New rules to ruffle feathers

How many of you brought your children home and they tested positive for tuberculosis (TB)? ?See me? ?That’s me wildly waving my hand in the air. ?It happened to us. ?The boy has latent TB. ?A chest x-ray determined that it is not active and 9 months of treatment ensure he would never pass it on to anyone. ?9 months. ?9 months of giving a 2 year old a yucky medicine that had to be specially ordered and he often threw at me.

Our wonderful friends at the CDC want to make sure that you don’t have to do such things as new parents to internationally adopted children. ?Aren’t they nice? ?They would rather you fly half way around the world under the guise that you are going to bring them home and then tell you no… you’ll have to wait until your child possibly goes through 9 months of treatment for a disease that is probably latent. ?But we can’t be sure that your child’s country of origin can afford to pay for the treatment so we’ll see. ?Have a nice trip home.

The CDC passed a new federal policy that states immigrants over the age of 2 must be tested for TB and if they test positive they cannot enter the United States until further testing or treatment is complete. ?Woah. ?Treatment? ?Yeah, treatment. ?The treatment for TB (as I previously mentioned) takes 9 months. ?And it is not cheap.

So what if you are born to US citizens or you just want a nice holiday in the US? ?Nope. ?Not required. ?Just immigrants. ?Adopted children are immigrants.

At the current time the CDC is enforcing this rule on immigrants from China and Ethiopia. ?Never-mind that a child adopted from one of these countries is likely going to come to the US and receive better health care than my grandmother. ?Lord knows I took my child to the doctor about 3 days after we arrived in the US. ?He was taken to an adoption specialist, tested and ?treated for everything under the sun.

In a nutshell, the whole policy stinks. ?The CDC is going to cause more damage than good. ?Children are going to have to live longer in unhealthy conditions and lose out on bonding time with their new parents. ?They won’t receive the medical treatment for other conditions they likely have.

I’m encouraging everyone to sign the Build Families, Not Barriers petition.

For more information you can visit the JCICS website or read about this on MSNBC. ?Please don’t let another government stand in the way of finding children forever homes.