Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing what are called intra-family adoptions. I get emails like this from time to time where somebody will say, "hey I have a niece, or I want to go ahead and adopt somebody that is within the family - usually it's a niece or nephew, sometimes even a grandchild. I've had folks contact me about this, or a step grandchild, stepchildren as well under certain circumstances, where they say, "look I want to go ahead and adopt this child". And the reason, I think the underlying reason is to gain immigration benefits, because for example once a child is considered legally the child of an American citizen - again depending on the facts of the given case - the Child Citizenship Act may be invoked in order to see nationality conferred in rather short order. 

Now for this reason, and due to the fact that people played a lot of shell games if you will, especially when you get into the context of the old Eurasian Visas associated with the aftermath of the Vietnam War. There were a lot of times that you had these Eurasian kids, that people around them would sort of position them “within the family”, their sort of “title” if you will is what type of relative they were in order to best facilitate the most immigration benefits that could be gained for like the wider family. Due to the high levels of manipulation associated with what we call intra-family adoption, USCIS or specifically it was the old INS that came up with these rules, but legacy USCIS, now under Department of Homeland Security, we have the rule that basically look you have to do two years of legal and physical custody with the child before they can be conferred benefits as would a natural-born child or as would a non-intra family adoptee, as would be sort of if you will arm's length adoptee. Again arm’s length adoptees are covered understand standard rules regarding immigration benefits, whereas intra-family adoptees must meet the two year's legal and physical custody requirements before they can be conferred similar benefits. 

So it is something of an anti-fraud mechanism if you will, to try and forestall people manipulating the US Immigration system and gaining benefits thereby.