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.

Help Adoptees Without Citizenship with current needs, defend against removal, and reopen immigration cases so they can return to the only home they've ever known.

Screen potential clients, develop case files, coordinate with A4J Staff, file for records, apply for status, and defend/reopen immigration orders of removal.