Intercountry adoption is the process by which you:
- Adopt a child from a different country than your own through permanent legal means; and
- Bring that child to your home country to live with you permanently.
Through intercountry adoption, the legal transfer of parental rights from birth parent(s) to another parent(s) takes place. Over the last decade, U.S. families have adopted on average approximately 20,000 children from foreign nations each year.
Many families in other countries adopt U.S. children. Intercountry adoption is governed by both the laws of the country in which the child lives and the country in which the adoptive parents live. Under U.S. law, there are two distinct intercountry adoption processes: the Hague Convention process and the non-Hague Convention process. Which process you will follow will depend on whether or not the other country involved is also a party to the Hague Convention.
Source: The State Department