Adopting a baby via

the Internet

Want to adopt a child?

Just dial up the Internet web site of Hearts & Homes for Children, and you can find biographies of five Marshallese children, complete with colour photographs, ready for adoption. Or spin the dial over to the Wasatch International Adoptions web site and you can find out about adopt ing kids from Bulgaria, China, Marshall Islands, Moldova and

Vietnam.

Wasatch is based in Utah, Hearts & Homes lists a Florida mailing address and a Costa Rica phone number. Another, Children’s House International, is also based in Utah, while For the Love of a Child is an Oklahoma-based child placing

agency. When recently visiting the Hearts & Homes site, it turned out that more than 1900 people have checked into the site since it was set up in five months ago.

While only a fraction of those are actually adopting, the number of contacts is indica tive of the growing business of adoptions in the Marshall Islands.

Hearts & Homes says that the agency is “an international relief organisation that believes that every child deserves to have sufficient food and water on a daily basis, medical services when necessary, and at least a basic education.” It also notes that it is working “primarily in the Marshall Islands and placing children from infancy up to six years old.” The web site tells you that “the children (for adoption) are pri marily living in one-parent families where it is most difficult to make ends meet.”

The Wasatch web site provides similar

information: “The (Marshallese) children are not in orphanages, but many are living in poverty. Parents are giving up their chil dren with the hope that their children will survive and have a better chance at life.”

Wasatch points out that because of the Compact with the US, Americans do not need to go through the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service to process this inter national adoption, as they would with most of other countries. These are international “adoptions with a domestic flavour,” it

says.

The costs listed for adopting a Marshall Islander vary dra matically. Wasatch, at the low end, esti mates the cost at SUS72SO not includ ing air fares, hotels and related costs for the parents travel ling to the Marshalls to adopt.

Children’s House lists the costs at about SUSBOOO. At

the other extreme is For the Love of a Child, offering adoptions at a minimum of SUS 14,000 per child. Of that, the agency is taking SUSSOOO for the service of locating and brokering the adoption, while more than SUS7OOO is listed as fees and costs for translator, guide and social worker in the Marshall Islands.

Wasatch estimates the total cost to the Americans adopting a Marshallese child to be about SUS72SO, including the place ment fee ($US1800), application fee (SUSSOO), program fee (SUSSOO), home study review ($US100), foreign govern ment fees (SUS37OO) and humanitarian.

While some of the adoption agencies are making a hefty fee, lawyers who handle the legal process in the Marshall Islands say that no money is being given to the Marshallese parents of the children being adopted. ■