children, and the investigator termed it a "stash house". With the thousands of dollars that these orphanages receive for each adoption, the conditions children are kept in could be vastly improved for just a fraction of the racketeers' profits. Intercountry adoption The United States is responsible for most intercountry adoptions in the world: 20,000 out of the total 30,000 total "orphans" adopted annually. The Westerners who adopt from developing nations pay thousands of dollars to process the paperwork of one child. This provides a lucrative incentive for those involved in the process. In many cases, the prospective adoptive parents are motivated by a sense of altruism, coupled with their desire to overcome infertility and fulfill the Western standard of the nuclear family. These adoptive parents create a demand for healthy infants that will be able to assimilate into their new home, cutting off ties to their birthplace and culture of origin. Prospective adoptive parents are placed with the "orphans" through adoption agencies, brokers, or online agencies. Due to the fact that most of the children adopted overseas are very young, they will not have any memories of their birth families. Without a paper trail and without any input from the child, it makes it nearly impossible to detect whether a child is truly an orphan. International legislation Hague Adoption Convention The Hague Adoption Convention has been widely adopted to regulate international adoptions. The Convention seeks to establish certain rules for international adoptions to combat child laundering. It seeks to establish an indirect solution to abuses. However, the Hague Convention fails to require any effort to preserve the family before turning to international adoption, and therefore the Convention mostly represents an anti-trafficking treaty. In 2000, the U.S. Congress enacted the Intercountry Adoption Act in order to implement the ideas of the Hague Convention. However, this Act is limited in the fact that the United States cannot enforce any measures against the sending country if corruption in the adoption process is discovered. Stance of the United States The US State Department does not consider child laundering to be a form of human trafficking, as it is a non-exploitative result. Furthermore, it is sometimes seen as a humanitarian act, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the child. The adoption agencies in the West are operating within a completely legitimate sphere, and have no way of knowing whether they are a party