< back
HOUSE IMMIGRATION SUBCOMMITTEE DEBATES CITIZENSHIP PLAN FOR FOREIGN ADOPTIONS
For years, adoption advocates have complained that the process for naturalizing children who are adopted overseas is needlessly burdensome and should be reformed.  Unlike many immigration issues, lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic sides agree with this fundamental proposition.  However, there is disagreement over the way the change should be made, a disagreement that was highlighted at a recent House Immigration Subcommittee hearing.  
The bill debated, H.R. 2883, the Adopted Orphans Citizenship Act, is a Republican backed solution to the problem.  This bill would provide automatic citizenship to foreign adoptees under the age of 18 so long as one of the adoptive parents is a US citizen who has spent at least five years in the US, at least two of which were after age 14.  It would also work retroactively to make such people citizens from birth, a move that is opposed by the Clinton administration and many Democratic lawmakers.  
At the hearing witnesses from adoption advocacy agencies expressed their support for the bill, as well as saying that they would support a proposed Democratic alternative.  This bill, H.R. 3667, which was discussed in our last issue (see http://www.visalaw.com/00feb3/2feb300.html), would extend automatic citizenship to children born to US citizen parents overseas as well as adopted children, but would not make it retroactive. 
Witnesses from both the INS and the State Department opposed H.R. 2883, saying that while they agreed with the effort to made obtaining citizenship for adopted children easier, they could not support making that citizenship retroactive to birth.  Two primary reasons for this opposition were cited.  First, the bill would make it easier for adopted children to obtain citizenship than for biological children born abroad to US citizens.  Second, and more importantly, the bill would create two types of naturalized citizens – those whose citizenship is made retroactive to birth and those whose is not.  This difference is, according to the INS and State Department, fundamentally contrary to the notion that a person who is naturalized is a full US citizen, regardless of the circumstances of their naturalization.  
The INS representative also expressed concern that making citizenship retroactive to birth in cases of adoption would create the impression that naturalized citizenship was somehow not as valuable as citizenship by birth. 
Despite the opposition to parts of H.R. 2883, the bipartisan support for making the legal requirements for obtaining citizenship for a child adopted from abroad, makes it quite likely that some change in the law in this area will not be long in coming.