About Adoptees For Justice
Adoptees For Justice is an intercountry adoptee-led organization whose mission is to educate, empower, and organize transracial and transnational adoptee communities to achieve just and humane adoption, immigration, and restorative justice systems. We envision a world where every person thrives in a safe and supportive environment in which communities of color, immigrants, and adoptees are liberated from all forces of injustice, with full citizenship for all. Our first project is to educate, organize and advocate for an Adoptee Citizenship Act that is inclusive of all adoptees.
Intercountry Adoption & Citizenship
Since the end of World War II, over Since 1948, over 500,000 children have been adopted from abroad by U.S. citizen parents to create American families with the promise of a safe and prosperous life. Despite becoming legal members of American families, citizenship was not automatically conferred with adoption finalization. This oversight, coupled with a significant lack of supervision by the U.S. government, sending countries, and adoption agencies, meant that some adoptees were never granted American citizenship.
As a result, there are legally adopted individuals who were born before February 27, 1983 who do not have U.S. citizenship and are potentially subject to detention and/or deportation. The Child Citizenship Act (CCA) passed in 2000 partially repaired this error – but included a major oversight. It granted automatic citizenship to adoptees who were born after February 27, 1983. It is difficult to estimate the number of directly impacted individuals, as the United States and sending countries did not track adoptees’ relinquishment or acquisition of citizenship. (The exception is the South Korean government, but these numbers do not accurately illustrate the number of adoptees without U.S. citizenship.)
As a result, a number of adopted people who were legally adopted by American parents have been deported, breaking up families and forcing adoptees to leave their homes for places where they do not know the language, culture, or have any support system.
There are cases of individuals without citizenship who were adopted from 28 countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Ireland, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Spain, South Korea, St. Kitts, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam.
We assert that citizenship is a civil right of all children adopted by a U.S. citizen parent. Children adopted by U.S. citizen parents should have the same rights as children of U.S. citizens. This civil right should be protected by legislation that provides automatic citizenship for all adult adoptees whose adoptive parents did not complete the naturalization process while they were children.