Thousands adopted to the US but not made citizens, being deported
UNB
Publish: 25 Oct 2024, 05:12 PM
WASHINGTON,
Oct 25 (AP/UNB)-The United States has brought hundreds of thousands of children
from abroad to be adopted by American families. But along the way it left
thousands of them without citizenship, through a bureaucratic loophole that the
government has been aware of for decades, and hasn't fixed.
Some of these adoptees
live in hiding, fearing that tipping off the government could prompt their
removal back to the country the U.S. claimed to have rescued them from. Some
have already been deported.
A bill to help them has
been introduced in Congress for a decade, and is supported by a rare bipartisan
coalition - from liberal immigration groups to the Southern Baptist Convention.
But it hasn't passed. Advocates blame the hyper-partisan frenzy over immigration
that has stalled any effort to extend citizenship to anyone, even these
adoptees who are legally the children of American parents.
They say they are
terrified about what could happen if former President Donald Trump is reelected
because he has promised massive immigration raids and detention camps.
Here are the findings of
the AP report:
How did this happen?
The modern system of
intercountry adoption emerged in the aftermath of the Korean War. American
families were desperate for children because access to birth control and
societal changes had caused the domestic supply of adoptable babies to plummet.
Korea wanted to rid itself of mouths to feed.
Adoption agencies rushed
to meet intense demand for babies in the United States. But there were few
protections to ensure that parents were able to take care of them, and that
they acquired citizenship.
The U.S. had wedged
foreign adoptions into a system created for domestic ones. State courts give
adopted children new birth certificates that list their adoptive parents'
names, purporting to give them all the privileges of biological children.
But state courts have no
control over immigration. After the expensive, long process of adoption,
parents were supposed to naturalize their adopted children, but some never did.
Has the U.S. tried to
rectify this?
In 2000, U.S. Congress
recognized it had left adoptees in this legal limbo and passed the Child
Citizenship Act, conferring automatic citizenship to adopted children. But it
was designed to streamline the process for adoptive parents, not to help
adoptees, and so applied only to those under 18 when it took effect. Everyone
born before the arbitrary date of Feb. 27, 1983, was not included. Estimates
for how many lack citizenship range from around 15,000 to 75,000.
Efforts since to close
that loophole have failed.
"It's the most
classic example of wanting to bang your head against the wall, because how in
the world have we not fixed this?" said Hannah Daniel, director of public policy
for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the lobbying arm of the
Southern Baptist Convention. Foreign adoption is particularly poignant for
Evangelical churches, which preach it as a Biblical calling.
"In this day and
age in Congress, if not doing anything is an option," Daniel said,
"that is the bet I'm going to take."
How do adoptees find out
they aren't citizens?
There is no government
mechanism for alerting adoptees that their parents did not secure their
citizenship. They usually find out by accident, when applying for passports or
government benefits. One woman learned as a senior citizen, when she was denied
the Social Security she'd paid into all her life. If they ask the government
about their status, they risk tipping authorities off to them being here
illegally.
For some, their legal
status is fixable through the arduous naturalization process - they have to
join the line as though they'd just arrived. It takes years, thousands of
dollars, wasted days, routine rejections from immigration offices on
technicalities, the wrong form, an errant typo. But others are told there's
nothing that can be done. The difference is in visas: Some American parents
brought babies in via the fastest route - like a tourist or medical visa - not
imagining complications down the road. This was particularly prominent in
military families, who adopted children where they were rather than going
through an adoption agency that brought them to the U.S.
Their status can mean
they can't get jobs or driver's licenses, and some aren't eligible for
government benefits like financial aid and Social Security. Some who have
criminal histories, even drug charges, have been deported back to the countries
where their American parents adopted them from.
How are the adoptees
affected?
- One was brought from
Iran by her father, an Air Force veteran working there as a military contractor
in 1972. She works in corporate health care, owns her own home and has never
been in trouble. She is in her 50s, and she doesn't know if she'll be eligible
for Social Security or other benefits. She lives in fear that the government
will come for her.
- Joy Alessi was adopted
from Korea as a 7-month-old in 1967. She learned as an adult that her parents
never naturalized her, and she lived in hiding for decades. She was finally
naturalized in 2019 at 52 years old. She says she was deprived all those years
of what American citizens take for granted, like educational loans.
- Mike Davis was adopted
to the United States from Ethiopia in the 1970s by his father, an American
soldier. Davis, now 61, got into trouble with drugs as a young man, but then
grew up, got married and had children. Years later, he was deported. Without
him as breadwinner, the family lived in cars and motels, and are desperate to
bring him home. He's lived in Ethiopia for two decades now, in a room with a
mud floor and no running water.
- Leah Elmquist served
for a decade in the U.S. Navy, but she wasn't a citizen. She was adopted from
South Korea as a baby in 1983, just 6 months too old to be grandfathered into
citizenship by the 2000 legislation. When Trump won in 2016, she said she felt
fear more intense than the night before she deployed to Iraq. She was
eventually naturalized, after what she describes as a crushing process with
immigration, including having to take a civics test.
- Debbie and Paul, a
couple in California, adopted two special needs children, a boy and a girl,
from a Romanian orphanage in the 1990s. Debbie sometimes lays awake at night
thinking that her children wouldn't survive a detention camp. The girl is a
Special Olympian who can't compete in international competitions because she
can't get a passport.
End/UNB/AP/SU