Dear Parents of Intercountry Adoptees: Do These Two Things Today

US authorities have started to restrict documents that intercountry adopted people need to prove or secure their US citizenship. Here’s what parents of adult intercountry adopted people can and should do today to help.

1. Get a Certified Copy of Your Own Birth Record

To prove legal status, secure US citizenship, or obtain a US passport, an intercountry adopted person must typically provide proof that their adoptive parent(s) are US citizens. The best proof is a certified copy of a parent’s birth record showing birth in the United States. Until recently copies of these birth records were available in my clients’ immigration files. These records, however, are now being entirely withheld from release, often making it impossible to verify that the record is already in the USCIS file.

So, do your kid a solid: apply for and obtain a certified copy of your own birth record and give it to them, no questions asked. To be honest, given today’s “show me your papers” atmosphere, every person in the United States should consider having a US citizen parent’s birth record (or a naturalization certificate) as an additional document to possess. You never know when you may need it.

Why Do This? Proof of a parent’s US citizenship is almost always required for issuance of a US passport to an intercountry adopted person. It is also required to apply for or secure most immigration benefits, including a Certificate of Citizenship. Whether an adult child can get a certified copy of a parent’s birth record, however, is governed by 52 different vital records jurisdictions across the United States, plus US territories. While many states will allow an adult child to obtain a parents’ birth record, some do not. And sometimes obtaining it can be overly complicated, leading to significant delays in getting such a critical document. Believe me, I’ve sometimes spent weeks with a client trying to track down a parent’s birth record, then waiting weeks or months for a certified copy of that record to come in the mail.

Bonus Request. If applicable, obtain a certified copy of your marriage certificate if you were married at the time of your child’s adoption—and give it to your adult kid. While it may not technically be required for certain immigration benefits, it doesn’t hurt for me or for my clients to have this record (again, the record is typically in the USCIS file but it has, like other documents, been entirely withheld from release as part of the file).

2. Get a Copy of Your Kid’s Foreign or State-Issued Adoption Decree (or both)

Obviously, proof of a full and final adoption is necessary for an intercountry adopted person to secure US citizenship. But it’s not often easy to get a copy of a foreign decree, especially decades after an adoption and now that immigration authorities are now redacting or withhholding the record from my client’s immigration file. So, if you already have a copy of the foreign adoption decree, make an extra (legible!) copy and give it to your adult child. Same goes for a state-issued adoption decree. Get a certified copy and give it to your kid, no questions asked.

Learn more about what the Adoptees United Citizenship Clinic does and who it serves. The clinic could also use your support. 🙂

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Why Do This? Two reasons. One, a foreign adoption decree is already tough to get unless you already have a copy. And while the decree is very likely already in the immigration file, it’s not a good idea for me or my client to assume that it is—an erroneous assumption could lead to denial of an application, loss of a hefty USCIS filing fee, or worse.

And, two, a state court adoption decree is unlikely to be in the USCIS file because the adoption typically happened in state court AFTER my client-immigrated to the United States. On top of that, all 50 states plus the District of Columbia have various restrictive laws that often do not allow the release of a certified copy of the court’s adoption decree without a court order. Because of that, I’ve often had to petition or persuade state courts to release a client’s adoption decree so that we can apply for a Certificate of Citizenship. Sometimes that effort can take months to accomplish—assuming it can even be successful (as I write this, one of my client’s has been waiting weeks to hear back from a state court in Iowa, which has some of the strictest laws around release of adoption court records).

Why (or better yet WTF?) Well, state court adoption decrees in the Untied States are typically categorized as secret documents, not to be released unless you can show good cause to do so. This policy is basically the ongoing legacy of secretive US-based domestic adoptions—but that legacy also impacts intercountry adoptees whose adoptions were finalized in the same secretive state court proceedings. As I say in this article, which relates an ongoing years-long process to get critical documents out of a state court:

It’s incredibly frustrating if not insane and ultimately dangerous for intercountry adopted people . . . when they cannot get basic documents to prove they are lawfully in the United States.

So, if you can get it easily—and, frustratingly, parents but not adoptees can typically get copies of a state court’s adoption decree—secure a copy and give it to your kid. No. Questions. Asked.