I am feeling a bit dumB for not knowing this but what happens with birth certificates in an international adoption. Does the adoptee retain their OBC from the country of their birth or is it amended to show their adoptive parents as their natural parents? If it is the latter do they also change the country of birth?
2009-01-07T18:38:48Z
So in international adoption there is no fake bc provided. Very interesting. I never would have thought international adoption would be more ethical in this area, apparently it is! Thanks for the info!
almost human2009-01-08T03:35:27Z
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I'm from Korea too, but a little further along in the discovery process than Kateiskate.
In Korea, there is no birth certificate per say. There is, instead a family registry, called a Hojuk, which traces the lineage of family clans. When we are born, we are usually listed on the family registries.
We are turned into "orphans," even if we have living parents, by way of a document registering us as orphans.
Once we are an "orphan," we are given a new family registry and we are listed as the head of our family clans! with no parents and, of course, no offspring. Our real Hojuk still exists somewhere in Korea, separated from us, and I hear our names are then "x'd" out...(yeah, that horrifies me too - being literally "x'd" out)
This erasing of our past makes us available for international adoption.
Upon completion of adoption proceedings in our new country, we are given a new birth certificate, one which "live birth" is not in the title. Our adoptive parents are written in where the form states the mother and father's identity. It is very curious, because we were born to people who reside in one state at the time of the "birth" certificate, yet our place of birth is in a foreign country.
I would call this a fake birth certificate, and I would also call this less than ethical.
As part of my documentation process preparing for my return to Korea, I also had to renounce my Korean citizenship. Not only do I have a family registry with my name "x'd" out on it, locked in some vault in Korea, but I have also always been a Korean citizen.
Being an international adoptee is often surreal.
ETA:
One of the wonderful things UNICEF is doing is registering children's births in developing countries. This is badly needed, because there is still inter-country slave trading in parts of Africa and Asia, and there is also international child trafficking. If there is any way we can, we should document and preserve the family ties of children.
My child, adopted from Guatemala has an original BC with the birth mother's name. (No father listed, born out of wedlock). Then when we arrived home, the US issued us an "amended BC" listing me as mother.
I think it's pretty cool, that way if my child wants to know anything about his birth mom then he can at least try. I am extremely grateful to his birth mom, I can't imagine how hard it was for her.
My children are from Ethiopia. When we met their father we did ask about their birth informaton. He told us they don't register births where he is, and they surely don't celebrate birthdays or anything so they just kind of go by what season the children were born in. So the birth certificates the government gave us do list their real family and real place of birth, but the dates are guesses. That was in the papers we got from the relinquishment proceedings. In our adoption paperwork they gave us birth certificates that list us as the adoptive parents.
When we validated their adoptions in our state we were issued birth certificates for them that list us as the parents.