Families Across Borders | law, policy, news and views
Hague Conference News
The Hague Conference on Private International Law has scheduled the Sixth Special Commission meeting to review the practical operation of the Child Abduction Convention and the Child Protection Convention in two parts. Part I will take place on June 1 to 11, 2011, and Part II is tentatively scheduled for January 2012. The Hague Conference has now [...]
Pregnancy Tourism?
Last fall, Rob Gifford of NPR reported on a trend among upper-class pregnant women in mainland China who are traveling to the United States to give birth so that their children would have the advantage of U.S. citizenship. See “Born in the U.S.A.? Some Chinese Plan It That Way.”
What do adult children owe their parents?
Just in time for the lunar new year celebration, China’s civil affairs ministry has proposed that adult children should be legally obligated to visit their parents regularly. The proposal was widely reported outside China; here’s a link to the BBC report, and here’s a story in the New York Times: Sharon LaFraniere, China Might Force Visits to Mom and Dad.
Dream Act Fails, Birthright Citizenship in Dispute
In the final days of the last congressional session, Senators supporting the Dream Act were five votes short of the number needed to block a filibuster. The bill, which passed the House in early December, would have opened the possibility of citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and subsequently completed two years of [...]
Religious Divorce Dispute in the News
See this recent coverage of public protests designed to persuade an Orthodox Jewish man to provide his ex-wife with a religious divorce known as a get: Mark Oppenheimer, Religious Divorce Dispute Leads to Secular Protest (N.Y. Times, 1/3/2011).
