The US State Department has posted a warning on their intercountry adoption page on Guatemala, and it's not pretty.

Read the whole thing, please, if you have any connection with adoptions from Guatemala, but I'll give a quick overview here. Please keep in mind that I am no expert on Guatemalan adoptions ... or much of anything, for that matter ... so am summing up to the best of my understanding a complicated situation from a hard-earned perspective of cynical suspicion.

Basically, the good old Department of State (DOS) appears to be bailing on families in the process and warning those contemplating a step toward adding a Guatemalan-born child to the family away from any such thoughts.

Citing Guatemala's stated intention to become a Hague country on the 1st of January next year, the 31st of December has now become the date all adoptions ... including those in progress at the time ... must meet the criteria the Hague demands.

One biggie for American families, of course, is that the US will NOT be a Hague country by the 31st of December, so DOS is assuming this means adoption by US families will come to a screeching halt on New Years Eve, once again no matter where those adoptions might be in their processes on that date.

The US is supposedly joining the ranks of Hague countries in the spring of next year, so in theory things could pick up where they left off, but DOS is already putting it out that Guatemala's Hague compliance may not meet the version of Hague compliance ... which the US has not instituted ... that the US would demand they meet, so after the US joins in, which will be a few months after Guatemala gets going, Guatemalan adoptions won't work for the US ... this, of course, coming a couple of months after US adoptions won't work for Guatemala.

Follow? No? Well, that could be because it makes so little sense.

Oh, sure, it makes complete sense to governments and organizations that love convoluted language and logic and don't really give a flying fox about the real live people caught in the sticky fibers shooting from some monstrous arachnid gut and attaching themselves in uncountable, and often unaccountable, ways to everything to do with adoption, maybe even assuming that hopeful adoptive parents are the reason children are orphaned or abandoned in the first place.

(Even the DOS in its warning alludes to the Casa Quivira baby grab as if that political maneuver proved "irregularities in the adoption process" rather than a buckling to pressure to show a little flash in the absence of substance.)

The DOC warning post ends with:

The Department of State strongly recommends that prospective adoptive parents defer plans to begin an adoption in Guatemala until the legal and procedural issues described above have been resolved.

I wonder if anyone is explaining this to the children of Guatemala.

For families concerned about the possibility that their children may never be allowed to home ... a very real concern ... who would like give a piece of their minds to some of the folks in charge or simply discharge some of the bile that has to be building with worry for the children, here is some contact info:

DOS phone numbers -- (202) 736-9090 or (202) 647-4000
DOS email -- AskCI@state.gov
The US Embassy in Guatemala email -- AMCitsGuatemala@state.gov
The US Embassy in Guatemala fax --(502) 2326-4654
DHS email -- Guatemala.Adoptions@dhs.gov
White House phone number -- (202) 456-1111
White House Fax -- (202) 456-2461
White house fax for mail from kids -- (202) 456-7705 (Have your kids write, too!)
White House emails --comments@whitehouse.gov, president@whitehouse.gov, vice_president@whitehouse.gov.