Suburban families fear moratorium on foreign adoptions

Antioch resident Gloria Burnette has spent five months preparing for her infant daughter's homecoming.

Now she just hopes her child's new home is a healthy and happy one -- wherever it may be and whomever it may be with.

"There's not a single day that I don't cry about it," Burnette says. "I could be OK if I knew she was going to be safe and happy somewhere. But I may never know, and that's what kills me."

Burnette is one of roughly 3,700 U.S. families anxiously waiting to see whether the Guatemalan government will allow them to complete adoptions that are already in process. The Latin American nation has threatened to halt inter-country adoptions on Jan. 1, 2008, in order to comply with international standards.

A Hague Convention treaty -- which Guatemala ratified four years ago but has yet to enact -- requires the creation of a centralized adoption-monitoring agency. Guatemala currently depends upon independent notaries and private attorneys to handle the nearly 5,000 cases processed there each year.

The U.S. government has asked Guatemalan officials to allow current applications to proceed without additional requirements. In September, the U.S. State Department warned American citizens not to begin adoptions until the matter is resolved.

Americans last year adopted 4,135 children from Guatemala, a developing nation about the size of Tennessee. In terms of raw numbers, only China provided more babies to the United States in 2006. Chinese adoptions, however, represent a mere .04 percent of that country's births. In Guatemala, one in every 100 children born there is raised by a U.S. family.

The ratio has led critics, in the impoverished nation and abroad, to blast Guatemala as a baby farm for rich Americans. UNICEF has joined the debate and is urging the government to halt adoptions until international standards are met.

"UNICEF supports the moratorium so that Guatemala can bring its adoption process in line with other countries … in order to protect not only the rights of children but also of those adopting," UNICEF spokesman Patrick McCormick said. "There's no reason why adoptions cannot restart once this has happened."

The Guatemalan congress next month will consider amending its moratorium legislation so that in-process cases can be finalized. President Oscar Berger recently told The Associated Press he would grandfather in existing applicants, even though the plan's original language does not provide for such exceptions.

"I have never said that I want to stop the adoptions," Berger said. "All my government wants is for the adoption law that is about to pass to be respected and for Guatemala to comply with the Hague Convention."

Without any guarantees, however, would-be parents -- many of whom already have met their children and have been paying for their foster care for months -- have sprung into action.

Gloria and Gary Burnette, for example, repeatedly have called their congressman and both U.S. senators from Illinois. Gloria Burnette's friends and relatives also have petitioned the congressional representatives on behalf of the couple.

"I've sent faxes and e-mails," said Gloria Burnette, who already has decorated her daughter's nursery in a butterfly motif. "I've made a lot of phone calls and left voice mails for a lot of people. It's on my mind constantly."

Kris and Bill Hull of Naperville also have spent the past few weeks monitoring the situation. The couple, who have adopted three boys from Guatemala, are waiting for their daughter Annika's paperwork to be approved.

Kris Hull checks her e-mail constantly throughout the day, hoping there's a note from their adoption agency with an update on 6-month-old Annika's case. Their little girl has been through the required DNA testing, but her petition still has a ways to go.

The couple also have called their congressional representatives and have asked friends and family to do the same. They doubt the moratorium will be enacted, in part because they believe Guatemala is ill-equipped to care for the more than 3,000 orphans assigned to American families.

Those children currently are being raised by foster mothers whose salaries are paid by the adopting parents.

"I don't think they are going to halt all adoptions," Kris Hull said. "But that doesn't mean we should sit around and do nothing."

The Hulls went through a similar situation when they adopted their oldest son, Myles, in 2003. Guatemala had signed the Hague treaty that year, and there were rumors that all adoptions would be halted.

That experience offers the Hulls some comfort as they wait for Annika -- whom they visited in August -- to come home. They know the great reward at the end of the heart-wrenching journey, they say.

"We just have to keep the faith," Kris Hull said.