Letter to Politicians about Vaccine Requirements

Senators:_http://www.senate.http://www.shttp://www.senathttp://www.sehttp://_(http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm)Representatives: _https://writerep.https://wrhttps://whttps://write_(https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml)

Dear [insert name here],

I am writing this letter to ask that your office work toward correcting a Congressional oversight in the Hague Convention that effects internationally adopted children by requiring that children adopted from Hague Convention Countries be up to date on all CDC's recommended vaccines instead of allowing adopted children to postpone their immigrant visa vaccination requirements until they are safely at home.

Public Law 105-73 provided the exception for newly adopted children to the vaccination requirement by allowing for a written affidavit in lieu of receiving vaccinations abroad before receiving an immigrant visa.

When the Hague Convention was passed, new regulations were issued in the Federal Register on October 30, 2007 at 72 FR 61301. The amendments revised the Department of State regulations to provide for inter country adoptions that will occur pursuant to the Hague Convention. This provided a new definition of "child" under the Immigration and Nationality Act, amending 101(b)(1)(F) and adding 101(b)(1)(G) Public Law 105-73 provided the exception for newly adopted children to the vaccination requirement by allowing for a written affidavit in lieu of receiving vaccinations abroad before receiving an immigrant visa.

When the Hague Convention was passed, new regulations were issued in the Federal Register on October 30, 2007 at 72 FR 61301. The amendments revised the Department of State regulations to provide for inter country adoptions that will occur pursuant to the Hague Convention.

While revising the law for the Hague's implementation, in an apparent oversight Congress forgot to extend a previous exemption that allowed adopted children to postpone their immigrant visa vaccination requirements until they were safely at home.

This oversight means that these newly adopted children must become up to date with all the CDC's recommended vaccines before they will be granted entry into the U.S. Various countries may have given these orphans anywhere from several to no vaccines, and often they have received vaccines relevant to diseases in their country and not required by the CDC.

Some of these children may have no medical record or an outdated record of the vaccines they received at the orphanage, and therefore they would be required to receive them again. As you can imagine, quality of medical conditions and quality of vaccines available from country to country varies considerably. This means that these vulnerable children may be required to receive a mega load of vaccines all in one day, many of which they may already have received, just days before they board the lengthy international flight home to the U.S.

Additionally, these children may not be healthy at the time these vaccinations are required, but as the law stands there is no available exemption, not even for fragile health. The best way to handle vaccinations, and the way it was done pre-Hague, was that once at home the family's pediatrician does a blood test to show their titer antibody levels, and then provides only those vaccines that are shown to be missing, on a safe time schedule.


As the law stands today, these vulnerable children are now the only class of U.S. immigrants that are given no possible exemption from their overseas visa immunization requirements. All other U.S. immigrants are allowed the possibility of exemption due to medical necessity or religious or moral grounds. Can it really be that this is a result of the Hague Convention which was intended to actually provide MORE protections for these children?

We only ask that your office seek to extend the previous exemption that allowed adopted children to postpone their immigrant visa vaccination requirements until they are safely at home. Such an exemption would be similar to 101(b)(1)(G) Public Law 105-73 provided the exception for newly adopted children to the vaccination requirement by allowing for a written affidavit in lieu of receiving vaccinations abroad before receiving an immigrant visa.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.