Issue 80 • JUNE 13, 2024
Good morning, and welcome to The Yappie’s AAPI politics briefing — your guide to the policy news and activism affecting Asian Americans + Pacific Islanders. S
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— Edited by Shawna Chen
THE BIG STORY
A naturalization ceremony. Photo: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
New bill could grant citizenship to thousands of U.S. adoptees
The Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2024 would grant U.S. citizenship to international adoptees—many from South Korea—who were legally adopted as children but lacked citizenship due to a loophole in U.S. law.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
The proposed legislation aims to grant certain international adoptees “full access to their rights as American citizens,” according to Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington), who introduced the bill alongside Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) and Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai‘i) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Details: The new bill closes a loophole in the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA) that left thousands of legal adoptees born between 1945 and 1998 without citizenship.
CCA automatically granted citizenship to any international adoptees who were under the age of 18 at the time or adopted after CCA’s effective date in February 2001.
Adoptees older than 18 at the time of CCA’s implementation were not covered by its protections, however.
More than 49,000 international adoptees lacked U.S. citizenship after CCA was enacted, despite being legally adopted into the U.S. as children, according to the Adoptee Rights Campaign.
Up to 20,000 of those impacted are from South Korea, per an estimate by the Korean American Grassroots Conference.
Case in point: Adopted from South Korea in 1967, Adoptee Rights Campaign director Joy Alessi and her family always assumed she had citizenship. She found out the truth when her application for a passport was denied but says she did not receive U.S. citizenship until she turned 52 in 2019.
In her words: “You can’t work and you can’t drive and you can’t move around … It’s an injustice that’s just never been corrected,” Alessi told USA Today’s Marisa Kwiatkowski in 2020.
A similar bill was proposed in 2019, but made no progress.
“As the father to two adopted children, I can’t imagine the uncertainty and anxiety faced by these adoptees who were legally adopted in our country, but are now being told they aren’t U.S. citizens,” Bacon said in a recent press release. “While this situation was rectified for newly adopted children when the law was passed in 2000, adoptees from before that year were left in limbo land.”
Historical context: The U.S. saw the beginnings of a wave of international adoptions in the wake of World War II, primarily from countries such as Russia, China, South Korea, Guatemala, and Vietnam.
Families often had to struggle through long, often confusing paperwork and processes to apply for U.S. citizenship if they adopted children internationally.
After the Korean War ended in 1953, more than 150,000 Korean children were adopted into the U.S., according to 2000 PBS documentary “First Person Plural.”
South Korean adoptees create what some call “the world's largest diaspora of adoptees,” the Associated Press’ Kim Tong-Hyung writes.
The number of new international adoptions in the U.S. decreased from almost 23,000 in 2004 to 1,500 in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of State.
— By
Katrina Pham
AAPI NATION
NUMBER OF THE WEEK
71
That’s the percentage of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander adults who support K-12 public schools teaching issues related to race, a new AAPI Data survey shows.That includes topics like slavery, racism, and segregation along with AAPI histories. “Even as parents are concerned and engaged in various ways with K-12 education, the culture wars are not something that resonate with AAPI parents,” Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of AAPI Data, told Associated Press’ Annie Ma and Linley Sanders. “I think that’s important because there’s so much news coverage of it and certainly a lot of policy activity.”
Books on display for AAPI Heritage Month. Photo: UCCS Kraemer Family Library via Flickr
👉 Here’s what else is happening across America...
⛑️ The University of Hawai'i, National Association of Pasifika Organizations, and Papa Ola Lōkahi received a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to assist support trusted community health workers in Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities, even if they lack formal training.
Their project aims to help NHPIs feel more comfortable engaging these health workers for treatment, especially for chronic diseases.
🗳️ New Jersey Senate candidate Andy Kim will advance to the November election after winning the Democratic primary. An exit poll found that more than 77% of Asian Americans who voted in the election backed Kim, who currently serves in the House.
❤️🩹 The newly founded Healing Our People Through Engagement (HOPE) is piloting a program to help the five largest Asian communities in Los Angeles respond to past and ongoing racism, AsAmNews’ Selen Oztur writes.
Details: Overseen by AAPI Equity Alliance, HOPE “emphasizes healing rather than simply coping with the traumatic impacts of racism by helping communities see how their experiences are connected to histories of injustice and brainstorming actions we can take to protect our own well-being,” said program designer Anne Saw.
🏔️ The Maui County Council approved a $1.7 billion spending plan for the new fiscal year, its first budget since the wildfires last year, Honolulu Civil Beat’s Nathan Eagle reports. The funds will be used for capital improvements, affordable housing, and emergency management.
🚧 The Philadelphia “Chinatown Stitch” project has garnered support from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is calling on the federal government to correct its infrastructure wrongs, NBC Asian America’s Kimmy Yam writes. The Vine Street Expressway was responsible for splitting the community and limiting access to school and other opportunities.
The project received a $159 million grant in March through the Transportation Department’s Reconnecting Neighborhoods and Communities program.
👎 A Nielsen report revealed that AAPI consumers want better brand and marketing representation. 64% of customers said they will stop consuming from brands that devalue their identity, per the study.
Why it matters: “We’re Asian all year round,” Nielsen Vice President Patricia Ratulangi told the Associated Press. “Knowing that there is this increased social justice awareness within the community is definitely an important aspect of understanding how to shape your outreach and your marketing to the community.”
🛜 Hawai‘i Gov. Josh Green (D) has issued an emergency proclamation to keep an estimated 1,500 Native Hawaiian households connected to the internet, USA Today’s Jeremy Yurow reports. It came after a local communications provider announced that it would cut phone and internet services from its users due to crippling debts.
🌊 Hawai‘i is set to host the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture after COVID-driven delays, per Hawaii Public Radio. FestPAC is the largest gathering of Pacific Islanders and is expected to draw more than 100,000 people and over 2,100 delegates.
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— By
Rachel Lee
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Preston Lieu