Some US Adoptees Fear Stricter Immigration Policies, Mass Deportations
Thousands of Adoptees in US Still Lack Citizenship
The Trump administration’s focus on deporting immigrants has left many intercountry adoptees increasingly vulnerable. Brought to the United States by adoptive parents who, for various reasons, failed to secure their legal status or naturalized citizenship, these individuals now face the threat of deportation from the only home they have come to know.
For decades, intercountry adoptions approved by courts and government agencies did not automatically guarantee US citizenship. Not until the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 were intercountry adoptees granted automatic citizenship, but it only applied to adoptees younger than 18 as well as future adoptions when it took effect in 2001. It excluded those who arrived before February 27, 1983, as well as those brought to the United States on tourist or medical visas, a route that might have seemed fast and simple to some adoptive parents, but that has left their adopted children without legal status once those visas expired.
Many in the non-citizen adoptee community fear the impact of President Donald Trump’s talk about mass deportations and stricter immigrations policies, such as the executive order aimed at “removing promptly all aliens who enter or remain in violation of federal law.” Some of these adoptees have uncertain legal status due to visa overstays. Others, while legally in the US, remain subject to deportation if they have a criminal history, including for drug offenses like marijuana possession.
Some intercountry adoptees did not realize they had no legal status as US immigrants or citizens until they tried to apply for passports or financial aid. Many might still not know. Estimates of how many adoptees lack citizenship range from 18,000 to 75,000, with around 18,000 believed to be Korean adoptees.
Even before Trump’s second term, deportation was nothing new to the adoptee community. According to some sources, in recent years 35 adoptees have been deported from the US to their countries of origin. One Korean adoptee took his life after struggling in his new home; another took legal actions against a system which he felt failed him. Others still hope to return to the US.
Though bills have been introduced throughout the years to amend the legal loopholes leaving adoptees without legal immigration status or citizenship, none have succeeded. Congress has an opportunity in front of it to address this problem right now: the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2024 would ensure that all intercountry adoptees are granted citizenship and that deported adoptees can return to be reunited with their families.