American Parents Continue Demonstrating For Visas
GABRIEL PASLARU , Associated Press
May. 10, 1991 11:50 AM ET
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) _ More than two dozen American women whose adopted Romanian children have been denied entry into the United States protested for a third day today outside the U.S. Embassy.
The U.S. ambassador, Alan J. Green Jr., talked with some of the distraught mothers for about 45 minutes and told them ''he has called very high authorities in Washington'' to try to help, said Kathy Lyon of Corning, N.Y.
But he made no promises, said Ms. Lyon, who has been in Romania for nearly two months adopting Quinn, 2, and a 2-month-old, Gus.
The completed adoptions make Ms. Lyon the children's legal parents as far as the Romanian authorities are concerned.
However, officials from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service told her the children cannot get an entry visa because questions surround whether they were abandoned by their natural parents, who are alive.
''I could have adopted children in the United States, but I thought I would do a good thing to offer a home to these children who desperately need one,'' Ms. Lyon said.
The prospects are grim for parents like Ms. Lyon, who have effectively become hostages to changing interpretations of U.S. adoption laws and procedures. According to U.S. law, an adopted child must be abandoned by his natural parents before he is granted residency in the United States.
''I guess I am not ready to believe that I have to stay in Romania for a couple of years'' in search of a visa, said Ms. Lyon.
Robert Looney, an official with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service who has been investigating the cases, says he has about 40 questionable applications, according to Ms. Lyon.
She said Looney plans to meet Monday with the families concerned.
About 20 American families started the visa protest outside the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday. By today, their numbers had swelled to about 30.
Sonya Paterson, of Vancouver, British Columbia, a protest organizer, said today that about 50 families have been denied U.S. visas.
The denials followed a recent broadcast on CBS's ''Sixty Minutes'' showing Romanian gypsies selling their children to Western couples for adoption.
The U.S. Embassy has granted 800 visas for adopted children this year, up from 500 for all of 1991, said U.S. Embassy spokesman Virgil Bodeen.
There are an estimated 140,000 orphans and abandoned children in Romania, partly as a result of former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's ban on birth control and abortion when he ruled the country of 23 million.
But Romania's continuing poverty has produced what a Romanian government spokesman calls ''mercantile'' adoptions, with poor Romanians allegedly offering their children for sale to Westerners.