cassandra
10-01-2007, 11:07 AM
Would that be too much to ask?
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1001guatadopt.html
GUATEMALA CITY - They roam the corridors of Guatemala City's best hotels, happy American couples pushing strollers carrying little Guatemalan babies.
Every day, a new batch of Americans checks in to rendezvous with adoption-agency workers bearing bundled-up babies. A few days later, they check out, many of them carrying packets of visa documents needed to take their new children home.
Guatemala has become "Baby Central" for Americans looking to adopt. Prospective parents are drawn by looser requirements, shorter waits and a greater availability of young children than in the U.S. The phenomenon has led to charges of baby-selling, kidnappings and bribery in this country of 12.7 million people.
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"The idea of adoption is a noble thing, but crimes are being committed in its name," said Helen Mack, president of the Myrna Mack Foundation, a human-rights group in Guatemala City.
The number of Guatemalan children adopted by Americans has quintupled in the past decade, with 4,135 coming to the United States in 2006, according to the U.S. State Department.
That's second only to China, a country with 100 times the population.
The numbers have raised suspicions of wrongdoing, with the United Nations Children's Fund alleging that 1,000 to 1,500 Guatemalan babies are bought and sold each year. In June, the U.S. State Department warned against adopting in Guatemala because of a lack of government oversight.
On Aug. 11, authorities detained two adoption lawyers and raided a home where 46 children were being held pending adoptions.
Under fire from human-rights campaigners, including first lady Wendy Widmann de Berger, the Guatemalan government says it will begin taking the adoption process out of the hands of private lawyers next year.
Adoptive parents, meanwhile, insist that they are doing no wrong and say they are angry over the recent criticism.
"We don't have any advocates; all we have are naysayers," said Allan Imes of Locust Grove, Ga.
Giant nurseries
The adoption phenomenon has turned Guatemala City's hotels into huge nurseries, as Americans come to visit the children, consult with lawyers or do paperwork at the U.S. Embassy. Because the process is controversial, adoption agencies discourage parents from leaving the hotels with the babies.
At the Baby Lounge in the Marriott hotel, two couples played with Guatemalan toddlers as Jeff and Heidi Bratkiewicz of Sioux Falls, S.D., fed Angel, a child they had never met but nevertheless planned to take home within days.
Like many couples who adopt abroad, the Bratkiewiczes had struggled with fertility treatments. When those failed, they looked into adoption but discovered there was intense competition for babies in the United States.
"There's a sense that when you're adopting domestically, it's a horse-and-pony show because the birth mothers decide," Jeff said. "We didn't want to have to pretend to be people that we weren't."
The couple started the paperwork a year ago to adopt Angel, sight unseen.
Guatemala's "notarial" adoption system puts private lawyers in charge of the entire process.
The lawyers find babies, obtain power of attorney from the mothers, secure governmental adoption approval, arrange housing for infants pending paperwork and deliver the children to the new parents. Foster parents and doctors are paid by the lawyers.
The process costs about $30,000 and takes a year from the first application, parents said.
That's far quicker than in the United States, where waiting lists can last years.
Country of orphans
Guatemala has a lot of children in need of good homes, social workers and human-rights officials say. Family planning is still rare in the country's poor, remote Mayan communities, and drug addiction has become a problem in the cities. A 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 tore apart many communities, creating social problems that still plague the country.
At the Casa Guatemala, a home for abandoned and neglected children in downtown Guatemala City, toddlers played with worn toys on a cracked linoleum floor. Like most homes run by charities, it sees few adoptions, manager Amparo Arriaza said.
"The Americans want babies, not older children," she said.
Getting a judge to declare an abandoned child eligible for adoption is also a long, difficult process, she said.
So instead of orphanages, many adoption lawyers use jaladoras, or finders, to seek out poor, pregnant women, said Alejandra Vázquez, director of the Social Movement for the Rights of Childhood, Adolescence and Youth.
Their babies then disappear into a casa cuna, or "cradle house" run by an adoption lawyer. Unlike in the United States, there is no government agency that shepherds cases through the courts.
"If we got into adoptions, it would take us two to three years to do the paperwork," said Lucy Santis, a manager at the Hogar Rafael Ayau, which has 110 children. "The lawyers get things done quickly because they pay bribes."
Adoption lawyers insist they do not pay bribes or engage in other wrongdoing.
After the Aug. 11 raid in Antigua, adoption lawyers ran newspaper ads accusing the government of "meddling and persecution."
"We have done absolutely nothing wrong," said Vilma Zamora, one of the lawyers detained during the raid. "Everyone has gotten paranoid about this."
The government shut down the Antigua house and says it is still investigating. No charges have been filed against the lawyers.
U.S.-based adoption agencies that employ the lawyers said they follow the rules. But they also said the lack of government oversight leaves room for abuse.
"We're pretty confident in the person we work with," said Victor Bondarenko, international adoption coordinator for A Helping Hand agency in Lexington, Ky., which handled 34 Guatemalan adoptions last year. "But there are probably some people who are doing something shady."
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced it will start scrutinizing child visa applications more carefully because the adoption process in Guatemala "is not adequately protecting all children."
Tougher rules
Under pressure from the United States and other countries, the Guatemalan Congress in June ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, an international treaty.
The pact, which takes effect in Guatemala in January, requires the country to create a central agency to review adoption requests, make referrals, oversee foster homes and accredit adoption agencies.
Some adoptive parents fear children will be swallowed up by the new bureaucracy and end up in government-run orphanages. But others said they supported the changes.
"I think the Hague treaty is actually probably a good thing, because there are some issues here," Imes said. "Anything that makes this more legitimate, I'm all for it."
He waved a hand at other Americans pushing their strollers through the lobby of the Marriott.
"I still think 90 percent of the time (adoption) is to the baby's benefit," he said. "These people are here for good, decent reasons: to have a family."
This article is such crap. :no
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1001guatadopt.html
GUATEMALA CITY - They roam the corridors of Guatemala City's best hotels, happy American couples pushing strollers carrying little Guatemalan babies.
Every day, a new batch of Americans checks in to rendezvous with adoption-agency workers bearing bundled-up babies. A few days later, they check out, many of them carrying packets of visa documents needed to take their new children home.
Guatemala has become "Baby Central" for Americans looking to adopt. Prospective parents are drawn by looser requirements, shorter waits and a greater availability of young children than in the U.S. The phenomenon has led to charges of baby-selling, kidnappings and bribery in this country of 12.7 million people.
advertisement
"The idea of adoption is a noble thing, but crimes are being committed in its name," said Helen Mack, president of the Myrna Mack Foundation, a human-rights group in Guatemala City.
The number of Guatemalan children adopted by Americans has quintupled in the past decade, with 4,135 coming to the United States in 2006, according to the U.S. State Department.
That's second only to China, a country with 100 times the population.
The numbers have raised suspicions of wrongdoing, with the United Nations Children's Fund alleging that 1,000 to 1,500 Guatemalan babies are bought and sold each year. In June, the U.S. State Department warned against adopting in Guatemala because of a lack of government oversight.
On Aug. 11, authorities detained two adoption lawyers and raided a home where 46 children were being held pending adoptions.
Under fire from human-rights campaigners, including first lady Wendy Widmann de Berger, the Guatemalan government says it will begin taking the adoption process out of the hands of private lawyers next year.
Adoptive parents, meanwhile, insist that they are doing no wrong and say they are angry over the recent criticism.
"We don't have any advocates; all we have are naysayers," said Allan Imes of Locust Grove, Ga.
Giant nurseries
The adoption phenomenon has turned Guatemala City's hotels into huge nurseries, as Americans come to visit the children, consult with lawyers or do paperwork at the U.S. Embassy. Because the process is controversial, adoption agencies discourage parents from leaving the hotels with the babies.
At the Baby Lounge in the Marriott hotel, two couples played with Guatemalan toddlers as Jeff and Heidi Bratkiewicz of Sioux Falls, S.D., fed Angel, a child they had never met but nevertheless planned to take home within days.
Like many couples who adopt abroad, the Bratkiewiczes had struggled with fertility treatments. When those failed, they looked into adoption but discovered there was intense competition for babies in the United States.
"There's a sense that when you're adopting domestically, it's a horse-and-pony show because the birth mothers decide," Jeff said. "We didn't want to have to pretend to be people that we weren't."
The couple started the paperwork a year ago to adopt Angel, sight unseen.
Guatemala's "notarial" adoption system puts private lawyers in charge of the entire process.
The lawyers find babies, obtain power of attorney from the mothers, secure governmental adoption approval, arrange housing for infants pending paperwork and deliver the children to the new parents. Foster parents and doctors are paid by the lawyers.
The process costs about $30,000 and takes a year from the first application, parents said.
That's far quicker than in the United States, where waiting lists can last years.
Country of orphans
Guatemala has a lot of children in need of good homes, social workers and human-rights officials say. Family planning is still rare in the country's poor, remote Mayan communities, and drug addiction has become a problem in the cities. A 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 tore apart many communities, creating social problems that still plague the country.
At the Casa Guatemala, a home for abandoned and neglected children in downtown Guatemala City, toddlers played with worn toys on a cracked linoleum floor. Like most homes run by charities, it sees few adoptions, manager Amparo Arriaza said.
"The Americans want babies, not older children," she said.
Getting a judge to declare an abandoned child eligible for adoption is also a long, difficult process, she said.
So instead of orphanages, many adoption lawyers use jaladoras, or finders, to seek out poor, pregnant women, said Alejandra Vázquez, director of the Social Movement for the Rights of Childhood, Adolescence and Youth.
Their babies then disappear into a casa cuna, or "cradle house" run by an adoption lawyer. Unlike in the United States, there is no government agency that shepherds cases through the courts.
"If we got into adoptions, it would take us two to three years to do the paperwork," said Lucy Santis, a manager at the Hogar Rafael Ayau, which has 110 children. "The lawyers get things done quickly because they pay bribes."
Adoption lawyers insist they do not pay bribes or engage in other wrongdoing.
After the Aug. 11 raid in Antigua, adoption lawyers ran newspaper ads accusing the government of "meddling and persecution."
"We have done absolutely nothing wrong," said Vilma Zamora, one of the lawyers detained during the raid. "Everyone has gotten paranoid about this."
The government shut down the Antigua house and says it is still investigating. No charges have been filed against the lawyers.
U.S.-based adoption agencies that employ the lawyers said they follow the rules. But they also said the lack of government oversight leaves room for abuse.
"We're pretty confident in the person we work with," said Victor Bondarenko, international adoption coordinator for A Helping Hand agency in Lexington, Ky., which handled 34 Guatemalan adoptions last year. "But there are probably some people who are doing something shady."
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced it will start scrutinizing child visa applications more carefully because the adoption process in Guatemala "is not adequately protecting all children."
Tougher rules
Under pressure from the United States and other countries, the Guatemalan Congress in June ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, an international treaty.
The pact, which takes effect in Guatemala in January, requires the country to create a central agency to review adoption requests, make referrals, oversee foster homes and accredit adoption agencies.
Some adoptive parents fear children will be swallowed up by the new bureaucracy and end up in government-run orphanages. But others said they supported the changes.
"I think the Hague treaty is actually probably a good thing, because there are some issues here," Imes said. "Anything that makes this more legitimate, I'm all for it."
He waved a hand at other Americans pushing their strollers through the lobby of the Marriott.
"I still think 90 percent of the time (adoption) is to the baby's benefit," he said. "These people are here for good, decent reasons: to have a family."
This article is such crap. :no