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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 22nd of February, 2022.

You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we’re really glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up on The World and Everything in It: American citizenship for people adopted from outside the country.

You probably just assumed that a legal adoption would include citizenship for the child. New family, new country, new citizen. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

REICHARD: But it doesn’t always. International adoptees sometimes find out that while their adoptions were finalized years ago, their citizenship never was. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill that could change that. WORLD’s Lauren Dunn reports.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Joy Alessi was adopted from Korea when she was 7 months old.

ALESSI: Some adoptees like myself came into the United States on a plane full of babies for the sole purpose of adoption.

That was in the 1960s. Alessi was adopted in California and grew up as an American. But in her 20s, when she applied for a passport for a trip to Mexico, she learned she wasn’t a U.S. citizen.

ALESSI: At that time, I was also told that if I had ever tried to apply for citizenship and resolve this issue, that essentially I could be in trouble because I had voted by then. And so the idea was that I could possibly be prosecuted, and then deported from the United States. And obviously, those words were enormously scary. And I was told that I should probably seek legal counsel.

Alessi is one of thousands of international adoptees who learned years after their adoption that they were not U.S. citizens. Often these adoptees don’t even know they aren’t citizens until they apply for a passport or school financial aid. Many are unsure of their legal status. In a few rare cases, some adult adoptees have been deported to their birth countries.

ALESSI: Lawyers continued to tell me, I should just be grateful that I have legal permanent residence, that at least I was able to work. And I shouldn't rock the boat, essentially.

Getting citizenship for adoptees is supposed to be part of the adoption process. And most get it without any problem. So how come some don’t?

Chelsea Sobolik is the public policy director at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

SOBOLIK: And I think it can be easy to say, Well, why didn't families just naturalize these individuals. Sometimes they weren't aware that they needed to naturalize them, or sometimes they thought they completed the process and didn't or there were some tragic cases where a parent died and paperwork was lost, and just a whole host of issues.

Congress tried to solve the problem in 2000 by passing a law that ensures every internationally-adopted child who comes to the United States becomes a U.S. citizen. It’s automatic, as long as the adoption is legal and finalized and at least one parent is a U.S. citizen.

But the new law only applied to adoptees who were under 18 when it was passed. Adoptees like Alessi, who were already adults by then, were left out.

Congressman John Curtis is a Republican from Utah.

CURTIS: It feels like it was unintentional that we let we left a loophole in it. And so when that bill was passed, if you were 18, at the time the bill passed, you didn't qualify even though you may have been very young when you were adopted as assistance into this country. So it feels like we just missed it in Congress, not like somebody intentionally said that these people should not be recipients.

Sobolik and others estimate about 30,000 adoptees fell through that loophole. Some still may not realize they aren’t citizens.

SOBOLIK: So the number is a little bit, it is an approximate number. And the reason for that is when some of these people realize they're not citizens, those agencies or organizations don't capture that information. You know, when you go to get a Social Security benefit and find out you're not a citizen, they don't ask you, were you adopted? So these are the best estimates based off of where adoptions are happening at the time...

Earlier this month the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Adoptee Citizenship Act as part of the broader America COMPETES Act. It grants citizenship for international adoptees legally brought to the country before they turned 18.

The Senate passed its version of the America COMPETES Act last summer. But it did not include the Adoptee Citizenship Act. There are other differences between the House and Senate versions, so the bill will go to conference committee before returning to both chambers for a final vote.

This isn’t the first time the Adoptee Citizenship Act has been considered in Congress. But this year is the first time the measure has passed in the House. And Sobolik says the bill has plenty of support.

SOBOLIK: The bill writ large really does enjoy broad bipartisan support, both in Congress, and then a lot of advocacy groups, whether it's faith based groups like ours, or child welfare groups, or adoption advocates are supportive of this bill and supportive of a fix, because this should have been done, you know, 22 years ago at this point, and it hasn't.

The issue is personal for Sobolik. She was adopted from Romania as an infant in 1991 and naturalized as a U.S. citizen. She and her husband Michael are in the process of adopting from India.

SOBOLIK: Adopting from other countries is a privilege and not a right. And so this is a way of signaling to partner countries that we will continue to honor our promises and that we will take the utmost care and concern of the people that we have adopted from their countries.

Joy Alessi became an American citizen a few years ago. She now directs the Adoptee Rights Campaign, an advocacy group that has raised awareness on this issue and helped adoptees. She says the House passage of the bill is a big step.

ALESSI: So I think the key is to continue raising support from both sides of the aisle. We definitely are going in that direction. So, you know, bipartisan support is tremendously important. If we can keep it on that track, then I think we'll do well.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

One more thing, last summer I joined 25 college students and recent graduates for a two-week journalism intensive: “WORLD Journalism Institute.”

Nearly every voice you hear on this program and almost every writer you read in WORLD magazine or WORLD digital went through the WJI training program.

At WJI I learned to start asking questions and talk to people even when I felt nervous. And I was reminded that we don't need to worry about frightening headlines: the sky is not falling, our instructors told us, because God holds up the sky.

So if you’re interested in studying journalism grounded in facts and God’s word—or know a young person who is—WJI is currently accepting applications for the May course at Dordt University.

Apply online at WJI.world.

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