Shirley Chung, who was adopted from South Korea and brought to the United States in 1966 at just one year old, lived her entire life believing she was an American citizen. She grew up in Texas, attended school, got her driver’s license, married, had children, and worked as a piano teacher. However, in 2012, a routine visit to the Social Security office revealed a startling truth: she was not a citizen and could face deportation.
Shirley’s story is not an isolated incident. It is estimated that between 18,000 and 75,000 American adoptees lack citizenship, leaving many vulnerable to deportation. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 aimed to grant automatic citizenship to international adoptees, but it excluded those who arrived before February 1983, creating a bureaucratic limbo for tens of thousands.
The fear and uncertainty have intensified with recent policy changes and rhetoric surrounding immigration. Adoptees and their advocates express deep concern over the current administration’s focus on deportations, fearing that administrative oversights could lead to the separation of families and the displacement of individuals who have lived in the U.S. for decades.
One anonymous adoptee from Iran, who arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s as a toddler, shared her story of discovering her non-citizen status when she was 38, after critical documents supporting her claim to citizenship were lost. She lamented the erasure of her cultural identity and the broken promise of American citizenship that adoption policies once represented.
Advocacy groups are calling for legislative action to remove the age cutoff for automatic citizenship, emphasizing that these adoptees are not immigrants but individuals whose lives and identities are intrinsically tied to the United States. They are appealing for compassion and a resolution that acknowledges their lived experiences and the promises made to them as children.
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