Oddly enough, the bustle in Guatemala's adoption market is partly a result of stronger international efforts to curb such abuses. After the signing of the 1993 Hague convention on international adoptions, dozens of countries have passed strict provisions to regulate the way foreign adoptions occur. These actions have virtually shut down the activity in some countries that were once popular with U.S. and European agencies specializing in adopting abroad. It's a wonderful law. But there were 800 children a year coming to the U.S. before it was passed, and now, over the last three years, it's been an average of 17.
International adoptions happen in Guatemala with a minimum of state interference.
Private attorneys can act as the representative of absentee clients while paperwork is processed. Prospective parents need be in the country no more than three days. That's turned the country into one of the stars on an international adoption circuit in which several thousand children are adopted each year by parents from the United States. In three years, visas for Guatemalan babies being adopted by Americans have more than doubled to 879 last year. The growing demand comes from prospective parents frustrated by strict requirements imposed in their own countries.