Expressing Support For the Goals of National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I actually would have a question, first, of Senator Blunt, because I know he is the parent of an adopted child from Russia.

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. OK, good. I wanted to get that on the record because I know he wanted to come to North Dakota, which is everyone's dream, and so Senator Blunt asked for some advice from me to go to the great State of North Dakota.

Your child whom you adopted is Russian, and we have so many issues with some of these countries, from Russia to the Congo. I know families in Minnesota who have adopted children from Russia, and they were just ready to adopt the sibling. They met the brother or sister--and of course the kids know the brother or sister--and then the curtain was brought down, and those kids were literally pawns in a political game when Russia stopped all adoptions.

Senator Blunt is hosting a meeting with the people involved in adoptions in the Congo. We have had a similar situation where the visas were pulled and the parents who visited these kids and are ready to adopt these kids haven't been able to do that.

I wondered if Senator Blunt could comment on the situation with these countries and what the Senator thinks we can do.

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Thank you. This is also very important in my State. As I mentioned, we have the highest rate of international adoptions in the country. We have families who have opened their hearts and their homes to kids from every country, including Vietnam, Guatemala, Nepal, and Haiti.

In my background as county attorney, for 8 years I oversaw the lawyers who worked with foster care and adoptions. We made it a huge priority to try to speed up the process for kids to be adopted from foster care. Right now in our country nearly 400,000 children are living without permanent families in the foster care system. Over 100,000 of these children are eligible for adoption, but too many of them will languish for years in foster care--oftentimes with very good families for them, but obviously a permanent home is what you want.

We talked about international adoptions around the world. There are estimated to be nearly 18 million orphans who have lost both parents and are living in orphanages or on the streets who want, again, a permanent home.

Senator Blunt talked about some examples from his own State. One example is the Hatch family. Emerson Hatch was one of these orphaned children. They started the process to adopt her from India in 2000. Emerson was one of 300 kids living in an orphanage built to house 34 children.

The Indian Government refused to release her, and the family had to endure a 2-year wait, an earthquake, and a contested election in India before they were finally able to get her out of India with 1 minute to spare before her passport expired. She was malnourished, 2 years old but only weighed 14 pounds and was in poor health.

But with a lot of love and the help of the Adoption Medicine Clinic at the University of Minnesota, Emerson and the Hatch family are thriving. She is in high school, and the family is passionate about giving orphans permanent, loving homes.

There are many things that this Senate can do. The first, as Senator Blunt explained, is leading efforts when countries put up barriers for no good reason. Obviously, sometimes you will have legal issues in countries with corruption or other reasons why there is a pause in adoptions. But when countries are putting up barriers for no good reasons and for reasons that are fairly transparent, we must lead and work with other Senators across the aisle to get this done.

The second is legislation. We have had a number of successful bills passed in the Senate. The bill I am probably proudest of is something that I did with Senator Sessions and Senator Inhofe, which was to allow older siblings to come in internationally when a younger sibling had been adopted. What was happening is kids would turn 17 after holding the family together as the oldest sibling, and then they would no longer be eligible for adoption.

We had a family out of the Philippines with nine children, and the oldest two kids helped hold them together in an orphanage and then they turned too old to be adopted. That family I will never forget. The Merkourises came to me and said: Well, we have these choices. We can adopt the seven kids and leave the two behind--it was like a ``Sophie's Choice''--or we can leave them all there because we want them to stay together or you can change the law. That was the discussion.

So I worked with my colleagues. I will never forget. The Merkourises came with pictures of these children on their iPads and went around to the offices of House Members and Senators who were holding up the bill and showed them to their staff members. The staff members would call our staff crying and said: OK, well, we won't hold it up anymore. And we were able to get that passed.

To Senator Blunt, I was able to be with that family in their home, a farmhouse that they have expanded. It was like a Philippine version of ``The Sound of Music.'' They are an incredible family. I just talked to them a few months ago, and they are doing very well.

This is, I would argue to our colleagues, a bipartisan area in Congress. It is something we can do across the aisle, but it is also something where we can make significant difference--not just in one family's life but in many, many families' lives.

I thank the Senator for his work and his continued leadership in this area.

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Thank you.

As you know, our work is never done. We have a number of bills out there for which we have bipartisan support and that we are going to work on.

I think my last statement would be that our kids deserve so much more than just a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in. Each and every child deserves a loving home, a nurturing family, and a brighter future. That is what National Adoption Month is all about, and that is why Senator Blunt and I are on the floor today. That is why all of us have a responsibility to carry on this torch and to keep fighting for these children.

I thank Senator Blunt.

I yield the floor.

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