Thread: Foreign adoptees are living in legal limbo

Foreign adoptees are living in legal limbo

Immigration status unresolved before children's arrival

By Leslie Berestein and David Hasemyer
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS

October 20, 2008

Almost 17 years after Nick and Alice Zizzo adopted a brown-eyed, chubby-cheeked baby girl through San Diego County's child welfare system, she came home one day bubbling that her high school choir was going to Europe.


The Rancho San Diego couple helped their daughter, Stephanie, apply for a passport in fall 2006, then waited for it to arrive. What they received instead was a piece of stupefying news from the federal government: Stephanie wasn't a U.S. citizen. She wasn't even in the country legally.

County officials have acknowledged putting Stephanie Zizzo and at least four other adoptees born in other countries, including Mexico and Kenya, in legal limbo by not resolving their immigration status before adoption.

In the year and a half since the cases began to surface, the county has updated its policies to require that a child's legal residency be established before they leave the system. But no one knows how many children were adopted without it, or what they'll face trying to stay in the only country they've known.

Online: For more information, call County of San Diego Adoptions at (877) 423-6788. To read the stories of two other families, go to uniontrib.com/more/adoption

“After all these years thinking everything was OK, to hear that there were problems was stunning,â€

All the pro-illegal groups like LaRaza do everything they can for illegal aliens who steal jobs and everything else from Americans, but nothing for these children who are basically Americans.

Why weren't these children returned to their country of origin? That is who should be setting up their adoptions.

Good example of Liberals making a decision to adopt them out(what they think is best), instead of returning them home. Besides, how do these people know that these children don't have a parent or family back in their home country looking for them, when they don't even know where they are from?

Isn't that child abduction?

Dixie

I adopted my 6 year old daughter in the Philippines in 2004. The total cost was 18 hundred dollars and the process took 2 years and it was one of the happiest days of my life when it was over. These people had problems because they took the word of somebody that was probably only interested in the money that she got paid for the kid. If that kid was born in Mexico then they should have gone through the immigration and visa process as the law requires just like I did. It is a tedious process but things will not come back to haunt you as the years go by.

I would have thought that the adoption process alone would give these kids a right to be in this country and bestow citizenship, as long as the adoptive parents are Americans. Since these children adopted were minors, I would think the adoptive parents' nationality would also apply.
What a confusing mess! Sounds like this should end up before the Supreme Court.

Originally Posted by vortex

I would have thought that the adoption process alone would give these kids a right to be in this country and bestow citizenship, as long as the adoptive parents are Americans. Since these children adopted were minors, I would think the adoptive parents' nationality would also apply.
What a confusing mess! Sounds like this should end up before the Supreme Court.

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It is real confusing and it takes a lawyer to make sure everything is legal. Even though my daughter has my last name she has to go through citizenship requirements. I even had to go through 2 separate criminal background checks by the Philippine NBI before the paperwork started moving along. And it moves at a snails pace.

Originally Posted by loneprotester

It is real confusing and it takes a lawyer to make sure everything is legal. Even though my daughter has my last name she has to go through citizenship requirements. I even had to go through 2 separate criminal background checks by the Philippine NBI before the paperwork started moving along. And it moves at a snails pace.

It sounds like your adoption was harder than ours (Chinese orphan). We didn't have a lawyer, the Chinese government was very easy to deal with compared with the US Government, the entire process took less than a year.
Also we only had to pay a small fee to get her citizenship certificate one year after the adoption was final.

Our Government bends over backwards for China, Saudi Arabia and our southern neighbor.

Bless you all that have adopted, as these munchkins need the best us grown-ups can give them.