Tag Archives: Adoptee Rights Law Center

Adoptive Parents Must Step Up in the Time of ICE and Deportation Fear

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It would be great if none of us had to worry about deportation or ICE roundups, and about what to do if we get caught up in a raid. We parents who adopted internationally may feel everything is fine because our children–whether they are 4 years old or 39–have their Certificate of Citizenship or a valid passport. The Social Security Administration recognizes their US citizenship. That’s great.

And yet it may not be enough to prevent a sense of anxiety and even fear, especially for Brown and Black transracial adoptees from countries that are being targeted, Additionally, many international adoptees may not be US citizens. Some know this, and some are unaware, assuming that they are citizens. Adoptees without citizenship have been and continue to be deported.

What can and should adoptive parents do to help, given that we committed ourselves to international adoption?

  • Learn about the issue.
  • Be open and curious abut how adoptees are feeling.
  • Use our position as adoptive parents to help advance legislation to provide citizenship to all international adoptees and to prevent deportation.
  • Support and donate to adoptee-led organizations who are helping international adoptees with citizenship issues.

One concrete and important step is here: Dear Parents of Intercountry Adoptees: Do These Two Things Today. Consider this valuable and free advice from a lawyer who is also an adoptee.

Then move on to these items:

Learn

A brief overview:

International adoptees enter the United States as immigrants.

Adoptive parents have the responsibility to get citizenship for their children who are minors when they arrive here. Citizenship became automatic for international adoptees under 18 years old (though there is still paperwork involved) as a result of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000.

From the Adoptee Rights Law Center: “…despite the adoption, thousands of intercountry adoptees continue to have significant issues with US citizenship today. Those issues include:

  1. Securing U.S. Citizenship. Tens of thousands of intercountry adoptees today do not have US citizenship, despite being adopted as children by US citizen parents.
  2. Proving U.S. Citizenship. Even if intercountry adoptees acquired U.S. citizenship under the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, many may not have proof of that citizenship, either through a US passport or a Certificate of Citizenship.

Both issues are fraught with difficulty and may come with life-altering repercussions. Making it worse, U.S. law currently excludes older intercountry adoptees—those born prior to March 1983—from acquiring citizenship through adoption. Instead, they must often go through a long and expensive immigration process to naturalize as U.S. citizens. As adults today, they are considered immigrants, and are subject to deportation if they commit a crime or are not found to be in the country properly. This is fundamentally wrong.”

Adoption immigration law can be complicated, depending on when a child was adopted, what visa they entered with, and whether they commit a crime. Because of this, many international adoptees–even those with citizenship–feel concerned, perhaps about themselves, and perhaps about their fellow adoptees,

Be open and curious about how adoptees are feeling.

We adoptive parents who were born here in the US have rarely had to worry about proving citizenship, or even thinking about it.

Our adopted children look at the world through a different lens: as immigrants, perhaps as people of color. Their country of origin may also affect the way they see the world and the world sees them. Haiti, Nicaragua, Russia, Ukraine, Guatemala, and Mexico come to mind. Even if your child is not from one of those countries, or has no concerns about citizenship, as adoptive parents we can and should show empathy and concern for other adoptees.

Here are some adoptee perspectives:

Citizenship and Immigration Issues for Intercountry Adopted People: FAQ. Prepared by the Adoptee Rights Law Center, this list illustrates the concerns and quandaries of international adoptees in terms of documents and other resources.

Adoption, Belonging, and the Question of Citizenship: A U.S. adoptee reflects on the implications of birthright citizenship, closed records, possible inaccuracies or fraud, and how both domestic and international adoptees can be affected.

A Reddit conversation posted by an adoptee from China: Is anyone else paranoid about getting deported?

Thousands of Children Adopted by Americans Are Without Citizenship. Congress is Unwilling to Act. An AP article featuring adoptees from Iran, South Korea, Ethiopia, and elsewhere.

Use our position as adoptive parents to help advance legislation to provide citizenship to all international adoptees and to prevent deportation.

Legislation that would provide citizenship to all international adoptees has stalled in Congress for about 10 years. One challenge is that any immigrant without citizenship who commits a crime can be subject to deportation. Adoptees are included in this, regardless of the fact that they were brought here legally by US parents and with the oversight and permission of the sending country. (Some adoptive parents brought children to the US illegally, for medical or other reasons. They have a particular responsibility to acquire citizenship for their children, and it may not be easy.)

Aside from that, international adoptees without citizenship (for whatever reason) are technically here in the US illegally, and could be swept up in ICE raids. This possibility has fueled a great deal of fear among adoptees.

Adoptees for Justice has been actively working on this issue for years. Read more about their efforts on the Adoptee Citizenship Act (ACA) here. Donate to Adoptees for Justice if you can; share their information and ask your federal representatives to support citizenship for all adoptees.

If the ACA were passed, international adoptees who have been deported could return home. Adoptees have been deported to many countries: Germany, Ethiopia, Morocco, Mexico, Canada, India, Brazil, and more. There is a Wikipedia page about Korean adoptees who were deported back to South Korea.

From NPR: “NPR previously reported of an adoptee and father of five who was convicted of marijuana possession in Texas. Because his adoption was filed improperly, he was sent to his birth country of Mexico after having served a few years in prison.”

Support adoptees; Donate to adoptee-led organizations who are helping international adoptees with citizenship issues.

Here are resources to support, and to share with international adoptees and others in the adoption community.

I’ve previously mentioned and urge your support of Adoptees for Justice and the Adoptee Rights Law Center.

The Adoptee Rights Law Center offers free and low cost clinics for international adoptees who have questions about citizenship.

Adoption Mosaic is hosting an Adoptee Wellness Chat on July 16 This is an online, adoptee only event: “We will hold a virtual space to gather, reflect, and process together in light of recent political shifts. We intend to create a supportive environment where we can connect, recharge, and discuss how current policies affect us as individuals, as adoptees, and as a community.”

I understand that about 100 adoptees have registered so far, which gives a sense for what’s percolating among international adoptees right now.

Here’s a great list of Legal Resources for Intercountry Adoptees from Adoptees United. Adoptees United is related to the Adoptee Rights Law Center. Adoptees United is led by adoptees in the United States. “We are committed to a diverse board and organization that represents the interests of all adoptees, whether domestic, intercountry, transracial, or former foster youth.”

Support the work of the National Alliance for Adoptee Equality. Sign their petition for passage of the Adoptee Citizenship Act.


Hold space. Make space. Talk with whomever in your life might be at jeopardy, or might just be worried and stressed. Your adopted son or daughter might not want to talk about it. Keep learning nonetheless. Make sure you have all documents and copies (scroll down that page for the list of documents), all secured in a safe place.

Advocate for citizenship for all adoptees. Donate to help deported adoptees, like Mike Davis who was deported to Ethiopia decades ago and hopes to someday meet his grandchildren in person. Mike and other deported adoptees often struggle with life in deportation: they are isolated, often ostracized, don’t speak the language, and have difficulty securing work, housing, and medical care.

We adoptive parents have power to bring about change. Now is the time to be strong allies for international adoptees, to step up and do the work.

Why Are American Adopted Adults Denied the Right To Know Who They Are?

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There is simply no good reason. As an adoptive parent of two sons born in the United States and twin daughters born in Ethiopia, I believe that adopted people have the basic human and civil right to know their original family, to know their original names, to know their medical history, and to choose whether they want to pursue a reunion, once they have this information.

Still, today, in 2017, no other group except American adult adoptees is denied the right to their original birth certificates, to know who their biological parents are, who their biological grandparents are, who their biological siblings are, what their ethnicity is, and what their genetic history is.

It astounds me how many non-adopted adults and how many adoptive parents are willing to continue to deny adopted persons access to information about who they are.

How about if we listen to adult adoptees, as well as the many organizations which represent them, as the best advocates for the right to their own birth certificates?

Right now, in New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo is being urged by 45+ national and international adoptee organizations, as well as hundreds of individuals, to veto a bill that is costly (Adoptee Rights Laws estimates a cost of $6 million),  convoluted, and thoughtfully opposed by organizations such as the New York-based Donaldson Adoption Institute (DAI). Read the article “Give adopted people unencumbered access to their origins” by DAI chief executive, and adopted person, April DInwoodie. Read the list of adoptee organization and individuals who oppose the bill and urge Gov. Cuomo to veto it here. Information from New York Adoptee Equality is available here.

New York, and many other states, can enact far better, less costly legislation that is fair and transparent.

One commonly touted reason for opposing access to original birth certificates is that birth parents were promised confidentiality about the adoption. However, if they were promised this by a lawyer or doctor or adoption agency worker, it was an unenforceable assurance. There has never been any law that guarantees that birth parents would never be contacted by their children. It simply does not exist. In fact, adoption records were largely public until about 60 years ago. Records were sealed largely because of the stigma of illegitimacy then, but not to prevent people from contacting each other. Records have been unsealed in many states since, and judges can unseal records in emergencies. We have moved in the adoption community away from shame, secrecy, and lies, toward transparency, openness, and fairness. The Donaldson Adoption Institute’s report An Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth Certificates provides detailed information.

Another common rationale is that allowing access to adopted persons will increase the number of abortions. There is little evidence for this claim. Further, abortion is an alternative to pregnancy, not to adoption. Adoption is an alternative to parenting. “The abortion rates in both Alaska and Kansas, states which grant adult adoptees unconditional access to their original birth certificates, were lower than the national average as a whole – 14.6 and 18.9 abortions, respectively for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44, compared to the national rate of 22.9 (Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/journals/3026398.html). More information on this is available here and here.

A few U.S. states currently allow full access, though many states require adopted adults–not children anymore–to undergo mandatory counseling, to work with state-employed intermediaries, and to pay high fees. These requirements essentially infantilize adopted persons, treating them as children, buying into the narrative that adoptees should simply not be curious about who they are. Understanding who we are is a basic human pursuit and instinct.

I would be remiss if I did not note that DNA testing has affected search and reunion in adoption on a local, national, and global scale. Mothers are locating the children they placed for adoption; siblings and cousins are finding each other. Facebook groups provide astonishing amounts of support and guidance for adoptees to locate their birth family members. Among the many resources are DNA Detectives, DNA Adoption Community, and the Global Adoption Genealogy Project. Amazon Prime has sales on DNA kits today. All that said, adult adoptees should still have the legal right in the U.S. to access their own records, just as every non-adopted person does.

Adoptees raised in loving homes by loving adoptive parents have the right and perhaps the need to know as much as adoptees who had miserable adoptive families. The issue of gratitude is a volatile one in the adoption community, but being happy or grateful that one was adopted does not seem to me to be a reason not to want (or deserve) to know one’s original family.

Foster children who are adopted have their personal histories, their medical histories, and their names. Many international adoptees have their original birth certificates.

But American adults adopted as babies are denied the basic human and civil right to know who they are, a right which should be held higher than an ostensible promise of privacy. Only nine states in the U.S. currently allow total access to original birth certificates. Other countries around the globe allow far better access for adopted persons to their records. American adult adoptees should be allowed to know who they are.