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A South Korean adoptee addresses the issue of adoptees who do not have US citizenship during a launch ceremony for National Alliance for Adoptee Equality held at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Nov. 13. (Hwang Joon-bum)

Born in South Korea in 1982 and adopted by a US family in 1984, 37-year-old Leah has lived in the US for 35 years. After finishing school, she joined the US Navy and served for the next 10 years. In 2007, her unit was deployed to Iraq, but she was unable to go. Traveling to Iraq would require her to receive security clearance, and she did not have US citizenship. The reason she did not is because her foster parents divorced shortly after adopting her without finishing her naturalization procedures. Leah, who does not speak Korean, is legally regarded as a “South Korean national with permanent residence in the US.”

Leah shared her experience on Nov. 13 at a launch ceremony held at the US Capitol for a group called the National Alliance for Adoptee Equality.

“I have fought for the US. The US needs to fight for me,” she said.

There are many others like Leah in the US. According to some estimates, as many as 49,000 of those adopted to the US from overseas between 1945 and 1998 do not hold US citizenship. That number is estimated to include some 20,000 to 25,000 South Koreans. In some cases, the reasons had to do with the complex and time-consuming process for acquiring citizenship after overseas adoption, or with inadequate or erroneous information during the adoption process. In some cases, adoptive parents were reported to have deliberately avoided applying.

The US does have legislation to prevent such cases. During the Bill Clinton presidency in 2001, the Child Citizenship Act was enacted, automatically granting US citizenship in cases of adoptees born overseas with at least one adoptive parent who is a US citizen. But the law only applied to adoptees who were under 18 at the time it was enacted on Feb. 27, 2001; Leah missed the cutoff to benefit from the law’s protections by just a few months. Thousands of others like Leah were unable to obtain citizenship due to their adoptive parents’ situation or other factors and were adults over the age of 18 as of Feb. 27, 2001.

In every session since 2016, bills for “adoptee civil rights” have been sponsored as a way of making up for the existing law’s shortcomings by applying automatic, retroactive citizenship to overseas adoptees who were adults at the time the Child Citizenship Act went into effect. But they have ended up running into objections from the Republican Party and failing to make it through Congress. This year, a bill sponsored in May by Democratic Rep. Adam Smith drew 16 Republican and 14 Democratic cosponsors as of Nov. 14. An identical bill has also been sponsored in the Senate.

The National Alliance for Adoptee Equality, the group that was being launched that day, is a collection of non-government organization working to ensure that the law passes this time. Joining forces were the Korean American Grassroots Conference (KAGC), Holt Children’s Services, and the Adoptee Rights Campaign (ARC). In addition to Smith, the bill’s sponsor, the ceremony was attended by Republic Rep. Rob Woodall and Democratic Reps. Grace Meng and Gil Cisneros, all of whom gave congratulatory addresses.

The group plans to continue reaching out to Republican and Democratic members of Congress to enlist their support for the bill, while embarking on a campaign to raise public awareness of the situation faced by non-citizen adoptees. Despite the failures of past bills, the members said they are confident this time.

“We think we will be able to win Republican support this time, as the cosponsors include Rep. Andy Biggs, who chairs the party’s conservative Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Gary Palmer, who chairs the House Republican Policy Committee,” said KAGC Executive Director Wonseok Song.

“We’re aiming to get as many co-sponsors on board as possible to hold hearings within Congress,” Song said.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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