Adoptee Citizenship Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, last week, I cosponsored H.R. 5233, The Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2018. This is bipartisan legislation that seeks to make an important correction to U.S. adoption law.

Currently, when a child is legally adopted by an American parent and is raised by the family here in the U.S., they automatically acquire U.S. citizenship. However, when Congress updated the law, it failed to address the situation for thousands of families with previously adopted children. We need to correct that, which is why I support H.R. 5233.

This legislation does not create a new loophole that allows anyone to game the system These are individuals who legally entered the U.S. They were legally adopted as children, and they grew up here believing they were U.S. citizens. Unfortunately, through no fault of the children, adoptive parents in several thousand cases failed to properly file all of the citizenship papers on behalf of their adoptive children, often not realizing that it was even necessary after completion of the legal adoption process. If you were legally adopted by an American family, entered the U.S. legally as a child, and raised in the United States, you are an American. I look forward to working with both my Republican and Democratic colleagues on this bipartisan effort.

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