"As far as I'm concerned right now, I feel stateless."
BBC News article "The American adoptees who fear deportation to a country they can't remember"
Who would have thought that being adopted from a foreign country by a US citizen would not bestow citizenship on the minor child being adopted? I certainly did not know that this was yet another hurdle that adoptive parents must jump through, with precision, executing documentation requests, and even ensuring that the government does not lose the substantiating documents!
There are an estimated 18,000 to 75,000 American adoptees that lack citizenship. The shocking thing about this is that some inter-country adoptees don't even know they lack US citizenship. In more 'normal' times, this would not be a barrier to the path to citizenship. However, in the United States we live in today, people are grabbed off the street and shipped off to other countries without proper due process; this can be a death sentence for the deported adoptee. In 2017, one man, who was born in South Korea and adopted as a child by an American family, was deported because of a criminal record. He took his own life.
As one person said, who is in this position: "I blame all the adults in my life that literally just dropped the ball and said: 'She's here in America now, she's going to be fine.'" But it's not just the adults in her life; it is also the United States government and the government's xenophobic response to foreign nationals, immigrants, and children.
While the U.S. Government did pass the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, that only covered those born after February of 1983. While advocates have been pushing for Congress to remove the age cut-off, nothing has come of it except failure.
None of this is the fault of the children that were adopted, separated from their birth countries, and in many cases losing their cultural identity.
An example of this situation is a woman who adopted 2 special needs children in the 1990s after the Romanian Revolution (1989). She has fought tirelessly to obtain citizenship for her special needs children, only to be rejected time and again. The most recent of which was followed by a notice from DHS stating that if the decision was not appealed in 30 days, she would have to turn in her daughter to Homeland Security. A special needs child!
So many who thought they were American citizens live in fear of being deported. Not because of what they did, but because of what their parents did not do, and the government failed to provide notice of non-citizenship.
The American people and the United States are both at a crossroads. This entire situation is nothing more than a petty vendetta against a population that had no choice in coming here. Their only "crime" was that they were adopted by U.S. parents, not born to them.
So, I ask you, what kind of country do you want to represent you? One that protects the most vulnerable, or one that abuses its own power by kicking people out of the country for the sins of their parents?
