Immigration, Adoption and Our National Identity

In this Article, I tell the story of intercountry adoption. Our starting point is the beginning of the adoption process, with so-called “sending countries,” in which I explore the reasons that countries enter their children into the intercountry adoption market. We begin in the aftermath of World War II and continue until the present day. The story starts in Europe (specifically, in Germany, Greece, and Italy) and Japan. It then continues throughout the Korean War and the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauseacu, until present-day Russia and China. Next, I tell the story of receiving countries; I discuss the social, political, and economic conditions over recent decades that have caused countries to become receiving countries of international adoptees. In the third section of this Article, I explore why intercountry adoption policy and immigration policy should not be thought of as discrete and separate issues, but, instead, as different sides of the same coin, the development of which has and continues to stress the welfare of the nation and society as a whole. And, finally, I turn to the Hague Convention and explore where we are today in the context of the complicated and nuanced history of intercountry adoptio