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TODAY o February 22, 2001
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U.S. to embrace foreign-born adoptees faster
Parents rejoice as new law taking effect Tuesday will turn at least 75,000 adopted kids into citizens, make future cases easie.
Saeed Ahmed - Staff
Thursday, February 22, 2001
Kimberly Smith / AJC photo
Roxanne Lau (left), who is organizing a citizenship celebration in Atlanta, and her husband, Mark Mussatt, adopted two girls from China: Leeann Ellen Mussatt (second from left), who will become a citizen Tuesday, and Danielle Lee Mussatt, who is a citizen. Both girls are 4. |
Next to Christmas and their birthdays, Daniel and Lydia's favorite holiday is one their parents created just for them: "I Gotcha" day.
It marks the day the two Russian-born children, ages 3 and 4, were adopted by Carol and Brian Walters of Alpharetta.
This year, the Walters family is adding another celebration to their calendar, one they will share next week with hundreds of other adoptive parents nationwide.
A change in immigration law that goes into effect Tuesday will grant automatic citizenship to all foreign-born adoptees under 18, ending a process long fraught with red tape and years of waiting.
At least 75,000 adopted children will become American citizens Tuesday without having to go through costly and cumbersome paperwork.
That, says Carol Walters, is cause for rejoicing.
"It's an affirmation of the fact that these children are permanent members of our family and, just like a child born in this country, they're as American as you or I," she said.
The 44-year-old homemaker said she will do "something special" for the kids that day. And on March 10, she'll take them to a citizenship celebration organized by the Atlanta chapter of Families with Children from China. It's one of many events planned from Atlanta to Anchorage to commemorate the new law.
Roxanne Lau, who is organizing the Atlanta celebration, said more than 600 parents and children are expected.
"We'll have adopted children from all over the globe and families from as far away as Virginia attending," said Lau, mother to two adoptees from China. "We want to make it an occasion where we can show our children how important citizenship is."
The law, which sailed through Congress and was signed by President Clinton on Oct. 30, was pushed by Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), himself an adoptive parent. His youngest daughter was among the last infants airlifted out of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.
"Nothing personifies the basic compassion of Americans like the tens of thousands of overseas orphans rescued each year by U.S. families," Delahunt said. "We shouldn't hinder these parents by making them jump through hoops just because they've opened their homes and their hearts to these children."
Americans adopt far more foreign children than residents of any other country. A record 18,477 were adopted last year, according to the State Department. The Immigration and Naturalization Service doesn't give out state-by-state figures, but an Atlanta pediatrician who works with adopted children says the numbers are "exploding" here.
"We evaluate the kids prior to their arrival based on medical records sent by their home country and evaluate them again once they get here, and I can tell you that the number of children we are seeing weekly has definitely gone up," said Dr. Patrick Mason of the Marcus International Adoption Center for Health and Development.
Under current law, adopted children who were never naturalized can be deported for petty offenses. Last year, 50-year-old Kevin Day of Ohio, who was adopted from Ireland at age 4, was told he was "amenable to deportation" for voting in a local election.
With the change in law, children whose adoptions are completed abroad will become citizens immediately upon entry into the United States, provided one of their parents is a citizen. In cases where children come to the United States to be adopted, they will be granted citizenship the moment their adoptions are final.
The change will help adoptive parents who mistakenly think their children are already U.S. citizens and don't file the documents to naturalize them.
And it will spare children like Olesya Johnson, 8, who wants to accompany her mother to Russia to adopt a sister but can't because her naturalization paperwork has yet to be processed.
"You prepare all of the documentation, and then there's this drawn-out, interminable wait," said Olesya's mother, Renee Johnson, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A spokeswoman for the Atlanta INS office declined to say how long the current citizenship process for adopted children takes, but nationally it can take from 18 months to two years.
Once the law is in effect, an estimated 20,000 children a year will become citizens automatically.
Pat Waring, whose 3-year-old son's citizenship paperwork fell through the cracks at INS, says she can't wait.
"We celebrate their Vietnamese heritage every week," Waring said of her two adopted children. "Soon, they'll be able to celebrate their American heritage, too."
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