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News & Updates
Check out the latest news on EACH and the legislation that EACH is advocating be enacted into law! Below you will find links to news stories of interest to EACH members including updates on EACH’s legislative efforts.
- Landrieu Passes Amendment to Help Adopted Children Secure Citizenship : June 18, 2013
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Applies automatic U.S. citizenship provisions of the
CCA, which currently only apply to children who were under the
age of 18 at the time of its enactment in 2001, to all
foreign-born children lawfully adopted by U.S. families who were
ever lawfully admitted to the United States.
-
Clarifies language in the CCA so that eligible
children need only be “physically present” in the U.S. versus
“residing” in the U.S. for their citizenship to accrue. This
clarification benefits adoptees of American families who live
and work overseas, such as those serving in the military or at
U.S. Embassies or Consulates.
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Modifies the INA so that only one adoptive parent—not
both—must travel overseas to visit a child during the
intercountry adoption process for the child to qualify for the
type of visa that leads to automatic U.S. citizenship upon entry.
- Vote grants citizenship to Haitian orphans Help Haiti bill sent for Obama signature : December 2, 2010
- She's American, so make her a citizen : August 16, 2010
- Adopted overseas as children, they’re not U.S. citizens at all : August 15, 2010
- AIDS And Adoption – Part 2: Adopting An HIV-Positive Child : October 8, 2009
- New TB policy could disrupt overseas adoptions: August 10, 2009
- Families for Orphans - FACE Press Release: June 29, 2009
- Families for Orphans - FFO Press Release: June 29, 2009
- U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) Press Release: June 26, 2009
- Herald News: May 25, 2008 - Hope for Yordi
- Adoption Today April/May 2008 Editorial
- Launch of EACH announced in Adoption Today
- Presidential Proclamation for 2007 National Adoption Month
- Project HOPEFUL, NPF, Founder Carolyn Twietmeyer brings home three siblings from Ethiopia
- "ICARE” Act Introduced in Senate -- Landmark legislation heralds
changes to international adoption process
Adoption Today – December/January 2004 - New Bill is Every Parent’s Dream – Natural Born Citizen Act would
allow children adopted internationally to be elected President
Adoption Today – April/May 2004
Landrieu Passes Amendment to Help Adopted Children Secure Citizenship
June 18, 2013
Contact: media@landrieu.senate.gov
Landrieu Passes Amendment to Help Adopted Children Secure Citizenship
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., today passed the bipartisan Citizenship for Lawful Adoptees Amendment to the Senate Immigration Reform bill. The amendment provides technical but important fixes to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA) and the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) so that automatic citizenship provisions under these laws apply to all foreign-born adoptees of American citizen parents. The amendment is co-sponsored by Sens. Dan Coats, R-Ind., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
“Some adopted children, through no fault of their own, endure a precarious legal status, which can result in the horror of being deported to a country they don’t remember at all, where they don’t have any ties or even speak the language,” Sen. Landrieu said. “My amendment provides important technical fixes to ensure that children adopted internationally by American citizen parents receive automatic citizenship, treating them the same as biological children.”
The Citizenship for Lawful Adoptees Amendment:
Vote grants citizenship to Haitian orphans Help Haiti bill sent for Obama signature
December 2, 2010
From the News-Press:
By Daniel Malloy, Post-Gazette Washington BureauWASHINGTON -- The 12 Haitian children trapped for months in legal limbo at an Emsworth orphanage have been cleared for adoption, and a bill to ease the path to citizenship for orphans already in American homes passed Congress on Wednesday.
Sister Linda Yankoski at Holy Family Institute said this week that the dozen youngsters who arrived after January's earthquake in Haiti are in the process of being matched up with families in a process that could take a couple months. A State Department official confirmed Wednesday that the Haitian government cleared the children for U.S. adoptions.
The 12 were part of a group of 54 children brought to Pittsburgh in a dramatic Jan. 18 airlift, orchestrated by Pennsylvania politicians -- notably, Gov. Ed Rendell and Rep. Jason Altmire, D-McCandless -- with the help of then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who gave the final OK. They came from the BRESMA orphanage in Port-au-Prince, where Ben Avon natives Jamie and Ali McMutrie sent out a call for help after the quake destroyed the building.
They have spent the past 10-plus months frolicking in a strange substance called snow, learning English and becoming as close as siblings, Sister Linda said.
"They've been together through a lot," she said. "They're doing exceptionally well."
Most of the kids have families back in Haiti who agreed to open adoptions with American families, and Holy Family is helping match the children with adoptive parents.
The remaining 42 BRESMA children, with as many as 1,200 others, can gain permanent legal status thanks to a bill that passed the House of Representatives by a unanimous voice vote Wednesday, clearing the way for President Barack Obama's signature.
The Help Haiti bill, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., sailed through the House and Senate, which amended the bill so it had to be passed once more in the House. But after listing the measure in a stack of noncontroversial "suspension" bills earlier this month, House Democratic leaders removed it, amid talk that it could be used as a vehicle to pass a more controversial immigration bill -- the Dream Act, which would grant amnesty to certain illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children, though their citizenship would be tied to benchmarks of military service or academic achievement.
McLane Layton -- president of Equality for Adopted Children, an organization that has lobbied for the bill -- said that without the Help Haiti bill, the Haitian orphans would have to wait two years before applying for citizenship because of their humanitarian status. The bill, when signed into law, will essentially treat the Haitian orphans the same as other international adopted children.
A swift path to citizenship is important, Ms. Layton said, because some parents have reported difficulties obtaining health insurance for the children, among other complications. Also, if the adoptive parents die during the wait for citizenship, it prevents the children from becoming citizens.
"There's a lot of risk to them being in this limbo status," she said.
"It's going to be another transition for them," Sister Linda said, "and our hope is to make it a very healthy and appropriate transition for them."
Daniel Malloy: dmalloy@post-gazette.com or 1-202-445-9980. Follow him on Twitter at PG_in_DC.
Access the full article here.
She's American, so make her a citizen
August 16, 2010
From the News-Press:
"After we were adopted, (my parents) should have filed for a certificate of citizenship for me and my sister, but they didn't," Stevens said. Both parents and her sister are dead.
Stevens hasn't gotten her citizenship and she's scared about what can happen when she applies.
An attorney she spoke with told her she would be "irrefutably deported" because she had voted without being a citizen.
A second attorney told her deportation was a possibility, but for $4,500 he would represent her in court.
Immigration attorney Margaret Wong said because Stevens voted believing she was a citizen, she should apply for citizenship and, "I think she'll be OK. Immigration is not that mean," Wong said.
But Stevens, a third-grade teacher in Bonita Springs, wouldn't have to go through any of this if McLane Layton, of Equality for Adopted Children, had her way.
Layton is president of the nonprofit organization committed to equal rights for people adopted from foreign countries.
Layton helped write the 2000 Child Citizenship Act when she was working for a U.S. senator. The act will prevent citizenship problems for many foreign-born adopted children.
What the act also does, Layton said, is exempt adoptees who didn't know they weren't citizens from being criminally penalized for voting.
So that, she said, should be one thing Stevens shouldn't worry about.
But even with the Child Citizen Act, citizenship problems crop up. The problems are not only with adults who find out decades after the adoption, but also children adopted from countries that are not part of the Hague Adoption Convention. In fiscal year 2009, that was 4,957 of the 12,753 children coming into the U.S. on adoption visas.
"There are lots of things parents have to take the time, make the effort, spend the money, and know about, to ensure their children are American citizens. And sometimes that doesn't happen," Layton said.
For that reason, Layton is trying to get Congress to pass the Foreign Adopted Children Equality Act.
The bill would allow people whose parents failed to apply for their citizenship to be automatically granted citizenship if they can show they were legally adopted and the immigration process was followed.
Most of these people came in as infants and toddlers. They didn't ask to immigrate or be adopted.
They shouldn't be punished because their parents didn't fill out paperwork.
Access the full article here.
Adopted overseas as children, they’re not U.S. citizens at all
August 15, 2010
From the News-Press:
“You have many hundreds if not thousands of children who were adopted and are here legally, but are not U.S. citizens and therefore not afforded all the protections of U.S. citizenship,” said Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the National Council For Adoption, an advocacy organization.
More than half of the children adopted overseas by American parents become U.S. citizens when they enter the country thanks to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. But the law doesn’t apply to anyone who was 18 or older on Feb. 27 , 2001.
“We’ve been in conversations with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of State and they know this is an ongoing problem,” Johnson said. “But no one has offered a fix.”
After adopting three siblings from eastern Europe, McLane Layton was surprised to find out the children aren’t citizens.
“They’re supposed to be treated like I had given birth to them,” she said.
Layton worked as legislative counsel to then-U.S. Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, and wrote the Child Citizenship Act before founding Equality for Adopted Children.
Layton’s group advocates for adopted children to have the same rights as any child of American parents. The group has been unsuccessful in getting legislation passed to cover older adoptees who did not obtain citizenship.
“It’s no fault of their own. It’s neglect and ignorance on the part of the parents,” Layton said. “The adoptee should not be punished in such a serious way because of the failure of their parents.”
Access the full article here.
AIDS And Adoption – Part 2: Adopting An HIV-Positive Child
October 8, 2009
From the The AIDS Beacon:
By Elisabeth PerniconeWhen Margaret Fleming, founder and executive director of Adoption-Link, an organization specializing in domestic and international adoption, discussed her plans several years ago to open an adoption agency for families in the United States looking to adopt HIV-positive children, people thought she was crazy.
At the time,“No one else was doing this and people didn’t think it was possible with insurance, immigration and other factors,” Fleming said.
However, in 2003 Chances by Choice was formed and has since placed about 60 HIV-positive children with families. The ages of these children range from infants and toddlers to older children about 10 years old.
Chances by Choice, a program of Adoption-Link since 2006, provides services for families looking to adopt children in third world countries, such as Haiti and Ethiopia. They are hoping to develop programs soon in Russia and Kazakhstan.
Fleming said that many people who want to adopt children with HIV are not first time adopters, since adoption in general is a big step. However, she has worked with individuals who planned on adopting a healthy baby, but ultimately adopted one with HIV.
“We often see larger families with a number of adoptive kids wanting to adopt those with HIV,” she said. Unlike many parental requirements at traditional adoption agencies, Chances by Choice’s only minimum requirement is that potential adopters are at least 21 years old. If adopters are married, it must be for at least one year. Chances by Choice does not discriminate and also welcomes unmarried and same sex couples. These same requirements apply for individuals looking to adopt a healthy child through their main program, Adoption-Link.
Since relatively few children with HIV are born in the U.S. today, most parents seeking HIV-positive children must look internationally. The process usually takes about a year and requires traveling to that country for a period of time, ranging from a few days to several weeks. For this reason, parents looking to adopt newborn infants find more success domestically.
Parents adopting a child with HIV must also have an extra document signed, an I-601 waiver of inadmissibility from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). People with a “communicable disease,” such as tuberculosis and HIV, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are required to have this waiver, since they are currently ineligible to receive a visa under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The I-601 waiver must be processed by the CDC, the state department, and the USCIS, and previously took from three to nine months to process. The waiver currently should take no more than 10 days to process, according to J. McLane Layton, founder and President of Equality for Adopted Children (EACH).
Layton is currently advocating for the waiver to be completely eliminated, which hopefully will take place in the next few years. However, earlier this year, an amendment was proposed that would lift the ban of HIV-positive individuals entering the country, at which time people with HIV could be eligible for a visa and therefore would not require the I-601 waiver (related Beacon news).
EACH is a non-profit organization that works to promote adoption polices and legislative changes to ensure that adopted children have the same legal rights as biological children in the U.S.
“When families adopt internationally, the government treats that child as an immigrant, not an American,” Layton said. “We [at EACH] are a voice for adoptive children and families on Capitol Hill.”
According to Layton, in most instances, the TB positive skin test is determined after the child has already been adopted and is waiting to travel to the U.S. However, the adopted child cannot enter the U.S until the results of the test have been returned.
About two weeks ago, after much media attention on this issue, the CDC issued an addendum to this protocol. If a child 10 years of age or under has a positive TB skin test, a mucus culture from the lungs is still required. However, while waiting for these results to return, if the mucus specimen is examined under a microscope and found to have no mycobacterium tuberculosis (the bacteria that causes TB), the child may travel to the U.S. The results of this rapid test take about three days. If it is negative, the child can immigrate into the U.S.
Success Stories
Both Fleming and Layton have also found success in their own lives with adopting international children. Fleming recalls the scene when she adopted her daughter with HIV from an orphanage in Vietnam.
“The women [at the orphanage] said to me, ‘Why do you want this baby? You don’t want her; you want a baby that is big and healthy.’ I told them, ‘No I want her,’” she said.
Layton has also adopted three siblings from an orphanage overseas, which inspired her to advocate for child adoption laws.
“If you want to make a big impact in the world, this is something to do,” Layton said.
Chances by Choice encourages families to look into adopting children with HIV. For more information about adopting HIV-positive children, visit the Chances by Choice Web site.
For individuals needing advice or having problems with the I-601 waiver form, visit Equality for Adopted Children.
Access the full article here.
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