Posted on 07/25/2018 11:23:45 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
Since 2001, children adopted overseas by American parents automatically become US citizens. Before that, it was up to adoptive parents to take the legal steps to make sure their children became US citizens. But some adoptive children — now well into adulthood — are finding out that their parents never took the steps to make them US citizens.
That's the situation Ella Purkiss finds herself in.
She was adopted from South Korea in 1956 when she was 2.
“My Korean name is Kim Yang Ai,” she says, sitting in her trailer home in Pahrump, Nevada.
Her Korean name is about all she knows of her life in Korea. Purkiss, 61, grew up in the United States, got married, raised kids and worked as an electrician. When her husband died last year, Purkiss tried to collect Social Security benefits. That’s when she found out that she wasn’t an American citizen.
“Apparently my whole life has been a lie,” Purkiss says.
She says her adoptive parents led her to believe that she was a naturalized citizen, “even to the point of telling me how I sat on the judge’s podium, and he had talked to me. They even took pictures after all the supposed swearing in had taken place.”
Purkiss doesn’t know why her adoptive parents lied, and she can’t ask them as they’re no longer living. But over the years, she was able to do things citizens do. She voted. She sat on juries.
“I have passed security clearance to work in nuclear plants [and] Air Force bases. I’ve also passed security clearance after the terrorist attacks in 2001 to work on an Army base where we were building one of the factories they were going to use to help destroy the weapons of mass destruction with,” she says.
(Excerpt) Read more at pri.org ...
If she appeared before any judge, there should at least be a record of her appearance even if the reason isn't clear.
I’m sure there will be a solution pending. Fake news.
Perhaps it’s just a problem with the SS administration, otherwise, how was she able to pass security clearances?
You would think the naturalization would have been part of the adoption process. It doesn’t add up.
Playing fast and loose with immigration law does have consequences. Sadly, in this case the consequences are insufferable.
Not the same, but related. My friend’s brother got deported to England at the age of 54. Third arrest, he was a hot mess of a human. He left Britan as an infant on a military flight.
His father was brought to America in the late 40’s... A real rocket scientist. 50 years at NASA, five children later, he finds that the infant child they brought with them never got paperwork. The rest of the family was good, just him... lost in the matrix. Everything about dad was classified back then, even the baby.
A win, win... America sent back a village idiot who emigrated at three month of age. And he loves it in Liverpool... Because beatles, And drug culture, or something.
He must be dead by now.
Not an excuse for breaking our laws.
Send ICE Agents to capture and deport her.
Yes. They need to get things fixed up for those who came here as small children and only know their U.S. culture. It’s inhuman to send them to a foreign culture far from their de facto home.
But we need to get southern border security fixed up, too! Build the wall, and stop sucking in hordes of adults from cultures that are in conflict with ours.
Hard to believe she paid SS all her life and was never notified of her non-citizen status....Oh, wait, we’re talking IRS here......I’d wager there were bureaucratic SNAFUs along the way that led to many not being properly processed....inept business as usual....
I don’t think that SS wage garnishment requires citizenship
I wonder if she /they got the usual SS notices showing how much they would/could get in benefits....most folks start getting them a while before they reach “regular” retirement age...
I think if you get ss number you get ss.
Strangely, I feel no urge to fix every problem someone, somewhere possesses.
Oh good grief.
She didn’t even know she was not a US citizen. How would she? Her parents dropped the ball.
But whatever. You’re entitled to your viewpoints.
Culpability is important in law.
For example, a child of six years of age and brought to the U.S.A. by an adult does not have the choice of staying on the other side of the border. The child didn’t commit any crime. As the child grows up in the U.S.A., the child is told that the necessary paperwork was done, and fees paid.
And after the child grows up to adulthood in our culture, it would be damaging and harmful to her to deport her to a foreign culture that she does not understand. It would be as damaging and harmful as deporting a U.S. citizen.
Consider another hypothetical. A teenager is kidnapped, brought to the U.S.A. and escapes soon after. The teen is not culpable and also didn’t commit any crime. But no damage is done in sending her back to her homeland, because the culture of her homeland is hers. She can return to her family, navigate her original culture and work to be housed, fed, etc.
Another hypothetical... A lawyer, unbeknownst to the client, commits a crime in the client’s behalf without the client’s knowledge. The client doesn’t even know that the lawyer undertook the action that constitutes a crime.
The client is not guilty. Correct? The lawyer is guilty. Granted, if the client is responsible for any neglected paperwork or any payments owed by the client if responsible, then the client must do those things.
Have those who grew up from childhood here through no fault of their own do their paperwork, pay their fees and so on.
And pass the necessary funding to get the points of entry secured (the wall, etc.). Then do it. Stop the real-estate-for-green-cards scam, and end the diversity lottery. End the practice of sponsorships of extended family relatives (uncles, cousins, multitudes of children of polygamy,...), and restrict marriage and parent sponsorships to the nuclear family and minor stepchildren. End the big work visa inflows. Very similar cultures with English as their primary language are much less expensive and risky to assume.
My comment #16 is pretty near the plan in progress by the Trump Administration and more truly conservative members of Congress anyway, from what I recall. And it’s quite a step and probably the most that we can hope to attain.
“She didn’t even know she was not a US citizen. How would she? Her parents dropped the ball.”
That’s a fine argument for DACA and in support of the Dreamers.
Parents drop the ball.
Welcome to the USA!
It was another couple of rounds of paperwork and a pile of additional fees. It wouldn’t have been a big issue back then.
The parents’ fault.
They should have taken the steps to naturalize their children.
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