The Assumption of Citizenship: Why Intercountry Adoptees Are Left Out of the Conversation
There is a widespread and deeply rooted assumption that when a child is adopted internationally, citizenship automatically follows. It feels intuitive to many people. Adoption signals permanence, legal belonging, and family, so citizenship must be included too. But for thousands of intercountry adoptees, that assumption has proven dangerously false.
This misunderstanding has left adoptees overlooked in policy conversations, excluded from legal protections, and in some cases vulnerable to detention or deportation from the only country they have ever known as home.
It is time to name the assumption clearly and examine its consequences.
Adoption Does Not Automatically Mean Citizenship
Many people are surprised to learn that adoption and citizenship are not the same legal process.
Adoption establishes a parent-child relationship.
Citizenship establishes legal membership in a country.
While they often happen together, they are governed by different laws, handled through different systems, and historically have not always been completed at the same time.
In past decades, particularly before the Child Citizenship Act (CCA) of 2000, which took effect in February 2001 in the United States, citizenship for internationally adopted children was not automatic. Families had to complete a separate naturalization process after the adoption was finalized. This included additional applications, fees, interviews, and documentation. If these steps were missed or delayed, the child did not become a citizen, even if they were legally adopted and raised in the U.S.
The Child Citizenship Act was passed to address this gap. It granted automatic citizenship to many internationally adopted children under age 18, as long as specific requirements were met, including lawful permanent residency and finalized adoption status. However, the law was not retroactive. Adult adoptees who were already over 18 when the law took effect were left out, even if they had lived in the United States since early childhood.
In many cases, families were never fully informed about the earlier requirements, paperwork was mishandled, or systems failed altogether. Adoptees grew up believing they were citizens because everyone around them believed it too. They attended school, obtained driver’s licenses, worked jobs, paid taxes, and built families, only to later discover that their legal status had never been secured.
Assumption replaced verification, and adoptees carried the risk.
The Silence Around Adoptee Citizenship
Citizenship conversations often focus on immigration broadly, such as border policy, visas, and undocumented migration, but adoptees are rarely centered in these discussions. They fall into a blind spot between immigration systems and child welfare systems.
Because adoptees are raised in citizen families, speak the local language, and are culturally integrated, they are often perceived as unquestionably belonging. Their status is not questioned until a legal issue surfaces. By then, the adoptee is usually an adult and left to navigate a complex legal maze alone.
This silence has consequences:
Missing from Reform: Adoptees are frequently absent from broader immigration discussions.
Underestimated Need: Because the issue is "invisible," support services for impacted adults are limited.
The Identity Fracture: Discovering a lack of citizenship is more than a bureaucratic error; it is a traumatic event that challenges one’s very sense of belonging.
When a group is assumed to be protected, they are rarely prioritized for protection.
The Human Impact of a Paperwork Gap
When citizenship is never finalized, the consequences are far-reaching and severe. Some adoptees may face the loss of employment opportunities, barriers to higher education funding, the inability to travel, and the denial of public benefits. In the most serious cases, these gaps can lead to detention and deportation from the only country the adoptee has ever known.
These outcomes are not simply bureaucratic errors, they are identity fractures. Intercountry adoptees were placed through legal systems intended to create permanence and belonging. Discovering that one’s legal status is incomplete can be destabilizing and traumatic.
This raises a profound ethical question: If a child was placed through a government-recognized adoption process, should the burden of correcting systemic citizenship failures fall on the adoptee decades later? Many adoptee advocates argue that it should not.
Why Assumptions Persist
The assumption that adoption equals citizenship continues for several reasons.
It feels morally logical. People believe that if adoption is permanent, citizenship must be too. Systems are fragmented: adoption and immigration processes historically operated separately. Adoptees are not visibly categorized - they are rarely counted or tracked in immigration narratives. The issue is uncomfortable: It challenges the belief that adoption systems always produce secure outcomes.
Moral logic does not replace legal reality, and discomfort does not erase harm.
Centering Adoptee Voices
Adoptee advocates have been raising awareness about citizenship gaps for years. Their work emphasizes a simple truth. Adoptees should not have to prove they belong in the countries that placed them through legal adoption systems.
Citizenship is more than a legal status. It provides access to safety, mobility, opportunity, and protection. When adoptees are excluded from citizenship conversations, their lived realities are overlooked and their vulnerabilities continue.
Centering adoptee voices shifts the conversation from assumption to accountability.
Moving From Assumption to Action
Correcting this issue requires more than awareness. It requires policy clarity, administrative follow-through, and public understanding. It means letting go of the comforting myth that adoption automatically resolves citizenship status.
Important questions include:
Are adoptive families clearly informed of citizenship requirements?
Are post-adoption legal processes verified and tracked?
Are adult adoptees given accessible pathways to resolve status gaps?
Are adoptees included in immigration and citizenship reform efforts?
Assumptions simplify stories. Reality requires precision.
Belonging Should Not Be Conditional
No adoptee should reach adulthood and discover that their place in their country is uncertain because of an assumption made on their behalf.
The conversation about citizenship must include adoptees, not as an afterthought, but as a responsibility.
Stay Informed and Get Involved:
Intercountry Adoptee Rights and Safety Guide: What to Know in 2026
Support: Follow the work of adoptee-led organizations on the front lines: