More Paperwork After Coming Home with My Child?
The reasons behind readopting and obtaining citizenship

The arrival home with your new son or daughter is exciting, overwhelming, and stressful all at the same time.  Families return to the United States jet lagged, sleep deprived, and worn out from all of the excitement and anxiety they have experienced over the last few weeks.  There is no time to rest because you must establish eating and sleeping schedules, attend doctor visits, complete the post placement paperwork, schedule a meeting with your social worker, and of course let’s not forget introduce the precious gift that you have just received to the world.  It’s exhausting just to think about all that.  Before you have a chance to settle in, you are inundated with making many decisions, including should you readopt your child and, later, what to do about citizenship. 

At this point, one more piece of adoption paperwork could very well send you over the edge.  Some of the many thoughts that race through your mind as you contemplate subjecting yourself to spending any more time, money, and energy completing a process that you believed was done are:  What is this readoption?  Is it really necessary?  Most importantly, I thought I completed my adoption when I boarded a plane, flew 20 hours, traveled several hours by bus to the orphanage, and stood in line at the U.S. Embassy patiently waiting for them to process my paperwork and finalize my adoption.

Before beginning to answer these questions, let us be clear in saying if your child entered the U.S. on an IR-3 visa, then the adoption was finalized abroad and readoption is optional.  That’s right, you do not have to do it.  HOWEVER, you should do it.  Readopting your son or daughter ensures that you have complied with state and foreign adoption laws, eliminating any confusion surrounding your child's legal status.  Several of our parents have moved out of California prior to readopting and found that their new home state did not recognize a final adoption decree from another country.  Also, depending on the new state’s adoption/readoption requirements, you may have to obtain a new homestudy as well as go through additional post placement meetings before readopting in that state’s courts.

There are two additional reasons to complete this process.  First, the Social Security Administration, a branch of the federal government, is administered under state law.  For social security purposes, many state laws do not recognize foreign adoption decrees as full and final.  Consequently, children must have a U.S. adoption decree before being eligible for social security benefits, including disability, death or retirement benefits.  Second, the college admissions process is the result of the autonomy that colleges have operating as independent entities.  Many colleges will not offer grants and scholarships unless the child has a U.S. adoption decree.

BAAS staff have spoken with many adoptive parents of high school seniors applying for financial aid or scholarship funds who are dismayed to learn, only after completing the mounds of paperwork, that the student is ineligible to receive benefits because they do not have a U.S. adoption decree.  College may seem a long way off right now, but your children will be teenagers before you know it.  The college admissions process is overwhelming to say the least.  The fewer obstacles you have to face the better!

The bottom line is that there are many benefits to completing the readoption process:  receiving a state issued adoption decree, a state birth certificate, and a legal name change for your child.  Many states will not issue a birth certificate for your child until the readoption process is complete.  Most importantly, families are able to duplicate the U.S. adoption decree and birth certificate as many times as necessary with minimal time and expense.  (Remember how many birth certificates you needed in order to adopt?  If you had to go overseas to obtain a copy, can you imagine how long it would take or how much it would cost, if you could get one?)  Readoption is an important part of the post placement process.  Though the choice is yours, BAAS strongly recommends that all families complete this process.

OK, so now you've gone through the re-adopt process and are probably thinking to yourself: "Whew!  I am finally done with all that paperwork!"  Well....not quite yet.  There is one final, but crucial, step in order to complete the process for you and your new son or daughter.  You are going to need the Certificate of Citizenship and a US passport.  Families who adopted their children abroad after 2004 and returned on an IR-3 visa have the Certificate of Citizenship covered;  by entering the U.S. on an IR-3 visa, the child becomes an automatic U.S. citizen and his or her Certificate of Citizenship will be sent to the family home within 45 to 60 days of arrival in the U.S.   They will need to apply for a US passport.

However, if you are reading this and you adopted your child before 2004 and he or she entered the country on an IR-3 or IR-4 visa, then this would not apply to your situation and you would need to apply for citizenship.

Children entering on an IR-4 visa, those whose families have completed guardianship from countries such as India, the Philippines and Ethiopia, are entering as permanent residents and do not qualify for automatic citizenship under the Child Citizenship Act (CCA).  These families are required to finalize their adoption in the State of California court in their county of residence.  Through the finalization process, your child becomes an automatic citizen.  So, what's the catch?  Although the child will be a US citizen after the adoption is finalized, you will not receive a Certificate of Citizenship unless you apply for citizenship through US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) by filing the N-600 form.  You can apply for a US passport after the finalization without filing the N-600.   However, families should do both.  USCIS issues the Certificate of Citizenship.  The US State Department issues the US passport.  As separate entities, each group has its own mission and enforcement powers.  USCIS is the group that declares your child to be a citizen and the Certificate of Citizenship is proof that the child’s status is changed to citizen in the USCIS database.

In this day and age, BAAS cannot emphasize enough the importance of filing this form.  Because of tightening security measures across the country, the risk of adopted children running into problems is very real.  A family who adopted their child long ago but never filed for their child's citizenship is currently in a bind.  The adopted child, now over eighteen, ran into some legal problems and is currently facing possible deportation because the now adult child still has permanent resident status.  While no one wants to think that their child would ever get into trouble like this, and the vast majority won't, the old saying "better to be safe than sorry" becomes even more relevant now.  Without that Certificate of Citizenship, there is the possibility that a child can be viewed as a permanent resident, not a U.S. citizen, even if the child’s adoption has been finalized.  This possibility is small but exists nonetheless. 

For this reason, BAAS highly recommends families apply for U.S. citizenship once they return home.  Also, it is important to obtain citizenship while the child is still a minor, younger than 18 years old.  After 18, the child is considered an adult and will then have to apply for naturalization in the same way that adult permanent residents do, and will have to take the naturalization test (which children under 18 years of age do not take).

After readopting, going through the U.S. citizenship interview, taking the oath and becoming a U.S. citizen, you and your child can finally, rightly, say, "Whew! I am finally done with all that paperwork!" and mean it.  And your child will have the California Birth Certificate (or equivalent from another state), a social security card, the Certificate of Citizenship and a US passport, the most important documents of all.

*Excerpt taken from Legal Eaze article, Readoption—The Advantages.
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