Guatemala suspending adoptions
Posted on Tuesday, December 4, 2007
In trying to adopt a boy from Guatemala, Donna Baslee has patiently maneuvered through the intricacies of that nation’s adoption process. But the Bella Vista woman and thousands of other hopeful American parents are painfully aware that their desire for the prospective children and their mastery of the process now may not be enough.
Their pending adoptions are in limbo after Guatemala’s president informed the U. S. State Department his nation will suspend adoptions to the United States as of Jan. 1. The suspension includes adoptions already initiated but not yet completed.
Baslee said she knows of at least a half dozen other Arkansans whose adoptions of Guatemalan children also are in doubt.
Given the difficulties already present in adopting a Guatemalan child, the looming suspension has layered an already trying process with another level of frustration. But Baslee remains determined to see the adoption through.
“I’m bringing him home,” Baslee said of the child she already has named Logan. “I refuse to think any differently. He may be 5 years old and walking into kindergarten, but I’m bringing him home.”
Still, adoption agencies are advising people who want to adopt internationally to look in other countries for the time being.
“If your paperwork is already in Guatemala, just hang in there,” said Ed C. Appler, whose company, Grace Adoptions in Conway, among other services, performs home studies for international adoptions. “But if you’re considering starting the process, I would discourage someone from doing so.”
The Joint Council on International Children’s Service, based in Alexandria, Va., has been monitoring the situation. The organization has 260 members, which include adoption agencies, child advocacy groups, parent support groups and medical clinics.
“It’s traumatized those families who have adoptions pending,” said Tom DiFilipo, the organization’s president and chief executive officer. “They’ve bonded with those children. They consider them their children already.”
The crisis began in September when the Guatemalan president, Oscar Berger, said his country no longer will allow adoptions to countries that haven’t implemented the Hague treaty, an international agreement to ensure intercountry adoptions are legal and ethical. The United States won’t implement the Hague treaty until April 1.
“There’s a lot of countries that have not signed onto the Hague,” DiFilipo said. “We should be applauding Guatemala for implementing the Hague, and assist them in doing so.”
Guatemala is second only to China in the number of children adopted by U. S. parents, according to DiFilipo’s agency. So far in 2007, 4, 700 children from Guatemala have been adopted in the U. S., while 5, 400 children from China have been.
DiFilipo and other advocates of international adoption disagree with Berger’s decision to suspend pending adoptions. DiFilipo acknowledges some pending adoptions might need to be reviewed.
“There are ways to handle those cases without closing all of them,” he said.
Some members of Congress, including Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., have sent letters urging the U. S. State Department and Guatemalan officials to ease the crisis.
“I have heard from many constituents that have expressed concern that if the Guatemalan policy is implemented, thousands of children legally relinquished by their birth parents for adoptive care could remain outside permanent family care indefinitely,” Lincoln said in a statement. “For the sake of these loving children, we should make every effort to ensure that they are placed in caring homes.”
Guatemalan lawmakers could vote as soon as today on legislation that would ease the crisis, DiFilipo added.
But it is far from clear what the immediate impact of the law will be. “It’s not so much what happens with the [legislation ], Baslee said. “ It’s how people interpret it.”
Baslee began trying to adopt a child from Guatamala in July 2006. Baslee, 42 and single, is a senior auditor for a company that audits Wal-Mart Inc., the Bentonville-based retail giant.
“Adoption is something I said I always would do,” she said. “I felt like it was completely irresponsible for me to bring a child into this world when so many others need a home. It’s my own personal view. I don’t mean that for anyone else. I’ve said that since I was a little kid. I finally got to the point where if I do this I needed to be doing it.”
Baslee began researching her options in 2004. “Being single ruled out a lot of countries,” including the U. S., she said. Many countries either don’t allow single parents to adopt “or you have to jump through extra hoops.”
“It was almost like throwing a dart at a dart board,” Baslee said. “I contacted everybody just below God. I prayed a lot to him, too.”
She eventually settled on Guatemala and soon picked her son from photographs of children put up for adoption. Baslee calls him Logan Davis, but he was born Jose David Flores Zuleta on June 2, 2006. She filled out paperwork, had a home study performed and accepted his referral that August. Her dossier was ready in September.
“Everything was going relatively OK,” Baslee said.
A DNA test was scheduled Dec. 29, 2006. Several weeks passed and eventually months passed without any progress, and Baslee grew worried.
“They kept saying everything is fine,” she said. “Everything in me said that everything was not fine.”
Baslee’s intuition was correct. In April, she flew to Guatemala only to learn “they didn’t know where the birth mother was. Basically, the attorney said to forget this baby and accept another one.”
She would have none of it.
“I saw his picture in August,” Baslee recalled. “My heart was set on that baby. The thought of setting him aside like an old pair of clothing didn’t compute. I cried.”
She eventually agreed to accept another referral, a baby she has christened Gabriel Clayton, who was born in August 2006. But she hasn’t given up on adopting Logan, either.
Logan’s birth mother eventually was located, which restarted Logan’s adoption process. Bureaucratic entanglements continue to delay progress in his adoption, however.
Baslee has recorded her efforts and emotional tribulations in trying to adopt both children.
“The reason Logan was kicked out of [the office governing adoptions ] was because they didn’t like my employment letter and police clearance because they were dated in 2006,” Baslee wrote Nov. 19 on the Web log she uses to document her experiences. “Hell, my WHOLE dossier is from 2006. So now I have to re-notarize, re-certify, reauthenticate and re-translate two lousy pieces of paper before he can get back into [the adoption office ].”
On Nov. 20, she paid $ 60 to mail her new employment and police clearance letters for delivery to the Arkansas secretary of state’s office in Little Rock by 8 a. m. the next day. That office returned the documents in the mail the same day they arrived.
By Nov. 24, the documents were being delivered to a courier in Houston. The courier took them to the Guatemala Consulate on Nov. 26, picked them up the next day and delivered them by Federal Express to Guatemala, where the documents had to be translated and authenticated again.
The documents were supposed to be delivered to the adoption office last Wednesday.
Monday, she received good news and bad news. The good news is she will be able to pick up Gabriel this week in Guatemala. The bad is Guatemalan authorities say they haven’t received Baslee’s documents, meaning she has to put together the documents again before she departs for the country.
“I’m trying to just focus on Gabriel and be happy about that,” Baslee said Monday. “I’ll focus on Logan later because there’s nothing I can do about him right now.”
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
