Imagine that your daughter, whom you raised from infancy, was convicted of forgery. You certainly wouldn't be surprised if she were prosecuted for that felony and, while it would be heartbreaking, you'd expect her to be punished, probably even imprisoned. Now let's add one more element to this real-life scenario: How would you feel if the penalty imposed on your 30-year-old child -- who suffers from multiple sclerosis -- was deportation to another country where she knows no one and doesn't speak the native language?
I am not making this up. It is happening today. It is obviously devastating to the woman facing a jarringly disproportionate punishment for the crime she committed, but it is also much more than that. It is a vivid example of the unfairness and inequality that sometimes exist in the world of adoption.
What may be most unnerving is the fact that this is not an aberration; while it is hardly commonplace, it has happened again and again. And there has been virtually no media attention, or public outrage, or embarrassment on the part of immigration officials, or concerted effort to reform law and policy so that people who were adopted into their families are placed on a level playing field with their biological counterparts.
Here's the core of the case: Kairi Abha Shepherd was adopted from India into the United States in 1982, when she was three months old. Her mother, a single woman in Utah, died of cancer eight years later, so Shepherd went on to live with guardians for the remainder of her childhood.
In short, Shepherd's adoption took place before 2000, when a new federal statute conferred automatic U.S. citizenship on most children adopted internationally into this country; the law included a retroactive provision, but she was adopted a few months before it kicked in. So the adults in her life were supposed to fill out paperwork for her to become a citizen -- but, like many others, they either didn't know or, for whatever reasons, never got around to doing it.
As a consequence, when Shepherd was convicted in 2004 of forgery to feed a drug habit, U.S. authorities did what they do to many felons who don't have documents showing they are Americans: They started deportation proceedings, which are now coming to a head. It doesn't seem to matter that Shepherd has lived as an American for all but a few months of her life, and it is an extraordinary price to pay for a bureaucratic oversight made by the adults who raised her.
Again, this is not an aberration. Last year, a 31-year-old mother of three, who was adopted from Korea when she was eight months old, was held at a federal detention center in Arizona and faced deportation after a second theft conviction. It's unclear what happened to the woman, who was not named, but the bottom line was the same: Her adoption took place before the period covered by the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, and neither she nor her parents ever applied for citizenship for her. So, even though she had lived in the U.S. nearly all her life, had given birth to three children on our nation's soil, had never as much as visited Korea and didn't speak the language, federal authorities wanted to send her "back."
There are more examples, too, dating back at least 15 years; indeed, in my book Adoption Nation, I write about a young man who was adopted into the U.S. as a child, convicted of car theft and credit card fraud, and deported at age 25 to Thailand, where (same story) he knew no one and didn't speak the native tongue. Can you imagine anything comparable happening to someone born into his or her family, whatever the offense? Of course not.
People who break the law should unequivocally pay an appropriate price for their offenses. But I think it can fairly be argued that the reason some are being ejected from the only country they've ever known is not because of the crime they've committed -- but because they were adopted.
This feels grievously wrong. We should be shocked, we should be outraged, and we should do whatever is necessary to halt the cases already in progress and to prevent this from ever happening again.
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Many adoption social workers were loathe to acknowledge that the law had any role in the adoption process, and even discouraged adopters from seeking legal advice.
The average deportations for the last 10 years is around 250,000 per year so we have probably deported say 3.5 million people in the 15 years you refer to. So even if you could find 5,000 cases in that time, it would comprise 1 tenth of 1 percent. So to most rational people it is an aberration.
And before you throw your rudimentary attempt logic out of the window and start on the line - even one is too many, remember that it is this thinking that has allowed us to become overwhelmed with illegal immigrants. And then realize that the only remedy is enforcement to ensure that we can properly regulate the situation.
You have to draw the line somewhere and there will always be someone on the wrong side of it. Is it admirable to want to do the right thing in these cases - absolutely, but you cannot throw the baby out with the bath water.
No, adoption is only faking a legal document. And we've been sold the song and dance all along that adoption is "as if born to." So when this child was adopted in the United States at the age of THREE MONTHS (oh wow, big scary illegal immigrant INVADER there), there should have been a false birth certificate issued--and *that should have been the end of it.* It's just exactly like a real birth certificate, right? Then it constitutes a naturalization process. Then this woman is actually a legal American citizen, and she shouldn't be sent ANYWHERE.
By the way, she was adopted here before she was six months old. How do you deport someone who was raised by an American citizen here and lived here for almost her entire life, minus half a year? More importantly, how do you *defend* such a deportation?
You better hope YOU never wind up in a situation where you are in need of that Poor You mentality. I'm sure you noticed India's a lot worse off than we are. There's a reason for that.
Where does it say that she is an ILLEGAL immigrant? She was brought to the US in a fully legal fashion.
Since even domestic adoptees can't prove they were born here, what keeps them from being kicked out for simple infractions?
Such as: when a child is adopted in our supposedly civilized, progressive country, that child's birth certificate -- containing the names of his or her biological parents -- is sealed by court order and a new one is created (the benignly termed "amended" birth certificate) with the names of the adoptive parents... thus perpetuating the "as if born to" trope that you and I and our colleagues have worked so tirelessly to heal with education.
Joyce Pavao told of a widower whose wife had died when their daughters were school aged remarried a couple years later. For financial/legal reasons, his second wife adopted the girls but for that to happen their original birth certificates--bearing the name of their mother whom they so vividly and poignantly remembered--had to be sealed in this same way.
Is this still the case to your knowledge, Adam? A different kind of deportation and certainly less extreme...but a painful, wrong-headed situation nonetheless.
Marcy Axness, PhD
author of "Parenting for Peace: Raising the Next Generation of Peacemakers" http://marcyaxness.com/
So they missed the cutoff, never finished their paperwork, never did an follow up to see things got done. It's up to the people to do these things don't expect the government to do everything for you. It all falls on them.
On top of this being a non citizen then committing crime, non US citizens are subject to deportation when they break the law. Just don't break the law! Do we want to change this? Get a visa, commit any crime and expect to stay here forever? They may deport her to a country where she does not speak the language, she should have thought about it before committing the crime. Apparently she didn't care, now she can not care in the country of her birth.
She was guilty of the crime (and served her time) but not guilty of entering the country illegally.
Does the punishment (deportation) fit the crime? Being adopted, they are usually no longer citizens of their country of birth.
Do you propose deportation for ALL adoptees who are in the US illegally whether they commit a crime or not?
We have enough criminals here already - why import more? Why have a policy that ever allows anyone convicted of the smallest crime to remain here? Do you think we would somehow get a lower quality of immigrant? Or maybe we would not get enough immigrants to fill the 1+ million we let in every year?
Deportation is NOT punishment - please don't refer to it as that. It is simply a method to protect the citizens of this country. It is also returning a person back to their home country so that country can spend the vast sums usually needed to deal with criminals.
If you don't like it then invite a few paroles into your home to live and see if it works out. Let them be alone with your kids and see if you trust them. After all anything else would be punishment wouldn't it?
These types of tragedies have happened more than 20 times that we know of. Please see: poundpuplegacy.org/deportation_cases
Other types of adoption-related deportation tragedies exist as well. Parents of US born American citizens are deported tearing families apart and deportation detention threats are used to obtain other immigrant's babies. Please see: http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2012/05/adoption-and-deportation.html
All of it belies the myths of "forever families" or that adoption is the "same as if" the child were born into family, despite a birth certificate that states that lie.