There's a new documentary released in the UK called China's Stolen Children. It follows ten years after the policy-changing and award-winning film, The Dying Rooms, the same team returns to a very different China where the infamous One Child Policy has had the horrific side effect of a boom in stolen children.
With extraordinary access to devastated parents desperately searching for their stolen son; a man who brokers the deals and has sold his own offspring; and prospective parents grappling with giving up their soon-to-be-born daughter through lack of options, we are brought face to face with the crisis that such a stringent government policy has created among China's poorest people.
This film takes us into the heart of modern China, a place where girl babies are being sold for 3,000-4,000 RMB ($450-$550); detectives specialise in finding kidnapped children; and child traffickers are so relaxed about the trade they ply, that they allow the film-makers to covertly record them buying and selling tiny human lives. Tens of thousands of children are now kidnapped and traded on the black market whilst the State is more concerned with keeping the story quiet than tracing Chinas stolen children.
Why is this happening? Clare Dwyer Hogg from the Observer outlines it well:
A root cause of such large numbers of children being snatched is the fact that having a son in China is a necessity. He carries the family name, he is the child who will provide for his parents as they age. A daughter will leave the family to marry into another name, passively obliterating her own family line and leaving her relatives without the assurance of help in old age. The One Child Policy - which Save The Children calls a 'mass, live experiment in family life which is unique in the history of the world' - has resulted in prohibitive family-planning laws in China: prospective parents must have a birth permit before conceiving, and while rural families are allowed a second child if their first is a girl, urban families must pay a fine for flouting the one-child rule. And if you haven't had an abortion to get rid of your female child (although it is now illegal, around 40m girls have been selectively aborted since the One Child Policy was instituted in 1979), how can you be sure to get a son? Sometimes the only choice seems to be to buy a stolen child, gender already determined.
Here is the youtube link:
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=b9YdA3WSiPM
Friday, March 14, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
How The Matching Room Works
I found the below from someone else's blog. I have to admit I find it a bit convoluted but if you can follow along it's pretty interesting.
I have enclosed a copy of "How the Matching Room works" in this journal page. Right now rumors are that CCAA (Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs) is in the Matching Room.
How the Matching Room works:
First, they review the children’s dossiers and make sure there are no issues with them. We are told that they then count up all of the children’s dossiers that are eligible for matching that month and then look to see how far this stack will go in the parent dossiers without sending out a partial day, and they pull all of those parent files. That is the likely cut-off date. Sometimes something happens and they don’t get this far. Sometimes something happens and they get farther.
Next they match orphanages up with agencies. This orphanage has six children, this agency has six families. These two orphanages are in the same province and have a total of 12 children, this agency has 12 families. When they are through with this is when (I believe) some agencies start to get information about the cut-off date. Or at least it is when they used to start getting information.
And then they start matching individual children to individual families. At some point during this part of the process most agencies used to hear from their person in the matching room to let them know how many referrals they will be receiving and from what province(s). Some agencies shared this information with their clients. Some chose not to. Recently I’ve gotten the feeling that many agencies are still getting this information but they are being given orders by the CCAA to not share this information with the families.
Just as in the review room, each matcher is assigned certain agencies and is responsible for communicating with their agencies. Some matchers tell their agency the cut-off date, some matchers tell their agency you have X number of referrals arriving, some matchers give their agency a list of that agency’s families that will be receiving a referral. And some matchers don’t say anything at all to their agencies.
The next question that comes up is generally how the matchers match families and children. I’ve heard from several people who have had the opportunity to speak with someone who works in the matching room. The various conversations seem to all agree that they first look for something that stands out: a matching birthday, a child who looks a lot like a parent, or a child who likes music and a parent who teaches music. Several matching people have stated they match by bone structure of the child’s face and the parent’s faces (this is why they need our passport photos, so they can compare our mug shot with the child’s photo). Some have stated that they used Chinese astrology, also. Once they’ve matched the obvious matches they then start to look at things like age of child requested. The age requested is not a priority for them, they feel they are matching families and not filling orders.
I have enclosed a copy of "How the Matching Room works" in this journal page. Right now rumors are that CCAA (Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs) is in the Matching Room.
How the Matching Room works:
First, they review the children’s dossiers and make sure there are no issues with them. We are told that they then count up all of the children’s dossiers that are eligible for matching that month and then look to see how far this stack will go in the parent dossiers without sending out a partial day, and they pull all of those parent files. That is the likely cut-off date. Sometimes something happens and they don’t get this far. Sometimes something happens and they get farther.
Next they match orphanages up with agencies. This orphanage has six children, this agency has six families. These two orphanages are in the same province and have a total of 12 children, this agency has 12 families. When they are through with this is when (I believe) some agencies start to get information about the cut-off date. Or at least it is when they used to start getting information.
And then they start matching individual children to individual families. At some point during this part of the process most agencies used to hear from their person in the matching room to let them know how many referrals they will be receiving and from what province(s). Some agencies shared this information with their clients. Some chose not to. Recently I’ve gotten the feeling that many agencies are still getting this information but they are being given orders by the CCAA to not share this information with the families.
Just as in the review room, each matcher is assigned certain agencies and is responsible for communicating with their agencies. Some matchers tell their agency the cut-off date, some matchers tell their agency you have X number of referrals arriving, some matchers give their agency a list of that agency’s families that will be receiving a referral. And some matchers don’t say anything at all to their agencies.
The next question that comes up is generally how the matchers match families and children. I’ve heard from several people who have had the opportunity to speak with someone who works in the matching room. The various conversations seem to all agree that they first look for something that stands out: a matching birthday, a child who looks a lot like a parent, or a child who likes music and a parent who teaches music. Several matching people have stated they match by bone structure of the child’s face and the parent’s faces (this is why they need our passport photos, so they can compare our mug shot with the child’s photo). Some have stated that they used Chinese astrology, also. Once they’ve matched the obvious matches they then start to look at things like age of child requested. The age requested is not a priority for them, they feel they are matching families and not filling orders.
Monday, February 11, 2008
The Waiting Game
The wait times are getting a lot longer and I mean a lot longer. At first we were told 24 months now we're being told 36 to referral but I'm thinking it will be longer than that. Of course people around us ask why and I wish as much as the next person that I had an answer but I don't and our agency doesn't either. The CCAA who does the matching has simply slowed down its process and there is no guarantee things will speed up after the Olympics. That is more of a wish than a fact. It could happen, or it might not. What is known is that the CCAA is currently only making it through a couple of days with each batch of LIDS.
A few other possibilites for the increase in wait times may be due to the fact that Russia stopped all adoptions and has required all US agencies to recertify and many people jumped ship and switched to China. Guatemala's system was becoming so corrupt (with documented cases of baby theft) that that country has closed its doors for adoption for now, and again people in that program switched to China. Those factors, plus the growing demand for Chinese babies in a country that is seeing families in the cities now keep their daughters (which is great by the way) now means there are less "orphans".
What people can know for sure is that we hate it more than anyone and can use all the support we can get while we wait. We are in this for the long hall and know in the end we will get the perfect child for us, you'll be one of the first to know when we know something, thank you for your thoughts.
A few other possibilites for the increase in wait times may be due to the fact that Russia stopped all adoptions and has required all US agencies to recertify and many people jumped ship and switched to China. Guatemala's system was becoming so corrupt (with documented cases of baby theft) that that country has closed its doors for adoption for now, and again people in that program switched to China. Those factors, plus the growing demand for Chinese babies in a country that is seeing families in the cities now keep their daughters (which is great by the way) now means there are less "orphans".
What people can know for sure is that we hate it more than anyone and can use all the support we can get while we wait. We are in this for the long hall and know in the end we will get the perfect child for us, you'll be one of the first to know when we know something, thank you for your thoughts.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
At Long Last - We Have Our LID Date
The date everyone in the world of China adoption goes by is their Log In Date and we got ours today! This is when China officially approves your application to adopt. Our LID date is 12/19/07. We didn't expect to get it so soon but I got an email from Holt that links to DTC and LID dates and ours was the latest posted. So we have approximately 24 months until match from this date but the really hard part is behind us (although waiting is incredibly hard) the question of China approving our documents is now behind us. Yay, Happy Birthday to me!
Thursday, December 13, 2007
We are DTC!
You never could have guessed it from the title, but we found out today that we are DTC! Actually, our dossier goes out to China tomorrow, but we decided to go out and celebrate tonight anyway. Yeah, we're crazy like that. We went to Torrini down the street and allowed ourselves to have appetizers and dessert in addition to our very own meals. That's right. It's was a pretty special night.
We thought once we became DTC, it would be a month until our LID, but checking the Holt website, it might be sooner. For example, a couple that had a DTC on 11/16 got a LID of 11/28. Then again, last year a couple had a DTC of 12/15 got a LID of 1/24. My guess is China will find our application so fetching they won't be able to help themselves and we should have a DTC by the end of the week. A boy can dream.
This is Tim typing, by the way. That'd be weird if Danielle called herself a boy. I mean, I'd still love her, but...
We thought once we became DTC, it would be a month until our LID, but checking the Holt website, it might be sooner. For example, a couple that had a DTC on 11/16 got a LID of 11/28. Then again, last year a couple had a DTC of 12/15 got a LID of 1/24. My guess is China will find our application so fetching they won't be able to help themselves and we should have a DTC by the end of the week. A boy can dream.
This is Tim typing, by the way. That'd be weird if Danielle called herself a boy. I mean, I'd still love her, but...
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
How Long?
I get asked a lot "how long?" which I take to mean "how long until we're sent information about who our child is?" It's such a hard question to answer. Once our dossier is sent to China (DTC) China looks it over and gives it their approval. When that happens we are given an official date of entering the process. That's called our Log In Date (LID). This date is really important. It's the date families live by because we're matched with a child by this date. Each week the CCAA, the government organization in charge of matching families with children,
http://www.china-ccaa.org/frames/index_unlogin_en.jsp
goes by the family's Log In Date to see who is next in line for the child matches.
In order to answer the question, "how long" it's difficult to say. The 24 month wait from LID is for families getting their referrals now. These families logged in in December of 2005. Every month that the CCAA refers only a few days worth of LIDS, the wait grows. It is taking the CCAA several months just to get through one month of LIDS. There is no way to know how long someone logging in now will wait, though there are algorithms online that can render a guess.
http://people.wwc.edu/staff/stirra/china/stats/statsdisplay.htm#QUICK
We're hoping the wait won't increase but you can't know. People tell me how patient I am but that's not true. There's just nothing I can do about it. Plus, we don't even have a LID date yet, we're still waiting for our DTC.
http://www.china-ccaa.org/frames/index_unlogin_en.jsp
goes by the family's Log In Date to see who is next in line for the child matches.
In order to answer the question, "how long" it's difficult to say. The 24 month wait from LID is for families getting their referrals now. These families logged in in December of 2005. Every month that the CCAA refers only a few days worth of LIDS, the wait grows. It is taking the CCAA several months just to get through one month of LIDS. There is no way to know how long someone logging in now will wait, though there are algorithms online that can render a guess.
http://people.wwc.edu/staff/stirra/china/stats/statsdisplay.htm#QUICK
We're hoping the wait won't increase but you can't know. People tell me how patient I am but that's not true. There's just nothing I can do about it. Plus, we don't even have a LID date yet, we're still waiting for our DTC.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Not Quite Sure
Tim and I headed to the notary on Saturday. It was seemingly uneventful as we waited in line for our last document to be stamped. Emmanuel, the UPS store notary, was behind the counter as usual. He's now to the point where he recognizes us: I'm the uptight one (shocker), Tim's the jokey one (double shocker). Usually we have several items to take care of but on Saturday it was simple, one document, one signature, $10 and we were spit back out onto Wilshire Boulevard. We headed next door to Fed Ex where we have an account so I could overnight the I-171h to Masha Ma. Masha is my contact at Holt who is managing our dossier. She is in charge of certifying all our documents and then once that happens they'll be sent to the San Francisco Chinese Consulate for authentication. The good news is we expect our documents to come back from the certification process today which is sooner than I had expected. We might get the authentication process finished by the end of December which would be fantastic and pretty much the best Christmas present we could imagine but I'm trying not to get my hopes up. Having that done means our dossier is finished and to China but that's a pretty big hope with the holidays in December.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)