As I was glancing through the Buffalo News, I came across this nice story about a Buffalo family that adopted a three-year-old boy named Geoffrey from Haiti.
Naturally, my first thought was one of pleasant disbelief -- how could an American family so quickly navigate the bureaucratic gauntlet of adoption regulations to rescue a Haitian boy from his earthquake-ravaged village? Perhaps our esteemed regulators have finally embraced the concept of getting the hell out of the way in order to facilitate rescue efforts by motivated, private citizens!
But of course not. The Lancer family has been trying to adopt little Geoffrey for two years.
Erin Lancer was in Haiti visiting Geoffrey when the devastating earthquake shook the impoverished nation Jan. 12. Neither was injured. She was evacuated, but Geoffrey had to stay behind at his orphanage because the paperwork allowing him to leave Haiti and come to the United States was not completed.
I'm sure the Lancers are busy celebrating the culmination of a years-long quest (nothwithstanding the outstanding paperwork required to make Geoffrey's immigration permanent, of course), but how absurd that they could have just as easily lost their new son a couple weeks ago due to the mind-numbing bureaucracy associated with state-run adoption.
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