Pakistani Adoptions

Adopting a child from Pakistan is a complicated process. The US embassy will only give visas to children who come from certain organizations. This in itself poses a problem. For various reasons, many couples will not be considered by these organizations as adoptive parents. For example, the Edhi foundation will often not consider families who have moved house recently or who already have a child. Only a handful of adopted children came to the United States from Pakistan last year.

The other alternative is is a private adoption. An adoption where there is no agency or orphanage involved. The child comes from another source- a hospital, a religious organization or directly from a birth parent.

The difficulty is this is that not only will you be adopting a child in a country where legal adoption is not recognized but you also have to get the child into the United States and this is the stumbling block.

The first step in the Pakistani adoption process is to locate a child who is an orphan under US immigration law. It should be noted that certain children who are relatives can also be adopted this way.


Let’s look at US immigration law.

The main requirements of this section are as follows:
1. The child must be under the age of 16 at the time the Petition is filed immigration;

2. The child must meet the U.S. immigration law definition of “orphan” because:

A. The child has no parents due to the death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, or separation from or loss of both parents; or
B. The sole or surviving parent is incapable of providing proper care and has, in writing, irrevocably released the child for emigration and adoption.

You should note that the words “disappearance” “abandonment” and “desertion” have very specific meanings under the immigration law.

Abandonment generally means that the parents have surrendered the child to an orphanage or agency that is recognized by its country as a licensed child placing entity.

Desertion means that the parents have refused to carry out their parental duties and the child had become a ward of a competent authority.

Disappearance means that the parents have unaccountably passed out of the child’s life and there is no reasonable hope for their return.

We find the key to a successful private adoption from Pakistan in US immigration law. The key is this: the child you pick must be an orphan.

The fatal flaw in most failed private adoptions from Pakistan is that the child does not fall under the United States definition of an orphan. An ill-fated couple will locate a child, usually one in great need. They will adopt the child in the Pakistani courts only to be denied a visa to enter the United States because the child had two parents or because the orphanage to which the child was abandoned was not recognized as a child placing entity by the Pakistani government or they will proceed under the wrong legal theory-abandonment instead of desertion.

The most important thing you can do to ensure that your private Pakistani adoption is successful is to hire a US immigration attorney BEFORE you even begin to look for a child. Once you begin your search, you can then present the potential children to your US immigration lawyer who can advise you whether or not the child in question will be eligible for a visa to enter the United States. Your attorney should be a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and should be familiar with the particular difficulties presented by Pakistani cases.

While you are locating a child, you can begin work on your home study. This is an evaluation conducted by an American social worker to determine your fitness to adopt a child from Pakistan. A home study will allow you to pre-qualify with US immigration to become an adoptive parent; thus shortening the immigration process.

With a pre-approval from US immigration in hand and a suitable child located, you can proceed to Court in Pakistan where both adoptive parents will be named guardians of the child in a Guardianship Order. Such an Order is considered to hold the same force as an adoption order for the purposes of US immigration law. This Guardianship Order must contain the statement that the Pakistani Court will allow the child in question to travel outside of Pakistan for the purpose of immigration and adoption.

Once your Guardianship Order has been issued you can file a petition for a visa for your new son or daughter. The embassy will investigate all of the facts surrounding the adoption and will approve a visa within days of the petition being filed.

Here are some points that you should keep in mind:

Remember that the Guardianship Order you receive from Pakistan does create an adoption for immigration purposes but you will need to domesticate your adoption once you return to the United States so that your child can eventually become a US citizen. Additionally, Pakistani nationals should remember that Shari’a’s inheritance laws are very different to those of the United States and you should consult an expert regarding any inheritance questions you may have.

The most important thing you can do for yourself is hire a competent US immigration lawyer. You should not locate a child, spend time with him or her, get a Guardianship Order and then look into getting a visa. You may be letting yourself in for a world of heartbreak when you find out that there is no way for you to bring your new son or daughter home.

Your US immigration lawyer should work closely with your Pakistani attorney through out the process. All of your documents should support the fact that the child is an orphan and eligible for US immigration benefits. Your US attorney should know enough about Pakistani adoptions to ask your Pakistani lawyer to insert this supportive language into every document from the Surrender to the Court Order.

Adjudications Officers in US embassies perform the function of determining who is eligible for a visa and who is not. They are not there to assist you with getting your child into the United States or to provide you with legal advice. You have hired attorneys who are intimately familiar with the law to assist you with that.

In some cases a “buffer agency” scheme may be proposed to you. This means that a child who is not an orphan is surrendered to an orphanage or children’s home after a pre-arrangement has been made between you, the biological parents and the orphanage to have the child immediately placed with you. These schemes should be avoided. They are fraudulent. Everyone involved will be in difficulty if and when the scheme is discovered. It should also be noted that couples adopting from Pakistan have run into the problem that the entity from which they adopted is not considered a “child placing entity” by either the US government or the Pakistani government.

When dealing with the Pakistani authorities and the US immigration, you must ALWAYS tell the truth. No matter what, you want your adoption to be solid. Never go to the US embassy and claim that you gave birth to a baby that is not yours. They routinely request DNA tests and will discover the truth. If the embassy believes you have been less than truthful they can permanently prevent you from getting immigration benefits for any child. It is a crime to attempt to gain immigration benefits fraudulently and I am sure that the Pakistani authorities also frown on such behavior. If you suspect that the child you are thinking about adopting has been bought or stolen from the birth mother you should immediately discontinue the adoption. The US embassy routinely investigates adoption matters by sending an investigator into the community to independently verify the circumstances surrounding an adoption. The US does not want to be complicit in the illegal adoption of a Pakistani national.

Finally, I routinely have couples call my office who have already adopted a child and who now are having difficulty bringing the child home to the US. Some of these cases are salvageable with proper diligence. Some are not. If you are one of these couples you should speak to a competent immigration lawyer. There is almost always a way to bring a child in if you are willing to take the time to do it correctly. Occasionally, there is no way to get a visa for a child. It is better to know this than to spend years and perhaps thousands of dollars attempting to do something which will never be possible.


I want to dedicate this article to the families I have worked with on Pakistani adoptions- the ones who successfully brought their children home but more particularly to those who are still separated from their babies and still traveling the arduous path towards family unification.