Legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to grant citizenship to all international adoptees.

Please contact your Congressional representatives and ask them to co-sponsor the “Protect Adoptees and American Families Act,” PAAF.

Proponents of the bill have for years focused on a bipartisan effort.

The bill introduced in the House by Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) is H.R. 5492.

In the Senate, the co-sponsors of S. 2923 are Sen. Maizie Hirono (D-HI) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Here is a statement by Sen. Hirono:

Proposed law aims to correct citizenship oversight for adoptees

Adoptees United has solid information here about PAAF.

Next steps could be hearings in the Judiciary Committees of both chambers, then passage in both the House and Senate, and then signature into law by the president.

That’s certainly my hope. Thousands of international adoptees, brought to this country to join new families, did not automatically receive citizenship because their parents failed to get it or because of bureaucratic errors. This reality has been an untenable, unfair reality that the Congress has taken far too long to rectify. This legislation has been previously introduced over the last 10 years, though it has not passed. It would provide a long overdue correction, one wanted by the sending countries, by the adoption community, and by adoptees.

It seems amazing that, for decades, international adoptees were not granted automatic citizenship when they were adopted by U.S. citizens and arrived in the U.S. You can learn more here.

Some folks might forget that international adoptees are immigrants, with all the complexity that immigration involves. I urge all adoptees and their families to make sure they have a Certificate of Citizenship. A passport is a limited means of proving citizenship, can expire, and is issued by the U.S. State Department, The Certificate of Citizenship is issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and does not expire. State and Homeland Security use separate databases, and so having a passport may not be adequate proof of citizenship for some purposes.

And the current cost of the Certificate for adoptees is 0, which is wonderful and could change. More info on the fee schedule for the N-600 is here.

You may never need the CoC. I get that. But the parents of deported adoptees (those convicted of a felony and without citizenship) probably never envisioned their children subject to deportation either. Nor, of course, did the adoptees themselves, including those who have been deported to Germany, Korea, Brazil, and elsewhere, who are sitting in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, or who are unable to vote or get financial aid because they have no proof of citizenship. Why risk it?

And please support the passage of the Protect Adoptees and American Families Act. It is long overdue, and it is the right thing to do. Thank you.