Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Gratefulness

Adoptees and immigrants are always supposed to be grateful. We’re never supposed to criticize the United States nor the people who adopted us. After all, we’re lucky enough to have been given a chance to live the American Dream. We were saved from horrible Third World Countries where we would have been working in factories making cheap goods for Wal-Mart. Or worse. We hear, “Women are treated horribly in the countries where we were born. “America” is better, the best country, ever! Shut up and don’t make waves. In your country you don’t have the freedom to say anything against the government so how dare you complain?!”

But the adoption industry created the market for children and babies. The United States funded wars that orphaned us and impoverished our countries and our families. We're supposed to be grateful that the United States (one of the many American countries) colonized our countries, by sending missionaries, military, and merchants. Some families driven to desperation migrated from their ancestral homes, their families, their professions, and their lives. Others gave up their children.

For this we're supposed to be grateful.

"Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful" - The Reverend Keith C. Griffith

From Transracial Korean Adoptee Nexus

Thanks to Nate James Bae Kupel at Transracial Korean Adoptee Nexus.


Joon Hyun Kim’s case once again illustrates the fateful convergence of decisions made and not made by adoptive parents and adoptees, who are eventually left to confront the issues of ethnicity and nationality by themselves and without much guidance.


Dorothy Romriell was finally being sworn in on Monday, ending an ambiguous chapter in her life that began five years ago when she applied for a U.S. passport, only to learn that she never became a citizen back in 1956 when she was adopted by the family of a U.S. Air Force member stationed in South Korea.


There is a fairly large constituency of Asian adoptees in Massachusetts who are not citizens


Dan Heiskala...was adopted at the age of 5, yet was never naturalized as a citizen by his a-parents (Adoptive Parents). His legal battle over his illegal status began in 1992 when he was convicted of stealing a truck which he alleges was false. Per counseled instruction, he did not testify on his behalf and was found guilty by trial resulting in a 7-10 year sentence.