Adoptee Citizenship Advocacy

Jul 6

IAMAdoptee is dedicated to providing the intercountry adoptee community with continued information regarding adoption advocacy, research, policy and practice.

**The Issue Facing Adoptee Citizenship**

Many intercountry adoptees lack citizenship despite having been adopted as children by American citizens.
The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 automated the citizenship process and granted citizenship retroactively to adoptees who were affected—except for those who had reached 18 years before the enactment date.
The abrupt transition of responsibility for naturalization placed many adoptees in legal limbo.

**The Importance in Addressing This Issue**

Citizenship and nationality are the fundamental human rights of all individuals.
Families who come together through adoption deserve the same rights, privileges, and security as biological families. Adoptees should receive equal legal inheritances, including insurance benefits, family name, and other assumed family rights. Adoptees who were not naturalized by their parents deserve citizenship as they legally immigrated to the U.S. as children.

The Adoptee Citizenship Act

IAMAdoptee is dedicated to providing the intercountry adoptee community with continued information regarding adoption advocacy, research, policy and practice.

This bipartisan legislation is a simple, common sense fix to a problem that has existed for far too long. It recognizes and counts those who were legally adopted by U.S. citizens as children raised in the United States. It upholds the fundamental legal principle that attributes the rights of a child naturally born to a U.S. couple to a child adopted by a U.S. couple. Furthermore, it protects the rights of these adoptees against deportation that breaks up families and returns adoptees to places where they do not know the language, culture, or have any known family members or supports.

Source: Adoptees for Justice (June 2024)