Transcript
GIFF JOHNSON: What happens in the Marshall Islands, at least what has apparently been happening in the last several years apparently with increasing regularity is that recruiters who represent either adoption agencies or attorneys who are based in the US identify pregnant women who are willing to travel to the US and give up their babies for adoption. And once they have identified those women they organise airline tickets and they go to various locations. My understanding is Hawai'i and Arkansas and possibly even Texas are destinations where there are set up such so that pregnant women stay in an apartment and there may be more than one, there may be quite a few who stay in an apartment or a series of apartments. And when they give birth they give up their babies for illegal adoption. According to the Compact of Free Association between the Marshall Islands and the United States Marshall Islanders have visa-free travel to live and work and study. But the Compact specifically forbids travelling for the purpose of adoption. So that is where it falls afoul of the Compact. Although, as US authorities have said it's a very difficult thing to identify if a person is, in fact, going up to give birth for the purpose of adoption.
TIM GLASGOW: How are they getting away with this?
GJ: Essentially young women are coached in what to say, if they are asked. The issue of adoptions in the US has been red-flagged by the US Embassy in Majuro with the US Department of Homeland Security. So I believe immigration people are laying more attention to it. When women are asked, why are they coming, whatever they are saying doesn't suggest that they are going there to adopt their baby. And they simple fact is that many Marshallese and Micronesians have travelled to the Us, to Hawai'i, or Guam to deliver babies and then return home. And the reason they go there to have their babies somewhere else maybe simply that they want to make sure they're in a safer medical environment - if there's say a late pregnancy or some complications. So it's a difficult on to get a handle on at that point of immigration/
TG: They're going there without a child, then a family in the US is ending up with a child all of a sudden. How do you think they're managing to get around that?
J: My impression from doing a little bit of research into this is that a lot of the women who go to the US to deliver babies don't return or at least don't return very quickly. So that isn't really a way to get a handle on it. Because many of them maybe simply use this as a one way ticket to migrate.
TG: who are the people co-ordination these illegal adoption rackets, I suppose you could call them?
GJ: Well my understanding is that there are both attorneys and adoption agencies who get involved, who handle the adoptions on the US side and frankly I'm not really certain but there may be Marshallese who are in Hawaii or the mainland who are being the agent, who are identifying people and bringing them up and getting them sorted out for I guess you could say delivery, or whatever. The fact is once the baby is born and is given up for adoption in the US it does go through a legal process in the US. But by virtue of being born in the US the baby becomes a US citizen. So it's an interesting development, because what you have is you now have a US citizen being adopted by another US citizen, which has the flavour of an international adoption because of course everybody knows the kid is really a Marshall Islanders.
TG: What motivation is there for the Marshallese women who are doing this?
GJ: I don't know that the women are actually being paid, but what they're getting is a free plane ticket to the US, they're getting put up, housed and fed for however many months it takes for them to give birth, they're getting whatever prenatal care handle and all that. From what I've heard I don't believe that people are actually getting paid.
TG: Is there any speculation as to why it's increasing at the moment?
GJ: Well I think it's just one of these things where there is a demand for adoption sin the US. They can make money, and there are agents who can do it and pick up whatever they get paid for every woman that they recruit. The lawyers and the adoption agencies make money right on down the line. Couple it with the fact that you have a country that has very little in terms of an economy, very high unemployment, a lot of people are school drop outs, don't have very much opportunity and someone says "I'll give you a ticket to the US".
