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A few years back, Philippine orphans were generally considered extremely lucky when adopted by American or European couples. As late as August 2, 1986, the Manila Chronicle, a newspaper later believed to have an anti-foreign bias, lauded foreign adopters because they provide "Homes for children Filipinos don't want" (the headline of the report). As an example, the case was cited of a Filipino boy, Renato, "born with club feet, a cleft lip and palate" who was adopted by an American couple from Idaho. The Chronicle article also quoted Ma. Teresa Lopa, a volunteer of the Department of Social Services and Development: "Many foreigners think differently about adoption. They even make it a point to ask for handicapped children. Such kindness could only be the work of God in their lives."

The statement was made to show the difference between Philippine and foreign adopters. Philippine adopters are said to care much more about appearance, particularly light complexion, and thus to prefer mestizo children of Philippine bar girls and white US military men. While dark looking children are often discriminated against by Filipinos, foreigners were praised for accepting them.

The winds have changed in the Philippines. Like marriages of foreigners to Filipinas, adoptions of Philippine children by foreigners have turned somehow rather scandalous in Philippine public opinion. The Philippine media repeatedly has blown up cases where children were procured for adoption by foreign parents, creating the impression that all children adopted by foreigners face a horrible future as house slaves for work and perverse sexual pleasure, just as Philippine brides abroad allegedly do.

The most celebrated case in alleged child traficking so far was the arrest and deportation after several months of Margaret Kresser, 48, of West Germany. She was nabbed June 24, 1988, and subsequently branded in the local media as a member of a babies-for-sale syndicate. When she was arrested, she had in her possession a number of birth certificates for Philippine children, affidavits of Philippine parents, giving her custody over some children, as well as some infant clothes.

Rather unspecific reports have surfaced about infants "sold" for adoption near the US bases of Olongapo and Angeles City. The Evening Star of December 22, 1988, cited as typical the case of a certain Vivian Bernales who allegedly "bartered her baby for rent money after she was abandoned by her American sailor boyfriend when four months pregnant." According to a feature titled "How much is that Filipino baby for sale", foreigners pay around 30,000 pesos (approximately 1,500 dollars) for Philippine infants (Star of January 12, 1990).

The Star article indicated, that discussion had completely shifted from questions concerning the welfare of the children to the sole topic of how much money adopting parents spend. And because money is spent, the whole affair is branded a "sale", with immorality insinuated. The possibility that the children would be better off after adoption by foster parents is not given much consideration anymore, in spite of the fact that the Philippines has tens of thousands of abandoned children mostly living on the streets.

As facilitating marriages between Filipinas and foreign men is branded trafficking in Philippine women, facilitating adoptions of Philippine children by foreign parents is branded child trafficking. And while there is legislation pending to prohibit matching Philippine brides with foreign men, there is also a bill authored by Sen. Orlando Mercado under discussion in the Philippine Senate, which provides imprisonment of 12 to 20 years for private persons who facilitate adoptions.

Even in the past, with more liberal adoption laws than today, there was strict control of the social and personal conditions of prospective parents before they were allowed to adopt a child. Before adoptions were allowed it had to be proven that, among others, the parents had no criminal record, that they were socially stable, that they had the economic means to guarantee a sufficient education of a child.

Therefore, the number of Philippine children adopted by foreign parents remained surprisingly small. According to the Far Eastern Economic Review of June 1989, "inter-country adoptions rose from 442 in 1987 to 635 last year, about 50 percent of which were non-relatives." The article also revealed that "at a recent matching conference in Manila, DSWD had only 10 Filipino families on hand, compared to a waiting list of 300 foreign families.

But the trend seems to be to minimize the number of adoptions of Philippine children by foreigners with all measures short of outright prohibition. The Philippine government burdens the process of an adoption by imposing ever more and more conditions, all with the excuse of being concerned with the safety and welfare of the child to be adopted.

But if adults basically are indeed as malicious as one gets the impression from the precautions taken before permitting adoptions, one starts questioning: How about parents who just beget their children? Are prospective adopters principally abnormal? Aren't they just people who, like others, want to extend help and love to a child but can't beget their own? What justifies the distrust? Is the mere intent to adopt a child because one cannot beget proof of a scheme?

Probably not. But then: Why doesn't the government feel equally compelled to check natural parents as thoroughly for their qualification to raise children as it checks prospective adopters? Grave negligence?

As mentioned, the Philippine state rules out adoptions of children if the prospective parents are not wealthy enough to guarantee sufficient support. But how about the hundreds of thousands of children born every year to parents who are much poorer than the prospective adopters, so poor that a considerable number of children suffer malnutrition? Doesn't this seem much more intolerable than the adoption of a Philippine infant by average Europeans or Americans? The fate of the child is not less secure when adopted by foreigners than when raised on the streets or slums of Manila.

Actually, one should believe that parents who do not fear the efforts and costs of adopting a child of a Third World country are better prepared to take care of their adopted child than parents who beget a child more or less accidentally or even unwanted, who have already a number of children, and who are so poor that they can't sufficiently feed them.

There are, on the one hand, hundreds of thousands of children living in subhuman conditions around the globe. Most could not meet a better fate than being adopted into a Western family. And on the other hand, there are many Europeans and Americans that would be very willing to adopt some of these children. Government red tape, in the Philippines and in many other Third World countries, robs the children of the chance for a better life.

And it's not only the fault of the governments of Third World countries like the Philippines but also of those states in the industrial world where any policy that stops immigration from the Third World, and may it be of infants, is hailed - often with a hypocritical argumentation that people from the Third World would only suffer in the Old or New World.

Common sense would dictate making adoption by Westerners of Philippine orphans easier, and this is even admitted by Hilarion Henares, a columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, who certainly cannot be accused of pro-foreign bias. After the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) had raided an unregistered nursery in Makati for facilitating adoptions, Mr Henares wrote in his column 'Make my Day' of June 17, 1989: "The Social Welfare Department under Mita Pardo de Tavera is again on a villainous rampage, harassing compassionate people who are doing the job the government itself is failing to do: taking care of hopeless, helpless children abandoned by their parents. Dungheaps at the Social Welfare forbid direct contact between the foreigners and Filipino parents wanting to have their babies adopted. This is a procedure they themselves cooked up in order to get a free trip, delivering babies to adoptive parents abroad, yet they cannot even begin to fill the need... Whatever 'regulations' are cooked up by your department to generate a racket for free travel, Mita, what is best for the child should be the highest law of this land !"

Mrs. Araneta Ocampo who ran the above mentioned raided nursery justified her operations as being for the benefit of the children. According to an article in the Evening Star of June 17, 1989, she "explained that the government sends babies only to DSWD-accredited agencies which charge each prospective parent 7,000 to 10,000 US dollars per baby... Ocampo opined that there is nothing wrong with sending impoverished children to foreign families who can provide them with better living conditions."

And what's the opinion of the Philippine Department of Social Services and Development? "We decided that we will allow foreign adoption only if the child cannot be adopted by a Filipino... Maybe I am just being nationalistic," said Undersecretary Flora Eufemio. (Inquirer, July 5, 1989) Henares' comment: "Nationalist, my foot! We have the highest rate of population growth (3.2 %) and the lowest capital GNP growth in our part of the world, plus religious objections against contraception and laws against abortion -- and Eufemio assumes that Filipinos can take care of our abandoned babies! Holy Mother of God, what kind of brains do these busybodies have? What kind of conscience to imprison within narrow limits the universality of love and caring that reaches across oceans to give hope to our hopeless? to helpless little babies?" (Inquirer, July 5, 1989).