My mom and I just got home from a scrapbook retreat, but before I post about that, there are more important things at hand!
This is my nephew, Marcel:
He is 3 months old and lives in Guatemala in a foster home. My sister and brother in law are in process of adopting him and have been since January, but all of the sudden, if he isn't home (HERE!) by December 31, he could become an orphan. My sister in law, Rachel, sent out this e-mail that I will now post here in case anyone would like to help. We have never met Marcel, but we love him, and want him to come home SO much!
Here is her e-mail:
Dear Friends,
Bryant and I are writing in need of your help. As you know, in June we began the process to adopt a little boy from Guatemala. His name is Marcel (after Bryant’s great-grandfather) and he’s 3.5 months old today. I’ve visited him twice (once with Bryant and once with my mom) and I assure you that he quite possibly may be the cutest, smartest little baby in the whole world!
We are asking for your help because political tension between the US and Guatemala regarding adoptions has gotten to the point where the out-going Guatemalan President, Oscar Berger announced last week his intention to shut down all adoptions to the United States on January 1, 2008 regardless of where a family is in the process of adopting their child. This very well could mean that we wouldn’t be allowed to bring Marcel home. Even if we were able to beat the deadline and bring Marcel home, it would mean a humanitarian crisis for the other 5,000 children currently available for adoption in Guatemala.
What this amounts to is thousands of orphans that will literally be homeless! And when I say homeless, I don’t mean “in orphanages.” There are NO orphanages in Guatemala. There is no place for these children to go. They are currently living in foster care homes that are supported with the money that adoptive families pay through adoption fees. Once adoptions stop, the money to these homes will dry up and there will literally be no homes for well over 5,000 children (and counting).
At the end of this email, I included more information about how INCREDIBLY serious this situation is and how it got to this point. Needless to say, I haven’t slept in about a week thinking about what would happen to Marcel if we miss that deadline! But you can help and that’s why I’m bugging you with my problems.
Please help us by taking one or more of the actions I listed below. The hope is that, by applying pressure to our government, they will do a better job of working with the Guatemalan government to solve these problems. It seems to be working already. Our government has already altered its message to adoptive families just from the work that has been done in the last four days. But we need to keep up the momentum and that’s where you come in!
I want to thank you for even reading this email and thank you more if you do something with it! I plan on making cookies for everyone who helps us out with this. Email me back to tell me what you did to help and I’ll put you on my “cookie debt list”. The sooner you respond, the higher you’ll be on the list and the sooner you will get your cookies! Hopefully I will be so backed-up with cookie baking that I’ll be paying off this debt long after Marcel comes home.
All our love and thanks,
Rachel and Bryant
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP Please start by signing a petition asking the Department of State to use diplomacy instead of pressure to handle this situation and to help Guatemala through a time when a lot of changes are taking place. The petition takes less than 60 seconds to sign.
www.petitiononline.com/foafoa1/petition.html Please consider writing one or more letters. If you are interested in writing letters but just don’t have the time, tell me and I will write the letters for you! I can either write them and email them back to you for you to print, sign and mail, or I can write them and sign them on your behalf, sending them to the elected officials for your area. There are two sample letters on our blog at
http://www.thediary.org/BuildAFamily/5247/Sample+Letters.html. For your elected officials’ contact information, go to
www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ Please consider calling your elected officials on October 8, 9, or 10. This is a coordinated phone campaign. That is why there are only three days in which we are asking people to call. That makes our jobs easier… we just need to clog up their phone lines for three days straight with calls about Guatemala adoptions! For more information about what you can say when you call, we have some notes on our blog at
http://www.thediary.org/BuildAFamily/5246/CALL+TO+ACTION%21%21%21%21.html.
Please consider forwarding this email to people who you think would sympathize with the cause. I am also sharing the information with my church because there are adoptive families in my congregation and because getting involved would be a good way for someone to express their faith.
Please pray! …for the children, for us, for Marcel and his foster mother, and most of all, that the people who have control of this situation will feel warmth in their hearts for all of these precious, helpless children!
WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?Here’s a little background so you can understand why we would be freaking out enough to contact you for help!
Aside from the fact that Mr. Berger is making this threat with absolutely NO plan in place to support the children who would be “stuck” (meaning, children who’s birth parents have already terminated their parental rights), and aside from the fact that our Department of State is basically doing nothing about it but telling adoptive families that they are SOL instead of doing what it can to correct the situation, there are many reasons that this is very upsetting. Guatemala suffers from extreme social and economic problems (some of which are directly due to past and present interference by American companies and the American government). I outlined a few of the results below.
· 47% of all children (67% of indigenous/Mayan children) under 5 years of age in Guatemala suffer from chronic malnutrition. This has irreversible effects on physical and cerebral development. As an orphan, Marcel will be one of these children if he stays in Guatemala.
· 75 % of the population lives in poverty. Three out of five people in Guatemala live in extreme poverty.
· Over 28% of children between the ages of 7 and 14 are compelled to work.
· Girls starting as young as 10 years old make up 98% of domestic service workers in Guatemala.
· Only 20% of children in rural areas (50% in urban areas) get a primary school education.
WHAT’S BEHIND IT ALL? (Only FYI, if you are interested in knowing the background)
Some of you might be wondering what happened to create this situation of a possible adoption shut down. There have been a lot of factors and it gets complicated but here’s a basic recap:
First of all, there are a lot of children being adopted from Guatemala by US families. So many, in fact that it has become a lucrative “business,” in a sense. The problem here is that, when there is a lot of money associated with something, dishonest people try to get a cut of the pie. As a result, there have been a few “bad” people who have done really terrible things like kidnap babies to put them up for adoption or take a lot of money from an adoptive family with no intention of giving them a baby. So, needless to say, reforms are needed to weed out the bad people from getting involved. The adoption community has been asking for help with this for a long time but the US just got on board with the idea this year.
With that information as a back drop, you then have UNICEF getting involved. UNICEF is against inter-country adoption and thinks that the best way for Guatemala to handle its poverty and social problems is to legalize abortion (Guatemala is a Catholic country). Thusly, it offered a $28 million donation to the administration with no strings attached if the out-going president will shut down adoptions and legalize abortions. The idea is that if women know that their child will starve to death before they reach age 5 anyway (because they can’t be adopted), they will almost have no choice but to abort the pregnancy. There ya have it! Whether you’re a pro-lifer or pro-choicer that should send you over the edge! They are both increasing abortions AND taking away a woman’s right to choose at the same time! Here is one time that everyone should agree that this approach is pure evil!
Add to this, the US government/Department of State (DOS). The DOS has been pushing Guatemala to make reforms since about March of 2007 (of course, the adoption community has been pushing for reforms for several years but the DOS just caught up with us a few months ago!). In their pushing, the DOS had basically told Guatemala, repeatedly, ‘if you don’t do what we want you to do we’re cutting you off around April of 2008.’
To which the Guatemala Congress replied, ‘Ok, we’re working on it and we’ll make sure that we’re ready by then.’
DOS: ‘No, really… we’re gonna cut you off if you don’t do what we want by April of 2008… we’re serious!’
Guatemala: ‘Ok, we know you’re serious and we’re working on it. The problem is, we have two laws we’re reviewing. One is really good and can be implemented pretty easily and keep things running smoothly but weed out the bad guys. The other one was presented by Berger’s wife and works “in theory” but would require a lot of money (that we don’t have) and a complete overhaul (which would basically mean a shut-down). The problem is, you guys keep pressuring us to go with the second law and we really think that’s a bad idea because it would basically shut adoptions down anyway.’
DOS: ‘Too bad. We like the second one and you should pass it and if you don’t then we’re going to cut you off by April of 2008. And we mean it!”
Guatemala President Berger: ‘Oh yeah? Well, how about this? I’m going to pass a law FIRST! Yeah… I’m going to pass the unworkable law that my wife wrote, and WE’RE gonna cut YOU off because YOU don’t have a new law yet (and won’t until April) and then I’ll take my money from UNICEF and retire a rich man!’
DOS (to American Adoptive families): ‘Yeah, things aren’t looking so good for people who are adopting from Guatemala. Looks like you’re gonna get cut off on January 1st. We know that this goes against international law but we don’t really feel like pushing the point with them. We recommend that nobody new get started on an adoption cause you’ll lose your life savings and have a huge hole in your family, too. But, of course, we’re not going to formally shut down the program for new families… we’re just gonna keep putting out warnings and scaring the crap out of everyone.’
That’s how it all came together to where we are now. The Guatemala Congress is still working on the legislation. Our hopes are that they approve the workable legislation (not the one the DOS is pushing) and that they push the date back to April 1st so we can all coordinate on our laws and work together like nice neighbors!
And if you read all of this all the way to the end, you get an extra cookie!
