The American adoptees who fear deportation to a country they can't remember

[Jilly_in_VA]

Shirley Chung was just a year old when she was adopted by a US family in 1966.

Born in South Korea, her birthfather was a member of the American military, who returned home soon after Shirley was born. Unable to cope, her birth mother placed her in an orphanage in the South Korean capital, Seoul.

"He abandoned us, is the nicest way I can put it," says Shirley, now 61.

After around a year, Shirley was adopted by a US couple, who took her back to Texas.

Shirley grew up living a life similar to that of many young Americans. She went to school, got her driving licence and worked as a bartender.

"I moved and breathed and got in trouble like many teenage Americans of the 80s. I'm a child of the 80s," Shirley says.

Shirley had children, got married and became a piano teacher. Life carried on for decades with no reason to doubt her American identity.

But then in 2012, her world came crashing down.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy1n438dk4o

This is criminal. Obama or Biden should have taken care of this years ago.

[underpants]

1. I had absolutely no idea adoptees weren't just given citizenship. No idea.

This should’ve been the standard/rule decades before Obama or Biden.

Shirley is not alone. Estimates of how many American adoptees lack citizenship range from 18,000 to 75,000. Some intercountry adoptees may not even know they lack US citizenship.


So the babies airlifted out of Vietnam weren’t given citizenship?




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Babylift

[dalton99a]

3. They may be at risk for deportation to Vietnam or Sudan or wherever:

https://www.voanews.com/a/despite-adoption-vietnamese-american-did-not-become-citizen/3898082.html

Despite Adoption by US Parents, Vietnamese-American Did Not Become Citizen
June 13, 2017 5:45 AM
By Aline Barros

SEATTLE — Vietnamese American Kristopher Larsen learned he was not a U.S. citizen when he was in Washington State prison serving time for kidnapping – and he was confronted with the possibility of deportation. He was in his early forties and had never thought of himself as anything but a U.S. citizen.

Larsen is one of thousands of foreign nationals adopted by American parents who do not have U.S. citizenship status because their parents did not follow through on naturalization.

He was only four when he left Vietnam to begin a new life as the adopted son of an American military family.

It was 1975. With the imminent end of the Vietnam War, President Gerald Ford ordered the evacuation of Vietnamese orphans during a mission known as Operation Babylift. Larsen was one of those children.

...

[Ms. Toad]

2. Here's the case that started it all, from the town I worked in at the time

Last edited Sat Nov 1, 2025, 12:52 PM - Edit history (1)

Joao Herbert, the adopted son of a Wadsworth couple who was brought to the United States from a South American orphanage as a child, then deported at 22 on a drug charge, was found shot to death Tuesday in his native Brazil.

He was 26.

. . .

Although Nancy Saunders and Jim Herbert adopted the youngster from a Brazilian orphanage as an 8-year-old, American citizenship was not automatic -- a law that has since changed.

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2014/05/27/may-27-2004-deported-man/10599084007/

Unfortunately, the law was changed going forward, not retroactively - leaving many of those adopted as children from our time in Vietnam and Korea at risk

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. Who are you directing that to?

I didn't work in Akron. Never have. I did work briefly in Cincinnati, but never Akron or Wadworth.

[Ms. Toad]

5. Typo.

Should have said I, not 'u"

I was responding to the content of the post v with more information about the case that triggered the change in the law to protect more recent adoptees, but wasn't retroactive to protect the person in the article you posted - or all of the children adopted from the Korean or Vietnam, after our involvement there.