Thousands of children from other countries legally adopted in the United States face deportation

Investigation NBC Bay Area found that tens of thousands of people in the United States adopted in infancy from other countries and raised in the United States now face deportation because they are not legally US citizens.

Фото: Depositphotos

California has the highest number of adopted foreigners in the country. The table below shows how many of them are at risk of deportation.

Infographics: NBC Bay Area

These risks arise from a flaw in the US immigration system. Anyone who was legally adopted after 2000 became an American citizen upon arrival in the United States. But for those who have been adopted before, missing one document can lead to a life of limbo. And many of those adoptees now in middle age may not even know they are in danger. One of those people — in limbo — contacted NBC Bay Area after learning he and his family could be separated because of one missing document.

His name is Liam. Because of his precarious legal situation, he asked not to publish his name and place of residence. He grew up in San Francisco, where he had a rather cheerful youth. They and their friends on Halloween knocked into the house of actor Robin Williams and several times they were lucky to receive candy from a Hollywood star.

Despite the fact that he does not remember another home, Liam's home country is far from San Francisco - the man was born in Brazil. He knew he was adopted, but the cultural diversity in San Francisco allowed him to feel completely comfortable and not feel that he was any different from other children.

Official records show that Liam was lawfully adopted by residents of San Francisco. But until recently, he did not know that this legal adoption technically does not make him a US citizen.

“I went to school, played sports with friends, got married. I didn’t think for a second that such a question could arise,” the man said.

Liam’s and his family’s life changed when he needed to undergo an inspection by the Department of Homeland Security to work. Only then, after more than three decades of living in the United States in full confidence that he is a citizen of this country, did Liam find out that he officially did not have American citizenship.

He admitted that this situation greatly scares him, because he can lose his wife and daughter if he is deported.

Liam and Dani got married in San Francisco 2013.

“I thought that as the adopted child of two US citizens, he inherited certain rights that he is now being denied, and the looming threat of our family being torn apart is terrifying,” Dani said.

Dani began to look for reasons for what happened, trying to understand what went wrong in the case of her husband's adoption. She found a box of documents left after the death of her husband's parents. There were official adoption papers, school papers, Social Security papers—everything related to Liam's childhood. She also spoke to people who knew his adoptive parents and relatives in Brazil.

“We have his birth certificate from Brazil. We know that his biological parents were afraid to sign any documents waiving parental rights or anything like that. In fact, his biological mother simply left her fingerprint on the documents,” Dani said.

She also discovered that Liam had never issued a legal document authorizing entry into the United States.

“We just can't find these records of Liam. We don’t know if they exist or if they were never issued,” she said.

The NBC Bay Area began an investigation into Liam’s story and in the process learned that he was not the only one who had this problem.

“It’s very difficult for adoptees. You cannot return to your country. You left there when you were a baby. You don't speak that language. You don't have family there, you don't know the culture. Your family is in America. What should we do?’” said Joy Kim-Alessi, who was adopted to the United States from another country and fought for citizenship for 27 years.

Kim-Alessi is also the program director of the Campaign for the Rights of Adopted Children, and she describes their situation in the United States as a legislative quagmire.

Infographics: NBC Bay Area

A recent Campaign report states that from 25 thousand to 49, thousands of people adopted in the US from 1945 to 1998 a year remain in limbo, despite the fact that foreign adoptions are sanctioned by US foreign policy.

The report also found that an additional 7 to 321 children adopted between 14 and 643 are at risk of reaching adulthood without U.S. citizenship due to shortcomings in current immigration laws.

Infographics: NBC Bay Area

“This is a difficult process. This is something that people need to know about,” said Suzanne Lawrence, special adviser for children's issues at the US State Department in Washington. Her job is to advocate for children adopted into the United States from abroad.

When asked if she recognizes that there are gaps in US immigration law and that these gaps cause problems for adopted children, Lawrence said: “Yes. We are absolutely aware of this, as is the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. And we try to work together to figure out how to convey this information to people in an understandable way so that they can take the necessary steps. ”

The law passed by Congress in the 2000 year does not help people like Liam, because the law does not have retroactive effect and, accordingly, does not protect people who arrived in the US before it was adopted. Lawrence says the problem is exacerbated by the complexity of the international adoption process.

“I think when people have an adopted child to care for, they're caught up in those concerns and they don't always go through the entire process that they had to go through to get citizenship for that child,” Lawrence said.

The new bill, entitled “The Citizenship of Adopted Children of 2018”, would correct holes in the current US immigration law, but this proposal did not pass through Congress in September of 2018. However, Liam and Dani turned to the office of Senator Dienne Feinstein to try to solve the problem.

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