There is a United States immigration requirement now for American parents to have their newly adopted children brought completely up to date with all vaccinations before entering the U.S. using vaccines from China that may or may not be effective or even needed. If you are a future adoptive parent, grandparent or friend of someone adopting from a Hague country (that's you!!) would you consider sending this to your representatives? Adapt as needed/desired. This was written by someone on one of my many adoption chat groups. I emailed and actually got a phone call from Saxby Chambliss' assistant!
Senate:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
House of Representives:
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
Dear ________________________,
I am writing this letter to ask your office to both quickly and diligently work toward correcting a U.S. Congressional oversight in the Hague Convention that affects internationally adopted children. This oversight requires immigrant children adopted from Hague Convention Countries be up to date on all Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommended vaccines prior to entering the United States. Most other countries besides the U.S. are NOT requiring this.
When the Hague Convention was passed, new regulations were issued in the Federal Register on October 30, 2007 at 72 FR 61301. The amendments revised the Department of State regulations to provide for intercountry adoptions that will occur pursuant to the Hague Convention. This provided a new definition of "child" under the Immigration and Nationality Act, amending 101(b)(1)(F) and adding 101(b)(1)(G). Public Law 105-73 provided the exception for newly adopted children from the vaccination requirement by allowing for a written affidavit from the child's soon-to-be physician in lieu of receiving vaccinations abroad. While revising the law for the Hague's implementation, in an apparent oversight, Congress forgot to extend this part of the process. As stated above, this oversight requires these newly adopted children become up to date with all of the CDC's recommended vaccines before they will be granted entry into the US.
It is important to note most of these children come from orphanages in developing countries. Various countries may have given the orphans anywhere from several to no vaccines. Often they have received vaccines relevant to diseases in their country and not required by the CDC. Some may have no medical record or an outdated record of the vaccines they received at the orphanage. Without Public Law 105-73 in place, the newly adopted children would be required to receive the vaccinations again.
As you can imagine, adoption is a very complicated process both emotionally and physically. Taking this into consideration, these vulnerable children may be required to receive a large number of vaccines all in one day, just days after being adopted and just days before they board the lengthy international flight home to the U.S. There are reports of children receiving 6-7 injections at their medical exam in Guangzhou, China in order to comply with this requirement. In my opinion, this is both cruel and unethical.
These children may be medically fragile at the time these vaccinations are required. As the law stands, there is no available exemption for anyone, including the medically fragile. If the family wants to return to the United States with their child, the injections are mandatory without exception.
It is important to note, as the law stands today, these vulnerable children are now the only class of U.S. immigrants that are given no possible exemption from their overseas visa immunization requirements. All other U.S. immigrants are allowed the possibility of exemption due to medical necessity or religious or moral grounds. Can it really be this is a result of the Hague Convention which was intended to actually provide MORE protections for these children?
The best way to handle vaccinations, and the way it was done pre-Hague, was once at home the child's Pediatrician orders a blood test to discover the child's titer antibody levels. With test results in hand, the Pediatrician recommends only those vaccines that are shown to be missing, on a safe time schedule.
We ask that your office quickly seek to extend the previous exemption that allowed adopted children to postpone their immigrant visa vaccination requirements until they are safely at home. Such an exemption would be similar to 101(b)(1)(G) Public Law 105-73 which provided the exception for newly adopted children to the vaccination requirement by allowing for a written affidavit in lieu of receiving vaccinations abroad before receiving an immigrant visa.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter. I look forward to your prompt and timely response. The well being of some of America's newest and most vulnerable citizens depends on it.
......................
NOTE from Katy: I am fine with vaccinations, but would prefer not to have my new child get 7 in one day that they may have already had, right after being adopted, paid for out of pocket rather than through insurance, not under our pediatrician's supervision, a few days before we take a 20 hour plane ride. We did not have to do this for Lilla; it is new because of the Hague laws, which were supposedly created to protect children. Families from Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries do not have to do this. They wait until they are home.
If you're still reading, thanks!!
