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€