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 1948, over 300,000 children have been adopted from abroad by U.S. citizen parents with the promise of a better life. However, some of these adoptees’ parents did not complete the necessary processes to provide their adopted children with citizenship or, in many cases, even a green card.
As a result, an estimated thousands of legally adopted individuals who were born before February 27, 1983 and raised in the United States and/or did not enter the country on an “orphan visa” do not have U.S. citizenship and are therefore potentially subject to deportation. There are 18,603 Korean American adoptees alone who do not have American citizenship, according to the Korean Health Ministry. A number of deportations of individuals who were legally adopted from foreign countries have already taken place, breaking up families and returning the deported individuals to places where they do not know the language, culture or have any known family members.
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.
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.
If you would like to read individual stories of impacted adoptees without citizenship, please see below.
Press Release
The National Asian Pacific American Caucus of State Legislators Recently Passed a Resolution to Support the Adoptee Citizenship Act!
The National Asian Pacific American Caucus of State Legislators (NAPACSL) is a group of over 170 state legislators from 33 states with Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry. On December 1st, they passed a resolution in support of the Adoptee Citizenship Act. Many thanks to everyone involved, especially Utah State Senator Jani Iwamoto, who sponsored the resolution.
