U.S. Adoptions Fueled by Guatemalan Kidnappings

International Adoptions Dip

On the whole, international adoptions by American parents have been slowly declining over the past four years. There were 23,000 babies adopted from foreign countries in 2004, and just 19,613 in 2007, according to the State Department.

Adoption rates have fallen as traditional source countries, like Cambodia, have banned international adoptions outright, and others, like South Korea, have encouraged domestic adoptions.

But the opposite is true of U.S.-Guatemala adoptions.

With fewer options available to them, Americans have, in the same period, increasingly turned to Guatemala. Orphan visas issued to Guatemalan children rose from 3,262 in 2004 to 4,728 in 2007.

In Guatemala, a national industry has developed around adoption, with specialty lawyers offering their services, and hotels catering to the thousands of American couples who visit for the sole purpose of finding a child.

As a result, the measures kidnappers have taken to get a piece of the action have become increasingly brazen.

'There Was Nothing I Could Do'

"My daughter, Angely Lisset Hernandez Rodriguez, was kidnapped as I was entering my home," said Loida Rodriguez, one of the mothers on hunger strike outside the offices of Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom. "A woman appeared in my backyard and grabbed her out of my arms. There was nothing I could do."

Rodriguez's daughter was taken from her a year ago and would be 3 years old now.

She said police were indifferent to her case and offered virtually no help in finding the kidnappers.

Rodriguez still does not know the fate of her daughter or if she ended up in an orphanage.

Incidents of kidnapping, government officials hope, will decline, now that the country is implementing the Hague Convention on Adoption, an international treaty that sets guidelines for adoptions. Guatemala also passed its own adoption law in January.

"Under the law, adoptions are not supposed to produce a profit for anybody," said Nidia Anguilar Del Cid, an official in the office of the government's human rights ombudsman.

"The money for an adoption is only supposed to go toward legal costs and bureaucratic paperwork, which doesn't cost anywhere near the $50,000 some lawyers have charged."