Amendment #1222: Citizenship for Lawful Adoptees Amendment

This is a very important  and good news...Thanks to my friend Daniel Lee, Attorney at Law for providing me with this great information. - Steve Morrison

 

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Amendment #1222: Citizenship for Lawful Adoptees Amendment
Sponsored by Senator Landrieu,
Co-Sponsored by Senator Coats, Senator Blunt and Senator Klobuchar

Passed the Senate unanimously by voice vote on June 18, 2013

The bipartisan Citizenship for Lawful Adoptees Amendment provides technical but important fixes to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA) so that that the automatic citizenship provisions of this bill apply to all foreign born adoptees of American citizen parents. The amendment also makes two technical fixes to the CCA and the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

What the Amendment Does...

Ø Provides automatic U.S. citizenship to all foreign-born children lawfully adopted by U.S. families who turned 18 years old before the effective date of the CCA (February 27, 2001).

The intent of the CCA was to ensure that all internationally adopted children of American parents receive automatic U.S. citizenship just as they would have received citizenship if they had been born abroad to the same American parents. However, the CCA currently only applies to adoptees that were under the age of 18 when the bill went into effect on February 27, 2001. Adoptees over the age of 18 on the effective date, whose parents had failed to naturalize them during their minority, did not receive automatic citizenship. All adoptees are entitled to citizenship as children of U.S. citizens, and due to no fault of their own, many did not receive it during their minority and as a result have trouble applying for a passport, license, student financial aid and in some cases have even been deported to the country in which they were born. The Landrieu Amendment eliminates the age limit in the CCA so that the law retroactively applies to all international adoptees of American citizens, versus just those adoptees who were under the age of 18 on February 27, 2001.

Ø 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 provision is a technical fix that amends the CCA requirement that an adoptee be "residing" permanently in the U.S. in order for his or her citizenship to attach to simply being "physically present" in the U.S. for citizenship to attach. This clarification benefits adoptees of American families whose work requires them to live overseas such as those in the military or on the mission field.

Ø 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 (IR-3).

Currently, the INA requires that an adopted child be personally seen by both adoptive parents (if married), in order for the child to receive an IR3 visa that confers citizenship as soon as the child enters the U.S. (instead of entering on an IR4 visa, which requires re-adoption before citizenship attaches). This is particularly significant since adoptees who enter the U.S. on IR3 visas receive automatic U.S. citizenship under the CCA. Those who enter on IR3 visas do not have to go through the unnecessary expense of re-adopting domestically or pay the hefty fees and file the paperwork for a Certificate of Citizenship. This amendment requires 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 IR3 visa.