, but I think his concepts also relate to foreign adoption. Personally, I’m not sure that a local child means more, somehow, than a child far away, except that I can identify more with the one I can see. Orphans have a hard life, and any of them that can be helped would be like that starfish in the story where at least that one was helped.

@Spinel – That’s true. The only thing is, why is it our problem that they’re poor? It’s not Canada’s fault that there was a natural disaster. I just don’t think it’s right that Canadian children without homes are being put on the back burner while kids who just lost their parents already have new ones. Not fair at all.

I think you’re one of the only other people that agrees with me that every country should take care of it’s own before others.

@laureth – Children born here that don’t have homes should be looked after before children from other countries. Just like the situation in Africa, they don’t need more money, they need more birth control.

To be honest I think it happens because the laws that are made to protect children and birth parents (at least here in the US, I don’t know about Canada) can leave adoptive parents with the possiblility that they lose that child in the future if the birth parent decides to contest the adoption.
Right now there are plenty of orphans in Haiti who lost both parents and if they have any relative left they most likely don’t have any means of raising the child themselves so they won’t contest the adoption.
I think people would like to adopt but don’t want to take the chance of getting their hearts broken. I know I’ve thought of adopting after I had my two children but after seeing the media show adopted children being ripped away from the only family they know to live with their birth parents, I decided to never try. The system allows you to adopt and tells you this child is 100% yours and then someone changes their mind and a family is torn to shreds.

@Oxymoron You’re right. Canada is not responsible for Haiti’s poverty woes. However, it comes down to which group is in need most at currently. Is it Canadian orphans, who have food and a roof over their heads and a secure arrangement? Or is it Haitian orphans, who have no shelter or food and are under threat from the elements and other people?

A turn around question: should our compassion be stopped by national borders? Should we prefer one nationality over anther because of preference?

(By the way, good response up there, @Oxymoron :) )

I think people get caught up in the ‘horror’ of a situation and want to help. We don’t advertise our orphans in Canada so there’s no tugging at heartstrings going on. I also think these Haitian kids need a lot more help than a Canadian orphan right now. But I wonder, would these people adopting Haitian kids of 5— 8 yrs adopt a canadian child the same age?

@oxymoron: When you need help here on fluther, I’ll remember that you’re a Canadian and therefore less deserving of help from me (an American) than other Americans.

I think you are forgetting that these adopted children are Canadian. The grow up Canadian, the live Canadian, they die Canadian. I agree that natural born Canadian children have a right to a family just as much. I also believe that children are protected by control and regulation. There are people that shouldn’t get their hands on a child.

Children die in droves every day of the year in different parts of the world., because they can’t be or won’t be provided for; be it for gender reason, ethnic or just being redundant.

This questioning is similar to concerns raised that we should take care of our own populations before helping other countries, like Haiti. I think people who say that should never accept help from anyone who has problems themselves that are unsolved.

I think one problem with unrestricted adoption of foreign born children is child trafficking. Stolen children that are sold into adoption is a horrendous thing, no matter how loving the adopting family is.

But a child is a child wherever they are from. I think that they should be just as welcomed by you that they are by the parents who adopt them.

I think that it is

@susanc – That’s your choice. The only thing is, you helping me won’t make your Country suffer or the people living within it. That’s the difference.

@oratio – That’s natural selection in my view. If you’re born in Africe or some other Country in deep poverty and you die, then so be it. I don’t think anyone else should be responsible for these people still reproducing (when it’s by choice) when they know they can’t support themselves let alone children. That’s the problem with everyone today, everyone is too open to everything. There are already so many immigration problems here and the population is booming at an alarming rate.

If Canada is anything like the US there are probably very few babies available for adoption. Most of the kids we have in the system are older and carry baggage. Most parents want that clean slate under a year old. Also adopting a foreign child limits the possibility of a birth mother pop-in every few years when the she has met and “approved” the adoptive parents.

@Oxymoron
Really, Natural Selection? Wouldn’t such a view include the canadian chidren? The people on the street? Should old people have pension? Should people have Home Care Services? Should there even be hospitals? In other countries than Canada, they lack the social services that you enjoy. Without support from society in Canada many people would suffer, die and more children would in the end be up for adoption. I don’t think you wan’t the society to be run by Natural Selection. That’s is not how we do things. That’s not how we strive for a utopian society.

I don’t see that the children of the people in africa are responsible for their own situation, neither are most of their biological parents. The sitation for people in the 70’s Chile, Sudanes south and Darfur, Falun Gong followers, parents who die of AIDS, the little girls and boys kidnapped and sold into sex slave trafficking. The list is long from A-Z. They are all to be written off, as natural selection you say, due to ethnicity and nationality.

These things are not an aspect of survival of the fittest. They are victims of arrogance, violence and neglect. Your nationalist approach of every man for himself is not very attractive. Do you think that people should only be allowed to adopt foreign children if there are no natural born Canadian available, or should it be banned all together? I think there are more important issues to adress in the world than restricting giving certain orphanes a home with loving parents, with preference to others. Infants don’t have a nationality, religion or a set of beliefs. They are helpless and innocent.

@oxymoron: Natural selection isn’t as simple as you think. In nature, communities survive partly because the members take care of the other members. A community of any kind of creature will always abandon a member who cannot grasp the concept of cooperation and adhere to it.

@susanc – Exactly. Members of the same community take care of eachother and help one another to survive. That’s how it should be. Other countries should be left on their own.

“Countries,” in that context, are pretty arbitrary designations. In fact, I have more in common (and blood relations, for that matter) with some people in other countries far away. Would I help some stranger in Frozenarse, Minnesota before helping a good friend in another country? Probably not.

If we follow this to the Nth degree, we should really help our next-door neighbor before the guy down the street, and someone in our home state before someone across the continent, etc. Why should politically-drawn borders matter when helping suffering humans?

If this were a case about a true community, i.e., helping someone in your extended family or someone you know from temple or your neighborhood, I would understand. It’s traditional to help your tribe or clan. But I don’t necessarily see why two people who are equal strangers to me would warrant different amounts of my help because of a country border.