Immigrants face paternity testing for citizenship
By Rachel Swarns
The New York Times
Published: Tuesday, April 10, 2007

MINNEAPOLIS - For 14 years, Isaac Owusu's faraway boys have tugged at his heart. They sent report cards from his hometown in Ghana and painstaking letters in fledgling English while he scrimped and saved to bring them here one day.

So when he became an American citizen and officials suggested taking a DNA test to prove his relationship to his four sons, he embraced the notion. Imagine, he marveled as a lab technician rubbed the inside of his cheek, a tiny swab of cotton would reunite his family.

But modern-day science often unearths secrets long buried. When the DNA results landed on Isaac Owusu's dinner table here last year, they showed that only one of the four boys - the oldest - was his biological child.

Federal officials are increasingly turning to genetic testing to verify the biological bonds between new citizens and the overseas relatives they hope to bring here, particularly those from war-torn or developing countries where identity documents can be scarce or doctored.

But while the tests often lead to joyful reunions among immigrant families, they are forcing others to confront unexpected and sometimes unbearable truths.

For Isaac Owusu, a widower, the revelation has forced him to rethink nearly everything he had taken for granted about his life and his family.

It has left him struggling to accept what was once unthinkable: that his deceased wife had long been unfaithful; that the children he loves are not his own; and that his long efforts to reunite his family in this country may have been in vain.

The State Department let his oldest son, now 23, come to the United States last fall, but said the others - a 19-year-old and 17-year-old twins - cannot come because they are not biologically related to him.

Isaac Owusu, is still hoping the government will allow the teenagers to join him, arguing that he has been a devoted stepfather, if not a biological parent.

But in recent months, he says, he has simply unraveled.

``Sometime when I get in bed, I don't sleep,'' said Isaac Owusu, 51, who works for an electrical equipment distributor and an auto supply shop here.

``I say to myself, `Why this one happen to me?' '' he asked, his eyes wet with tears.

A similar sense of shock is reverberating through other families across the country as genetic testing becomes more common.

State Department and Homeland Security officials do not keep statistics on the number of DNA tests taken by new citizens or permanent residents, who are allowed to bring some close relatives to the United States if they can document their family ties.

But Mary Mount, a DNA testing expert for the AABB - formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks - estimates that about 75,000 of the 390,000 DNA cases that involved families in 2004 were immigration cases. Of those, she estimates, roughly 15 percent to 20 percent do not produce a match.

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