How Do You Adopt a Relative from Another Country?

So, Debbie, let's start with the basics.

What qualifies as an international relative adoption and what level of biological connection or relationship is required for that child to be considered for the immigration and adoption purposes?

Okay, well, this is all related to USCIS.

And a little bit, it has to do with the country laws as well, because they may consider the fourth degree relative or even higher.

And so, you know, we can always appeal to USCIS that that is the law in that country if it's a little bit further out than we have ever seen before.

But generally, it's going to be a close biological relative.

What we see in our cases are usually siblings, grandchildren, niece, nephew, first cousins, maybe.

And, you know, again, this is how we vet the cases to find out exactly how is this child related to you and all those questions that follow after that.

So we determine if this is classified as kinship based on where are you, how are you related.

And so those categories would qualify.

Okay, so how you're related, the country from which you would be adopting, and then U.S. law.

U.S. CIS, correct.

Okay, great.

And what circumstances typically make a child eligible for an international relative adoption from the perspective of the U.S. immigration side of things?

Well, let me first state that what USCIS does not want is for someone to adopt a relative trying to work around the other immigration law.

So they don't want people using the Hague adoption process to bring somebody in faster than bringing them in through normal U.S. immigration processes.

so because of that there are some requirements so it can these children or this relative has to be in a situation that would be considered by uscis to be um you know very more than just poverty it would have to be they they are not able to care for this this relative Okay.

And there are two different, you probably know there are two different classifications.

There's the 800, which is the Hague process cases.

And then there's the 600, which has an orphan definition, which would be, you know, one parent is absent either by death, abandonment, or has had rights removed.

And the surviving parent cannot take care of the child.

And that would be based on not only USCIS standards, but also the local law.

would be they would go in and interview this family, this person, guardian, over with the child and determine, does this child have a level of care? And are they able to eat? And do they have clothing and things like that? Poverty alone is not going to qualify.

So it has to be more involved than that.

And so, again, to avoid, well, this is just a quick way to get somebody into the state through a kinship Hague adoption.