‘The United States does not see me as an American’: Thousands of adoptees live in limbo without citizenship

Mike was their breadwinner and they struggled without him. They lived in cars and motels, but they never blamed him.

Laura Lynn kept all her things carefully packed and awaiting her return: clothes, sports memorabilia, her favorite music, on cassette tapes, a reminder of how the world has changed since she left. He gets sick a lot as he ages, he said, and can’t access medicine in Ethiopia.

He has five grandchildren he has never met. His youngest son, Adam, now 26, recently moved into his first apartment and thought how nice it would be to have his father there to see him.

Laura Lynn has more hope than she has in a long time, she said, because a group she never expected came to her aid: Koreans. They have offered defense and legal help. He is represented by groups such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Adoptees for Justice.

“I pray that we can make them see that he did not ask to come here, but was adopted and brought here. “He became a really good man,” she said. “He has a family that loves him and we are ready for him to come home to us.”

Emily Howe, a California lawyer, carries a 5-inch binder, which she calls “the simplified version” of the labyrinthine set of laws that dictate which adoptees have been able to become citizens and which have not.

Howe was adopted from South Korea in 1984, barely young enough to obtain citizenship under the 2000 law. By a stroke of luck and timing, this could have been her, he said. That is why he represents many adoptive families for free.

“It shouldn’t be a spin of the wheel,” he said. Now ask each adoptee if they know their citizenship status. It gets complicated quickly; If they ask the government and discover that they are not citizens, they notify the authorities that they are living here illegally.

His clients are panicking about what will happen if Trump wins re-election.

“I’m terrified,” a mother named Debbie screamed in Howe’s San Diego office. “What if he comes back in? I hear him talk about mass deportations.”

Debbie and her husband, Paul, adopted two special-needs children from a Romanian orphanage in the 1990s, and have been trying to make them citizens almost ever since. The Associated Press is using only the parents’ first names because they fear putting their adopted children in danger.

The California couple watched a “20/20” television special about the plight of children there: They were called “unsalvageable,” they didn’t learn to read, and there wasn’t enough food.

The couple was middle class and had three biological children. But Debbie couldn’t sleep thinking about those children, cold and hungry. So they refinanced their house to bring home two, a boy and a girl.

“We thought we had to get these kids out of there. Then we’ll deal with what we have to deal with,” Debbie said.

The boy was 10 years old and so small, weighing only 40 pounds, that the school allowed him to go to kindergarten. The girl was 14 years old and legally blind, with limited vision in only one eye. Both had physical and cognitive disabilities; Doctors believed the child had suffered fetal alcohol poisoning.

The family was overwhelmed by their needs. Her new son was curious: in another life, he could have been an engineer, Debbie thinks. But in this one, they had to nail the front door shut because he went out at night. He was fascinated by electricity and could not be left alone without fear of starting a fire.

Howe assures them that they did everything they could.

“We thought we did it the right way, we tried, I hope we did,” Debbie said. “Maybe we were naive. Maybe there was something we missed.”

They consulted with dozens of lawyers, who said it couldn’t be fixed: It was a complicated calculation of the children’s ages, how their birth certificates were written, and their visas. They can’t count how many thousands of dollars they have spent.

“It’s silly, it’s outrageously silly, it shouldn’t be such a monstrous task,” Howe said. “This could be fixed in a month if someone had the political will to do it.”

His 43-year-old son doesn’t understand the situation he’s in, but his daughter does. She is a Special Olympian, now 46 years old, and has a ton of gold medals. He cannot compete in international competitions because he cannot obtain a passport.

“I really want to be a citizen,” her daughter said. “I want to be here for a long, long time.”

They have called their legislators. Debbie cried over and over again: “My adopted children deserve all the privileges of my biological children. They are no different to our eyes. Why do you look at them differently?