Thank You Senator Landrieu!

May 3, 2011
Honorable Mary Landrieu
United States Senator
431 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Honorable Senator Landrieu:

On behalf of the hundreds of children in Guatemala and their awaiting adoptive families across the country, Guatemala900 would like to express our deepest gratitude for your courageous and much needed advocacy.

The Families of the Guatemala900 individually entered into the adoption process with the common goal of providing a loving stable home to a child. We filled our hearts and lives with anticipation of the day we would become a family to the children we have come to know as our beloved sons and daughters. As timelines stretch and families continue to meet each process and challenge with due diligence, our hopes wane not knowing if there is an end in sight and if that day will ever come. As the days have turned to years, our children grow hopeless wondering where we are and why we have not fulfilled our promise to bring them home and love them forever. We are their mothers and fathers, and yet we are powerless to kiss away their tears and instill faith and worth into their weary hearts and minds. Living outside the love of a permanent family, the limits of institutionalization are killing them softly, little by little, everyday.

Each family began its adoption journey in good faith believing that our rights to a fair adoption process would be protected and honored by the U.S. and Guatemalan Governments. In these years of struggle, we have banned together to stand united in our quest for the children’s basic human right to a permanent family and the rights of their biological families to choose adoption. Today, approximately 400 hundred children continue to languish in institutions awaited by families while their “grandfathered” adoptions tarry in political gridlock. The rights ensured in the Grandfather Clause (Article 56 of the Ortega Law) have been violated as these cases are scrutinized without transparency outside the practices and protections of the law. We have repeatedly turned to our own government in the hope they will herald our cause and challenge this injustice. We have searched and waited for a voice. It is with heartfelt gratitude that you, Senator Landrieu, have become that voice.

All those associated with Guatemala900 stand behind you in your belief in the sanctity of family and advocacy for fair and ethical adoption practices. Our families are committed to the children of Guatemala. We are proud of their heritage and embrace the beauty of their country of origin. We will not stop fighting until every child is HOME NOW!

From the very depths of our hearts, we thank you Senator Landrieu! We thank you for making International Adoption and the Humanitarian Crisis in Guatemala a priority…We thank you for traveling to Guatemala to meet face to face with the authorities who hold the children’s futures in their hands…We thank you for asking the hard questions and demanding answers…We thank you for questioning impunity and demanding transparency and accountability…We thank you for planning to return to Guatemala to ensure action…We thank for acknowledging that this is a political issue that demands a political solution…

And most of all, we thank you for reviving our faith and spirit in providing the children we love a safe place to land!

With Hope and Gratitude,