ADA News (English)

Association Defenders of Adoption (ADA) was born in February of 2004, out of the need to have a voice to speak up and to reveal the side of adoption that is being hidden by those individuals and organizations interested in maligning the work that is done to provide loving families to the children who need them.

ADA has been successful in many ways, because it is thanks to the work of its members, that adoptions were possible in Guatemala, long after they became history in the rest of Latin America, exception made of Colombia, where a small number of adoptions is done, mainly to Europeans, who can afford to stay two months or more in Colombia.

Guatemala had a system that had many good features, that ensured the transparency and the willingness of the birth mother of the adopted child, to place him for adoption. Instead of keeping the good features of that system, UNICEF, Casa Alianza, and the US DOS, with the complicity of the former president Berger and his wife Wendy, forced on the Guatemalan Congress a law that creates a system that will not work and that if it does, it will be far worse than the one they eliminated.

On March 14th., 2007, the US DOS posted a list of FAQ to the adoptive parents, where they stated their concerns about the Guatemalan adoption process:

A: The major U.S. Government concerns about the Guatemalan adoption process include:
1. Conflicts of Interest: We are concerned that Guatemalan notaries may determine a child's eligibility for adoption, authorize the adoption deed, and register the adoption at the Civil Registrar. In the same case, the notary or his/her staff may also directly interact with birth mothers, solicit consents for an adoption, and handle the referral of the child to prospective adoptive parents. The Department of State does not believe that the notaries, given these multiple roles, can truly act objectively and in the best interests of the various parties.

ADA: a) The eligibility for adoption of the child was determined by the birth mother, who gave her consent to the adoption, and by the law, that stated who could be adopted; b) the notary authorizes the final deed AFTER the Social Worker appointed by the Family Court gave a favorable opinion, AND the PGN APPROVED the adoption. c) The registration of the final deed was done by the Civil Registry, not by the Notary. d) The foreign parents were approved to adopt by an authorized Social Worker in their country and were allowed to adopt by the authorities of their country of residence; the birth mother was aware that her child was being adopted by a foreign person or couple.

The comment of the US DOS: The Department of State does not believe that the notaries, given these multiple roles, can truly act objectively and in the best interests of the various parties, is very interesting because the Adoptions Law created an entity that will not have any oversight, because they are the only ones who will do it all. Even though the Courts of Minors will rule the adoptability of the children, who will do the placement, and charge for it, will be the National Council of Adoptions (CNA) who will also qualify the parents and who will do the adoptions, because the judge will only confirm with a sentence, the adoption done by such entity.

2) Lack of Government Oversight: Despite these critical roles in the adoption process, the notaries are largely unregulated. Public oversight is minimal. Particularly in cases in which prospective adoptive parents are told that the birth mother relinquished her rights to her child voluntarily, the U.S. Government is concerned that social services to birth mothers are extremely limited and that their consents may have been induced by money or threats. Monetary incentives and high fees drive completion of the adoption more than protecting the children, the birth parents, and the prospective adoptive parents. The Department is aware of a growing number of cases of adopting parents who have told us that they are being extorted for very large amounts of money by their local representatives in order to complete an adoption.

ADA: It is not true that the notaries are largely unregulated. There is a Notarial Code that establishes the duties of the notaries and there is an specific law that allows them to preside over voluntary matters, which is also a law of Congress that has been in effect since 1977, with very good results. The Adoption Law eliminated the articles that regulate the adoption process in that law, which goes against express prohibition of the Constitution. ADA has filed a constitutional challenge against article 67 of the Adoptions Law before the Constitutional Court.

It is not true that public oversight is minimal, and the US DOS well knows that the children are willingly relinquished by their mothers, but nevertheless, they try to discredit the decision of the birth mothers, by saying that they do it for money, or to cast doubts on those who work to make the adoption possible, by saying that they coerce the mothers, as if there were no police stations to complain if such thing happened.

The complaints of adoptive parents against local representatives have to be taken seriously and proper complaints before the local authorities should be filed. ADA is working with adoptive parents, whose local representatives are not working properly, which only proves aside from the public interest in keeping the system above board, there is also interest from the adoptions professionals to see that those who are not doing things properly, be banned from doing adoptions. We have found that most of those who act illegally are foreign facilitators who do not even have a working permit. ADA is very interested in holding them accountable, as well as the notaries and lawyers who work with them.

3) Unregulated Foster Care: Like the notaries, Guatemalan foster care providers are not regulated or checked by the Guatemalan government for compliance with any standards. Many Guatemalan foster families have demonstrated their love and concern for the children in their care, and American adoptive parents have expressed gratitude for how the foster families cared for the children while the adoptions were in process. Unfortunately, however, the Department of State is also aware of instances of grossly inadequate care for young children in foster home situations.; There are cases in which American adoptive families who have completed a Guatemalan adoption later learned that the foster care provider or others in the household had physically or sexually abused the children.

ADA. The Guatemalan government neither cares nor provides any child care, so it is a blessing that there were lawyers who trusted the children to foster mothers, and to private orphanages to care for the children while the adoption was done. The possibility of a child being physically or sexually abused is always present, even with the biological families and it is very common in the foster care system in the United States, according to what has been said by those who as children were in foster care. Generally speaking, the children in foster care in Guatemala are well cared and loved by their caregivers. Foster care is a temporary solution, but if the US Department of State were really worried for the wellbeing of the children who are in foster care, they would expedite their visas, instead of making it so difficult. It takes a great effort to file documents at the embassy to get authorizations for the DNA tests and to get the final interview. The adoption process in Guatemala used to be done in a couple of months, but in what seems to be an agreement between the US embassy and the PGN, adoptions take many months now and it is common that babies whose adoptions started when they were babies, have their first birthday in Guatemala.

4) Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption: Guatemala has been a party to the Hague Convention since March 2003, but it has never enacted Hague-consistent legislation or instituted Hague-consistent practices that would provide children the protections that are now lacking. Guatemala has not established the required central authority to oversee intercountry adoption processing under the Convention and has not yet taken numerous other steps the Convention requires. The U.S. Department of State, the Hague Permanent Bureau (which oversees the Convention) and other countries have consistently expressed concern about these and other problems with Guatemalan adoptions. In fact, many Hague Convention countries have stopped adoptions from Guatemala.

ADA: When Guatemala became a party to the Hague Convention, adoptions started after March 5th. 2003 were not approved by the PGN, who was appointed as Central Authority. The Central Authority, during six months did not even review those files. They did nothing. In August 13, 2003, exactly a year after the Congress approved The Hague Convention, the Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional that approval by Congress and in September, when the sentence was published, the order was restored and the PGN reassumed its role as reviewer. During those difficult six months we did no see any country, not even the US, whose citizens were waiting for their adopted children to come home, worried because nothing was being done.
The Adoptions Law established an entity named National Council for Adoptions as the Central Authority. After a legal battle to remove the people appointed by Berger, the people appointed by Colom, aside from doing the registration of the in process adoptions, have not done anything. The amparo filed by ADA has not been ruled, but just by filing it we got what we wanted, that is to say, that the CNA did not condition the registration of the adoptions, to an investigation of each case. If that had been the case, adoptions would have been paralyzed for years, while they investigated and approved each case, which was not what they were meant to do.

The Adoptions Law has accomplished that the notarial system is no longer possible, at least until the Constitutional Court restores it. Because the CNA is not working, the children who were born after such law became effective and whose mothers want to place them for adoption, are in a very precarious situation, because for those children much worse than being abandoned, it is to be kept by mothers who reject them, or who cannot provide for them. Abuse and neglect go undetected, until the child turns out dead, which does not make the headlines of the newspapers, the same tabloids that do not spare ink to criticize and malign adoptions.
The same international bureaucrats and diplomats who criticized the amount paid by foreign adoptive parents for an adoption in Guatemala, and who were very vocal in their opposition to the system that very successfully and against all odds gave families to a few thousand of children every year, remain silent and do not express any concern for the lack of activity of the National Council of Adoptions and for the fate of the unwanted children.
The accomplishment of closing down adoptions in Guatemala will be reinforced by the US when they become a party to the Hague Convention. The DOS has said that despite Guatemala being a party to the Hague convention and despite the Adoptions Law, their system is not Hague compliant and for that reason, the US will nor accept that its citizens adopt children from our country.

Adoption and marriage are very similar. Both create a bond of love between two people who are not related by blood, as a result of the agreement of two consenting adults, or if they are underage, by the adult who has their legal custody. Even though the child who is being adopted cannot express his consent to the adoption, it is assumed that the parents who represent him, have his best interest in mind when they decided to place him for adoption. A similar situation happens in marriage, when the children are born into that union. Those children did not ask to be born, and it is assumed that their parents wanted them to love them and to keep them happy and healthy. In the same way that the State does not prevent the marriage of a man and a woman, because that is part of the private rights of the citizen, established in the Fourteen amendment of the US Constitution and in article 47 of the Guatemalan Constitution, it should not limit the rights of the citizens to adopt, regardless of where the child that they want to adopt was born, in the same way that the State does not prevent a citizen to marry someone who lives in another country. To adopt a child is also part of the private rights of the citizen, and it should be asserted as something that one can do without some State entity saying that it is not possible to do it from certain country,
The war against adoptions is not motivated by a genuine interest in the welfare of the children. The reason beneath the merciless attacks to a system that has been essential to many children escaping death, hunger, mistreatment, is because it has proven to be successful. The US DOS does not want our children coming into the US. Not even as tourists, if they can prevent it, as they have done with my two younger children who I adopted four years ago, and who were denied US tourist visas and no matter how many interviews we had and how many documents I presented, the visas to my two children were not issued. My biological daughters got their US visas when they were newborns, without any problem, and so did all my Guatemalan born nieces and nephews. The only conclusion I can draw of that denial of visa, is that adopted children are discriminated against by the US.
ADA is committed to find the way to keep doing adoptions, to offer that option to the women who cannot raise their children and to the children who need homes, even if that upsets the plans of UNICEF, the modern Herod, and of the US DOS, who worries that the children are in an unregulated and good foster care, but do not care if they are tossed in the garbage dumps.

We are setting up the way to accept the donations that have been offered to help us with the legal battle to restore adoptions. We will let you know when it is ready and we thank you beforehand for your support.