Poor Nations Making Adoptions by Foreigners More Difficult : Orphans: Impoverished countries are trying to build protections into their legal systems to prevent hasty, unregulated actions.

VLORA, Albania — At the Harbor Orphanage in this poor seaside town, 30 children are struggling through the winter with no central heating and little food. Breakfast is a thin gruel. The only clothes come from an Italian charity.

An American visitor’s first inclination might be to scoop up one or two, get the approval of a local judge and take them to the United States, where Toys ‘R’ Us is everywhere and McDonalds never seems to close.

That may have been possible a few months ago, but not now--and for good reasons, child welfare professionals say.

Albania, like many poorer countries around the world, is trying to build protections into its legal system to prevent hasty, unregulated adoptions by foreigners.

“The new law is by no means intended to close the door, but it does look after the child’s best interests by preventing commercialization of adoption, profiteering and potential abuse of children,” said Alireza Mahallati, representative of the U.N. Children’s Fund in the Albanian capital, Tirana.

Other countries in the former Soviet Bloc, Latin America and Asia are drawing similar conclusions.

In Romania, where there were reports of babies being sold for up to $25,000, the government suspended foreign adoptions for six months and prescribed prison terms for taking money illegally to arrange adoptions.

Russia also may suspend foreign adoptions until the rules can be tightened, and Poland has drafted a bill to centralize control.

Almost overnight after communism fell, Albania became a popular hunting ground for Westerners who wanted to bypass the long wait and frustration of adopting in the United States.

In just over a year, foreigners took 270 children out of Albania after court and administrative proceedings that sometimes lasted only a few days.

Eli Dhima, the new director of Harbor Orphanage, said the process was so chaotic that some of the children had living parents. Now some want their children back.

Alarmed by rumors of baby-selling and the inability of officials to locate children adopted abroad to check on their welfare, Albania’s prosecutor general halted all foreign adoptions last March.

Most reform programs require centralized control of foreign adoptions, putting only one organization or agency in charge.

The purpose is to prevent a free-for-all in which people from wealthier countries can bribe--or be asked to bribe--lawyers, judges, orphanage directors and the natural parents.

Reform laws also set a clear procedure, said Mahallati of UNICEF. Efforts are required to return children to living parents or place them with close relatives.

If that is impossible, Mahallati said, attempts should be made to place the child with a family close to its roots, or at least within the child’s own culture, before adoption by foreigners is considered.

Putting a child in a foreign home should be almost the last resort, Mahallati said, because it “inevitably alienates a child from his or her roots.”

After finding a child to adopt, an American couple still must satisfy the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service before an entry visa is issued. The INS wants proof either that legal adoption has occurred abroad or that the child will be adopted in the United States.

The agency allowed 9,008 such children into the United States in 1991. The largest number came from Romania--2,552 before its laws were tightened.

“This kind of regulation by governments is a positive thing,” said Janice Neilson, executive director of the World Assn. for Children and Parents in Seattle, one of the larger U.S. agencies active in foreign adoptions.

She said it might not seem so to Americans who want complete freedom to find the child of their dreams, but “those in child welfare work know that there have to be safeguards to protect the children--the real clients in adoption.”

Children in orphanages of poor countries often have parents from whom they have been separated for economic or social reasons. Neilson believes the first aim should be to get these families back together, with proper support.

Neilson said the average wait for an American couple to adopt abroad varies widely: It has taken nearly 2 1/2 years to complete adoptions in Romania, but her agency has placed children from China in as little as three months.

Also, she said, the children left behind must be taken care of: “To go to an orphanage and take out the best and brightest and then leave behind children with vacant faces who are still in need of everything is unethical.”