Adoption of Noah from Finally Family

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Child Citizen Act
Becomes Effective

from Finally Family

On October 30, 2000 former President Bill Clinton signed the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (“The Act”).The Act, which makes virtually all children adopted overseas U.S. Citizens, became effective on February 27, 2001.

The Act applies to both adopted and biological children of U.S. citizens and amends Section 320 of the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA") to provide for automatic acquisition of U.S. citizenship when certain conditions have been met. Specifically, these conditions are:

One parent is a U.S. citizen by birth or through naturalization; The child is under the age of 18; The child is residing in the United States as a lawful permanent resident alien and is in the legal and physical custody of the U.S. citizen parent; and If the child is adopted, the adoption must be final.

Under prior law, internationally adopted children did not automatically become citizens upon their admission into the United States as immigrants. Rather, they were only admitted to the U.S. as permanent residents, i.e., holders of a “green card”. Parents of these children were required to apply to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a Certificate of Citizenship. This process takes several years in some jurisdictions. Moreover, since the children were only permanent residents rather than citizens, they were subject to deportation for committing crimes – regardless of how long they lived in the U.S. In fact, over the past few years there have been many unfortunate cases of adopted children who did not, through oversight, obtain a certificate of citizenship and as a result were placed in deportation proceedings because of the commission of a crime.This Act prevents this from occurring because, for the most part, citizens are not subject to deportation.

Regulations interpreting the Act and setting out the procedures for acquiring a passport for adopted citizens have yet to be passed. We will publish more details about the Act and its implementation after regulations are in place.