Column: When foreign-born parents take U.S. children

Let's take a break from the presidential election today and examine a relatively obscure but increasingly significant foreign affairs issue: the kidnapping of American children by foreign-born parents. This is sort of an Elian Gonzalez in reverse situation.

Remember Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy who was virtually kidnapped by his Miami relatives one year ago after surviving a shipwreck in the Florida Straits? He dropped out of sight after returning to Cuba with his father earlier this year, but his story dominated U.S. and Cuban headlines during the holiday season last year. At last report, Elian was back in elementary school learning to be a good little Communist and his Miami relatives and friends, including cousin Marisleysis and that weird "Fisherman," had returned to well-deserved obscurity.

I recalled the case last week, however, when the Appeal published a Miami AP story about an American father who claims that his ex-wife took off for Cuba with their 5-year-old son and her new boyfriend. U.S. and local governments are offering to help get the child back.

"I'm going to do whatever it takes to get my child back," said 31-year-old Jon Colombini, who has joint custody of his son Jonathon. FBI, U.S. State Department and Monroe County, FL, officials are working to return the boy to the U.S. Unfortunately, it could be a long, drawn-out process.

The increasing number of these cases, where foreign-born parents spirit their American children away to their native countries, is focusing media and public attention on the State Department's 6-year-old Office of Children's Issues. For many years such cases were handled by State's Office of Overseas Citizen Services, which assists U.S. citizens trapped in difficult situations in foreign countries. These situations include unjust arrests, civil unrest, terrorism, police abuse and kidnappings.

Part of the reason for creation of a separate Office of Children's Issues was that a handful of U.S. Foreign Service officers began to urge the State Department to do more to help the American victims of child abductions. One of them was Thomas A. Johnson, a State attorney specializing in human rights issues, who prodded the department to pay more attention to the abduction of his 13-year-old daughter by her Swedish-born mother five years ago. According to Johnson, department officials should have prodded the Swedish government much harder for the return of his daughter.

Sweden's Supreme Administrative Court ruled that by the time it took up Johnson's case two years ago, the girl had become a "habitual resident" of Sweden, thus qualifying for protection under the 1980 Hague Convention on the Rights of the Child. All Johnson has to show for his efforts are $200,000 worth of legal and travel expenses and a few supervised visits with his daughter in Sweden.

In another case, although an American father won a custody battle for his infant daughter in the Austrian Supreme Court, the court later reversed itself and ruled that it would be "gravely damaging" to the child for her to be uprooted and returned to her father. The father, Tom Sylvester of Cincinnati, concluded that U.S. officials were more interested in maintaining close ties with Austria than in enforcing the Hague Convention. He just might be right because our diplomats always must consider how such pressure affects relations with friendly governments like Austria and Sweden.

And then there was the case of Joseph Cooke, a New Yorker whose German-born wife fled with their two children to her homeland seven years ago. Until Cooke's plight was profiled in The Washington Post last May, the German government had pursued a hands-off policy toward international custody disputes. But after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright intervened, a German - U.S. commission was set up to handle such disputes and Cooke gained visitation rights.

A recent report by the U.S. General Accounting Office chronicled 2,347 child abduction cases between May 1997 and December 1999; of that number 1,199 cases were closed, 503 children were returned to the U.S. and 50 American parents earned visitation rights. Nevertheless, State's Office of Children's Issues hopes to do better in the future.

Writing in the Foreign Service Journal, citizens services specialist Barbara Greig noted that the office's new caseload has increased from 67 in 1996 to 410 last year. "Many left-behind parents and members of the press have unrealistic expectations of what kind of assistance the government can provide," she wrote. "(A) commonly held belief is that a U.S. consular officer can simply take custody of an American citizen child who has been abducted ... and put him or her on a plane for home."

But international law doesn't work that way.

"For the officers of Children's Issues, the work has a meaningful reward - the satisfaction of helping to make a positive difference in someone's life," Ms. Greig added. This is a worthy, but little known, aspect of the work of the U.S. Foreign Service. On this Thanksgiving weekend, I'm proud of what my former diplomatic colleagues are doing on behalf of their fellow citizens despite public apathy and shrinking budgets.

Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.