belgurdo said:
Why do westerners always look to asia to adopt babies, anyway? Don't like the selection here? Can't brag about westerners being so superior to the east that we have to raise their kids for them if they get one from their home state?
That's just ignorant.
Some of the adoption programs in the U.S. can actually be pretty shoddy. I did plenty of research on my own before we decided to adopt our kids from Korea. One big difference is when you are dealing with a trusted agency (unlike this Cambodian situation) you don't have to worry about some long lost family of the birth mother, who may have never had any contact with family before this, coming out of the shadows and demanding rights to the child that you adopted as your own.
In the U.S., much like many places around the world, blood is the most important thing when it comes to the ruling in court. Rarely are the childs best interests really taken in to account, no matter what they try to tell you. Obviously this doesn't happen all the time, but I sure as hell didn't want to take the risk.
There are many other factors involved with my personal experience (cost, age, wait).
If you'd like to educate yourself, feel free to ask away.