Korean Woman, Adopted as Infant, Facing Deportation in Arizona

Korean Woman, Adopted as Infant, Facing Deportation in Arizona

http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/archive/2011/01/korean-woman-adopted-infant-facing-deportation-arizona

Originally posted at New America Media
by Seung Woo Park/Translation: Aruna Lee
A Korean woman in Arizona, who was adopted and brought to the US when she was eight months old, is facing deportation after a second conviction for theft, reports the Korea Times. The 31-year-old mother of three is currently being held in a federal detention center in Arizona.

According to officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Seo (not her real name) was first convicted on theft charges in 2008, for which she served a seven-month sentence. She was arrested on a second theft charge in 2009, and sentenced to a year-and-half in jail. In January, ICE initiated deportation proceedings against her, requesting for a travel certificate from the Korean consulate in Los Angeles.

Officials say the decision to deport the woman was based on the nature of her crimes and on the likelihood of repeat offenses. Current law stipulates that legal residents can be deported if they are convicted for crimes involving drugs, prostitution or other nefarious activities, or if they are sentenced to more than a year in prison.

The Korean consulate, meanwhile, has requested that the deportation decision be withdrawn for humanitarian reasons, citing the fact that the woman has never returned to her country of birth since her adoption, her inability to speak Korean and her three children, all of whom were born in the United States.

According to Korea’s L.A. Consul General Jae-soo Kim, it would be “impossible for the woman to live a normal life in Korea given that she has no contact with relatives or friends there.” That aside, he adds, being a single mother, her deportation would leave her three children at the mercy of government institutions.

“Although [she] was adopted as an infant, she is only a green card holder and not a citizen,” says Kim, adding that adoption laws were changed after 2004, long after Seo’s adoption, to grant adoptees citizenship 45 days after their arrival in the country. “I’m not sure why she never applied for citizenship as an adult,” he says.

According to ICE, a large number of adoptees have been deported in recent years. Many of them said they were unaware of their non-citizen status.

“For the sake of Seo and her three children I hope ICE reconsiders their decision to deport her.”

Adopted boy at center of immigration dispute

The case is more than tragic, argued the Guatemalan ambassador to the United States — it's a symbol of the ongoing national and international debate about what to do with immigration policy in America. "We believe this is a very unfortunate result of the problems of immigration policy in this country," said Ambassador Francisco Villagran de Leon, who attended the arguments before the court and has been providing support to Romero. "Children of undocumented immigrants should not be given up in adoption just because they are here illegally." Romero was one of 136 alleged undocumented immigrants picked up at a raid of a Barry County chicken processing plant in May 2007 and later charged with various offenses related to the illegal use of false or stolen Social Security numbers. While Romero was in jail, her child, an infant at the time, was passed around among family members before eventually being adopted privately by the Mosers.

The full article is here.

Thanks to Ethica.

La MesaPatch's adoptee story problematic

This article bothers me a lot.

The story which put me on the defensive early into the article was this one:

His knowledge of American culture was even shakier. So when his first term paper in European history came back with a red-penciled B, the 16-year-old had no idea what it meant. In Korea, grades were percentages—100%, 90%, 80%, etc.
"I didn't want to reveal how stupid I was," said Spackman, who today turned 71 and Saturday was inducted into his alma mater's Hall of Honor. But a "beautiful blonde" nearby had an A, and "she's too pretty to be smart."
Spackman surmised that A stood for average—and B "must mean bad."

How cute! The socially inept Asian male who of course finds the blonde beautiful. Later the article says that he was rendered mute by a beauty queen (presumably white) so on TV he became the stereotypical bumbling dorky Asian kid. Awwww! What a heartwarming story!

It glorifies the 1950s and the Eisenhower era as some utopia. Remember the 1950s? Conform to white, middle class, hetero-normative, nuclear family ideals, or else! Forget about the codified racism of the era because we could leave our doors unlocked. Nevermind the establishment of the domination of the "military industrial complex" (Eisenhower's own words) that now is symbolized by firms like Haliburton. Oh, and remember the H-bomb and nuclear attack drills in schools? What a idyllic time that was!

It says that "in 1951, getting permission to emigrate wasn't easy." That's quite an understatement! In fact it was impossible. Racist quotas were in place from 1923-1965 which allowed only Europeans to immigrate to the U.S. And, only northern or western Europeans at that. No Italians, Greeks, Poles, or Russians permitted! (Western hemisphere (Latin American) immigration was unrestricted then but that's a matter for another post)

Other problems with this article:

• It does it does a lot to validate the model minority myth of the studious Asian who learns English in a matter of months and excels academically.
• It calls James an orphan although it says that he was separated from his mother.
• It presents success as corporate success.
• It presents racial isolation as a good experience.

Missouri high court to consider immigrant adoption case

By MARIA SUDEKUM FISHER
The Associated Press
The Missouri Supreme Court agreed this week to review the case of a woman from Guatemala who said she never consented to her son's adoption while she was in jail for immigration violations.

The boy, now nearly 4, was adopted in 2008 after his biological mother, Encarnacion M. Bail Romero, was caught up in an immigration sweep at a Barry County poultry plant. Romero, who has served her sentence, has been seeking custody.
An appellate court overturned a lower-court decision that gave custody to adoptive parents Seth and Melinda Moser of Carthage, Mo.
The appeals panel said the lower court lacked authority to grant the adoption and cited state laws that were intended "to prohibit the indiscriminate transfer of children, meaning that someone could not pass a child around like chattel."
At the time of Romero's arrest, her son was being cared for by her family members. After her arrest, those relatives sought help from a Carthage couple, according to the appeals decision.
That couple took care of the baby during the week and returned him to his aunt on the weekend.
In September 2007, the Carthage couple heard the Mosers were looking to adopt. After a 10-day visitation period, the child went to live with the Mosers in October 2007, according to the appeals decision.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/09/23/2246107/missouri-high-court-to-consider.html#ixzz10VHRZlUm

Via Ethicanet.org