Michigan Couple Sets Precedent with Adoption of Karen Refugees

Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan: December 10, 2009, (PCTV Newsdesk)

Jim and Karen Jacobson might describe themselves as ordinary citizens, but the Michigan residents have done something so extraordinary that they just may have set a new precedent in the U.S. adoption arena.  After nearly 18 months of wading through the murky waters of bureaucratic red tape, they have become the legally adoptive parents of eight refugee children, all of whom hail from Burma, one of the most devastated and war-torn countries in the world.

The Jacobsons are hardly strangers to the plight of Burma’s ethnic refugees, who in recent years have finally been granted approval by the U.S. State Department to seek asylum in the United States.  Jim Jacobson’s nonprofit organization, Christian Freedom International (CFI), works extensively among thousands of persecuted Karen and Karenni Christians in Burma and Thailand, with Jacobson having personally made countless trips to the region throughout the past decade to help build schools and medical clinics, and deliver humanitarian aid and hope to a people who have been struggling in the midst of a genocidal nightmare for decades.

Hundreds of Burma’s refugees who relocate to the United States each year have been orphaned by the violent war in their homeland.  When the question arose for Jacobson and his wife, Karen, about whether to adopt four refugee siblings -- who had previously received care through CFI in Thailand before arriving in the U.S. in the spring of 2008 -- the challenges stretched down a seemingly endless road, one where no American had ever ventured before.

The lack of official birth records -- and no real way to determine a refugee minor’s true eligibility for adoption -- remains the primary obstacle in the adoption of Karen and Karenni children directly from Burma’s refugee camps, and it was the initial hindrance to the Jacobsons’ adoption once the children were in the United States.  “One of the things that makes it very difficult to adopt refugee children is that there is no certificate of foreign birth, they have no birth record at all,” says Karen Jacobson.  “The only birth records they have are the ones that have been discovered or researched by the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees].  But if they don’t know it then they assign them a birth date, basically, because no one knows the exact day.”  It was only when a Michigan judge finally ruled, after six months of deliberations, that the children’s green cards and immigration paperwork could serve as “Other Proof of Birth” that the adoption process was allowed to move forward. 

In the months that followed, the Jacobsons also applied to adopt four other refugee children. “It was clear that all of the children wanted us to adopt them,” says Karen Jacobson.  “The goal for them is to train and be educated to someday go back and serve the Karen people.

News source: www.christianfreedom.org