Posted on 09/03/2016 3:03:21 PM PDT by Kaslin
Since we’re apparently going to be examining every other aspect of immigration policy over the course of this election, we may as well toss this log on the fire as well. The Washington Post examines a specific class of US residents who don’t get very much attention in this debate, and while it doesn’t apply to a huge swath of the population, it’s causing some problems all the same. We’re talking about people who were born in other nations but adopted by American parents. If their new family doesn’t take care of all the paperwork to make them citizens as part of the adoption process while they are still young children, what becomes of them as adults?
At basketball games at his Oregon high school, Justin Ki Hong, an adoptee from South Korea, remembers putting his hand over his heart and singing the national anthem, proud to be a citizen of the United States.
It wasn’t until he applied for a job years later that Ki Hong learned he had never been a citizen at all.
The employer asked for proof of citizenship, and Ki Hong’s Social Security number and driver’s license, which had worked when applying for college financial aid, were suddenly insufficient. He soon learned that his American parents had never filled out the paperwork to naturalize him after bringing him to the United States in 1985.
Now it was too late. Not only that, but Ki Hong is potentially deportable — to a country he doesn’t remember.
Ki Hong’s situation clearly doesn’t apply to all international adoptees. Since the passage of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 the confirmation of citizenship for the child after adoption has been essentially automatic and it was retroactively applied to almost everyone under the age of 18 when it was passed. Unfortunately, if you were already 18 when the legislation went into effect you weren’t covered. There are tens of thousands of US residents in this category according to the federal government.
So we’ve identified a problem and it’s time to come up with a solution. This one should be easy, right? Ha! If you think anything involving immigration and citizenship is going to go smoothly these days, think again. I suppose one possible solution is to amend the law to remove the 18 year old maximum for adoptees and make the rest of them retroactive, but the entire process is fairly complicated before we even get to the question of who should qualify. The law in question specifies the requirements for children who are to receive automatic citizenship and in the case of adoptees (rather than children who have one American parent but who are born abroad) they have to meet the requirements of section 101(b)(1) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. (If you want to give yourself a headache, go read through that maze of legalize.)
Either way, the definition of who qualifies as a “child” for these purposes ranges in age up to either 14 or even 17 depending on the circumstances. Not to put too fine of a point on it here, but by the time young males reach that age range they can be well on their way to fully formed adult attributes. We’ve seen kids younger than 14 going to war all over the world. Do we want to simply rubber stamp each and every one of them as citizens if they happen to find a family to adopt them?
None of these questions should apply to Ki Hong in the story above, but I’m simply pointing out that the solution probably isn’t as simple as some are making it sound.
I appreciate your attempt to hijack the thread. It happens here all the time. Piss off, n00b.
We also received an American Passport for both of them.
Not exactly. As I recall, there was a carve out for cases where the parents hadn't met the children before the foreign proceeding. The biggest group impacted by this were those from Korea, which basically had an option to airmail the children to America. Most foreign countries required the American parents to travel there first, which would generally end up satisfying the American law which went into effect in 2000.
You were responsible parents.
RTFA! Those people are not the subject of the article.
According to the State Department, the number of international adoptees 1999-2015 is 261,728.
The rate of international adoption has been on the decline:
What are you bringing up Fox News for? Fox News has nothing to do with this?
The mask was pulled off of Cruz, he is no better then crooked Hillary, they are on the same team
I support Trump and that is it
Cruz is dog crap to me
Jazz Shaw is the only writer left at HotAir that has held true to his conservative values. The rest are Establishment whores.
He isn’t as well known as some of the other columnists there, but he is a good guy, and has been around for several years.
Thought about it some more. If the kid was too old for the 2000 act to help, he should have been old enough for the original 1990s Amnesty.
You are so ignorant. Adopted children are not illegals
“If not, to hell with them a tat and a microchip implant that identify them from half a mile away, deport and make it that they will be shot on site if ever found inside our borders again.”
Tatoos are expensive and time-consuming. Brand them on both cheeks.
“...it’s easy for parents to,forget...”
I’m sure that ALL international adoptions have lawyers involved, this is something for the lawyer to be aware of and handle.
If something like this happened to me I would sue the attorney for malpractice and I imagine I would win.
I’m pretty sure we could carve out a very specific exception for however many/few people this would impact.
“What’s a Jazz Shaw?”
I’m surprised you don’t know him (I think he’s a him). He’s a big shot over at Hot Air, supposedly a conservative site.
But find his other post today, there or here where it’s posted, about Father Pfleger and how he’s right about violence in Chitown.
Shaw just gets stupider by the day.
When my future husband and I met in my hometown in Germany he also met my little boy who was just a little over 2 years old. (Both btw shared the same birthday) My now late son was 17 years old when I made my citizenship and when I filled the papers out they asked me if I want him to become also a citizen as he was still a minor. I said of course yes. s
Yeah but can’t call him an illegal.
Thanks. I guess Shaw might be a real name, but I bet he wasn’t born with “Jazz” as a first name. But then folks have been born with “Moon Unit” and “Dweezel” as first names.
There you have the Path to Citizenship.
Create an organization of US citizens that adopts Illegal Aliens a few days before their 18th birthday.
Adopt them, get their US citizenship right before their 18th birthday.
Fortunately our adoptions were after 2000 so our kids were covered by the change in law
The only lawyer we saw was in a Russian courtroom
That was 14 years ago
So no, there is no requirement for a U.S. lawyer to be involved unless the kids were re adopted in the US - ours weren’t
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