Tag Archives: Child Citizenship Act

Adoptee Citizenship Bill Fails to Pass Again

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Our U.S. Congress has again failed to pass legislation that would grant citizenship to all international adoptees. This is deeply disappointing news, especially for those adoptees who have been deported.

Per the Adoptee Rights Campaign from their Facebook page, “S.967, the Adoptee Citizenship Act, did not pass. Unfortunately, this means H.R. 1593, the House companion bill, is also lost despite passage earlier this year…Though it is a sad day, we remain hopeful. Discussions for renewed strategies are taking place. ARC will post related updates in the next Congress.”

ARC and other organizations (among them, Adoptee Rights Law Center and Adoptees for Justice) and individuals have worked hard for years on the citizenship bill. The legislation would have granted citizenship to thousands of international adoptees, including those who have been deported.

Through no fault of their own, thousands of international adoptees do not have U.S. citizenship: their adoptive parents thought wrongly that citizenship was automatic; the paperwork for citizenship was wrongly filed, got lost, or was inaccurately processed; the adoption agencies did not provide information or oversight to the parents and families, requiring them to get citizenship for adopted children; and other reasons.

Those adoptees are now in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and older. Their legal status affects their quality of life, their peace of mind, their access to Social Security, and their connections with their families, including parents, spouses, children, and grandchildren.

The current failed legislation would have applied to adoptees who were 18 or older when the Child Citizenship Act was passed. That law granted US citizenship to international adoptees who were younger than 18 when the bill passed in 2000.

Thousands of adoptees do not hold citizenship; many might not even know it. They might find out when they vote (non-citizens can be prosecuted for voting), or get in trouble with the law (serving their time and then being deported), or apply for Medicare and other benefits at retirement.

For adoptees who have been deported, this is especially disappointing news. They thought as adopted children that they had “forever families” here in the U.S., and considered themselves Americans. One of the writers in our book “Lions Roaring Far From Home: An Anthology by Ethiopian Adoptees” is Mike Davis. He’s 60 years old, a grandfather, and is alone in Addis Ababa where he was deported 17 years ago.

No international adoptee should ever be deported.

Mike, like other international adoptees, arrived here in the US as a child with the legal permission and oversight of both Ethiopia (the “sending” country) and the United States, to be part of his American family, including his adoptive father who was a U.S. Army officer.

Please keep these adoptees in your heart. Maybe say prayers for them, and for the granting of citizenship. This is an especially hard time of year for family separations and loss, and these adoptees are often struggling and alone.

Feel free to contact me if you want further information and/or to help the deported adoptees.

Update on Adam Crapser: Fairness and Justice for All International Adoptees

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Who holds the power in international adoption: adoptive parents or adoptees? Let’s talk fairness and justice. A case study:

The adoptive parent serves 90 days of jail for horrific abuse of children. The adopted son serves 25 months in jail for burglary (no one was hurt), and then could be deported.

In 1991, adoptive father Thomas Crapser served 90 days after being convicted for 12 counts of cruelty and abuse of children. One of those children, Adam Crapser, got into trouble as a teen and adult, and spent 25 months in prison for burglary.

Adam now faces deportation, because he is not a US citizen. Adam is 40 years old, with a wife and children. He has served time for his crimes, and has worked hard to be a good, productive member of the community.

Thomas Crapser received no punishment at all for failing to get citizenship for his internationally adopted son Adam, who was among the children beaten, burned, clubbed, kicked, gagged, and worse. Thomas also received no punishment for refusing for years to give Adam the documents needed to obtain citizenship.

No one is condoning Adam’s crimes. But let’s be fair. Let’s consider justice: 90 days for horrific cruelty to children. 25 months for burglary and then, deportation.

What a message about international adoption, and what it means to be a “forever family” in the United States. Every adoptive parent should be speaking out about this.

Here’s an article about the 1991 arrest of adoptive parents Thomas and Dolly-Jean Crapser:

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1991 Arrest of Adam Crapser’s parents

According to a recent Columbian newspaper article: The state launched an investigation in June 1991. The Crapsers were arrested in September 1991 and initially charged with 34 counts of rape, sexual abuse and criminal mistreatment across six years. The case went to trial in Marion County Circuit Court in June 1992. Testimony reported in The Salem Statesman Journal was that eight children had been kicked, punched, gagged, bitten, burned, slammed into walls and beaten with garden tools and belts.

Convicted on 12 counts, Thomas Crapser was sentenced to 90 days in jail, a fine and probation; Dolly-Jean Crapser’s 90-day sentence was suspended, and she was ordered to perform community service. An investigation report had recommended years in prison for both. The state unsuccessfully appealed the sentences.

When Adam Crapser was about 4 years old, he was adopted to the US for a better life with a loving forever family. Well, no. He was adopted–twice–by cruel, abusive parents. He was separated from his sister, shuttled around foster care, and grew up knowing far more abuse than love or even safety. There is no doubt that our US child protection system failed Adam.

Among the parents’ cruelties was the fact that the Crapsers withheld Adam’s basic immigration/adoption documents from him. That’s not a crime as such, to refuse to give a child his legal documents. Nor is it a crime to fail to get citizenship for an internationally adopted child. That failure though can result in devastating consequences.

Growing up in troubled, abusive “families,” Adam made mistakes, for which he admits remorse and has served time.

Again according to the Columbian article, Adam Crapser said middle school bullying was so bad that he wound up lashing back and serving time in juvenile jail. By his late teens, he was living in a car and fending for himself.

Over the next couple of decades, he tried to live a good life, he said, but he racked up several more criminal convictions — starting with burglary for breaking back into the Crapser home to retrieve childhood keepsakes like his Korean Bible. For that, he spent 25 months in prison. Back outside and fearing for his safety, Crapser said, he got hold of a gun — strictly forbidden for a convicted felon — and wound up in prison again.

He decided he had to turn himself around. He studied cosmetology and auto mechanics. He earned his G.E.D. and worked as a collision-repair estimator. “I’ve worked so many jobs for 90 days at a time,” he said, because every employer faced a deadline to require proof of legal status. Crapser’s permanent legal status — his Green Card — had long since expired. He couldn’t get a new one without documents that he said the Crapsers withheld.

Once he did finally get the documents in 2012 and applied to renew his green card, Adam’s criminal convictions brought the possibility of deportation. Here in the US, convicted felons who are not US citizens can be deported. That possibility of deportation extends to international adoptees who were brought to the US, without having any choice or say in the matter, by legal US citizens, with the awareness and permission of their country of origin and of the United States government.

Internationally adopted children did not automatically receive US citizenship prior to 2000. Read more here.

Adam Crapser’s initial deportation hearing was held on April 2, and resulted in a continuation until June 18. You can learn more here in the UK’s Guardian, here on MSNBC, and here on CBS News. Google “Adam Crapser” and you will see many major and local news outlets featuring articles and interviews.

The international adoptee community has been tireless in its advocacy for Adam and for changes in citizenship laws, urging retroactive citizenship for all international adoptees. Legislation is being proposed in the US Congress to correct the absurdity that children internationally adopted by US citizens do not receive US citizenship as part of their legal relationship with their family.

Fairness and justice.

 

 

International Adoption and Citizenship: Adam Crapser on the Eve of His Deportation Hearing

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On the day before his deportation hearing, Korean adoptee Adam Crapser is the subject of a New York Times story today. You can read it here.

I’ve blogged about his situation here.

Here’s the bottom line: International adoptees brought to the US before 2001 were not granted automatic citizenship. If their parents didn’t get the children naturalized, some were able to become US citizens as adults. Some, though, found out that they were not US citizens after they committed crimes, served time, and then were subject to deportation back to countries with which they no longer had any connection. Adam Crapser is one of those adoptees. Adopted from South Korea, he suffered astonishing cruelty at the hands of not one but two sets of adoptive parents. He acknowledges he made bad choices, he was arrested, and he served his time. He is remorseful. He is now married and caring for his children. And he could possibly be deported back to South Korea, where he does not know the language, the culture, or any family.

New York Times’ writer Maggie Jones’ article online today is about Adam’s situation. She also writes about the history of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, and the possible changes to laws that would make retroactive citizenship a reality for all the adoptees brought to the United States to be part of an American family. I am among those quoted in the article. Let’s hope for much-needed change that recognizes that international adoptees deserve all the rights and protections of the US government.

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The Deportation of International Adoptees Must Stop

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Do you think that internationally adopted children should be considered genuine family members, with the rights and responsibilities of other children here in the US? The US Congress appears to disagree. If an adoptee’s parents fail to get citizenship for the child, current immigration law says that the child could be deported when he or she grows up.

Imagine a family which has two boys, one adopted and one biological. Imagine that the sons, as adults, are convicted of the same crime. Both are subject to the criminal justice system and serve their time. The adopted one could then be deported. This has to stop.

Until 2000, citizenship was not automatic for internationally adopted children, when the Child Citizenship Act (CCA) was signed into law. (There are still legal processes to follow, depending on the type of visa.) However, the CCA doesn’t protect those who were adopted prior to 2000, if their parents, for whatever reasons, did not get them citizenship.

Yes: an adoptee, legally brought to the US for adoption by US citizens, CAN BE DEPORTED, never to return to the US again.

Do you know anyone who has messed up and gotten caught smoking weed, or driving drunk, or writing a bad check, or punching someone? Maybe you, or a family member. Maybe your son or daughter has, or will someday.

What if the punishment included deportation, to a country thousands of miles away, where your child had no family or friends, didn’t know the language, and had been in only when he or she was a small child, even a baby?

Immigration laws passed some 20 years ago included provisions allowing deportation of non-US citizens for certain crimes, even after they served their time. International adoptees, brought here for purposes of adoption by US parents (forever families!), surely were not the intended targets of this policy. We all agree that people who commit crimes should be punished and serve their time. It is highly unfair, though, to further punish adoptees because their adoptive parents failed to get them citizenship.

Dozens of other adoptees have faced deportation, to Thailand, Guatemala, Korea, India, Germany, and elsewhere. I’ve written previously about this injustice in “All They Will Call You Will Be Deportees.”

Here are two examples. Joao Herbert was adopted at 8 years old from Brazil, and raised in Ohio by loving parents. Two months after his high school graduation, he sold 7.5 ounces of marijuana to a police informant. For that first time offense, because he had not been officially naturalized as a US citizen, he faced deportation.

From a Washington Post article subtitled “For Children Adopted From Abroad, Lawbreaking Brings Deportation:” Through the thick glass of the visitation cubicles at the county jail where he’d been held since last March, he’d plead with his mother: “I’m your son, right? They can’t take me away, can they? Show them the adoption papers.”

The adoption papers, though, didn’t matter. Joao was deported when he was 22, for the rest of his life. His life ended four years later, when he was shot and killed at 26 years old, in Campinas, Brazil. You can read more here.

Adam Crapser was adopted from Korea in 1979 when he was four years old. His first adoptive family in Michigan subjected him to sexual and physical abuse, and he was placed in foster care at eight years old.  When Adam was 11, he was adopted by the Crapser family in Oregon. Five years later, these adoptive parents accepted plea deals for sexual and physical abuse. You can imagine what Adam’s childhood was like. He talks about it in a Gazillion Voices podcast here. It’s heartbreaking. No child should endure what he went through.

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Childhood photo of Adam Crapser from Land of Gazillion Adoptees

Adam has committed crimes, including breaking into his adoptive parents’ home to get the Korean bible he arrived with. Neither of Adam’s adoptive families got US citizenship for him. Now he faces deportation, like Joao, to a country where he does not speak the language and has no friends or family. Now almost 40 years old, Adam is married and has children. He is remorseful for his crimes, and has served his time. It is an outrage that he should be deported.

You can read more about the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 here. It applies to adoptees who were under 18 as of February 27, 2001, when the law went into effect. For older adoptees, there is no automatic citizenship. Some find out when they go to register to vote or apply for college loans. Some find out when they have been convicted and served time–and are subject to deportation.

Adam has a deportation hearing on April 2. Please listen to the podcast, and share this post. Contact your federal representatives in Congress, and ask them to support an amendment to the Child Citizenship Act that so that adoptees are treated fairly, even if their parents failed to get US citizenship for their children.

Update: There is now a petition to request administrative closure on Adam’s deportation case, which would allow Adam to get his green card and move toward citizenship. Please learn more about this petition here. Already over 7,000 people have signed it, which is great news.

Adoptive families deserve to be treated like other families legally, and adoptees deserve to be treated like the family members they are–not perfect, but protected under the law.

Please help spread the word. Many thanks.