Adam Crapser was adopted from South Korea nearly four decades ago, but today he languishes in an immigration detention center in Washington State awaiting deportation because his American parents never filed citizenship paperwork for him.
Mr. Crapser, 41, built a life in Oregon, got married and raised children but will soon be forced to leave the country in which he has lived since he was 3 for South Korea, where he plans to eventually reunite with his biological mother in a small town three hours outside of Seoul, the capital. His family will remain in the United States temporarily, and they hope to reunite in South Korea.
“At this point I’m ready to just go back and try to make my life over there, ” Mr. Crapser said on Monday night in a telephone interview from Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a week after a judge denied his final request to stay in the United States. “There’s been some good things that came out of all this, surprisingly.”
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Mr. Crapser’s sanguine attitude toward the wrenching dislocation that looms ahead is thanks in part to the media attention his case has attracted in both the United States and South Korea, he said. A South Korean documentary on his plight and the lives of other Korean adoptees led to his birth mother coming forward.
“I do have a Korean family back in Korea, ” Mr. Crapser said. “They’ve been informed that I am returning. It’s good, and it’s bad. It’s kind of bittersweet.”
That promising development is far from a universal experience, however. His lawyer, Lori Walls, said on Monday that Mr. Crapser’s case illustrates how easy it is for permanent residents to be placed in deportation proceedings, even when they entered the country lawfully as adoptees but were not naturalized by their adoptive parents.
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According to the Adoptee Rights Campaign, an advocacy group, there are about 35, 000 people in the United States who were adopted by American couples as children but who do not have citizenship.
Mr. Crapser had been living legally in the United States under IR-4 documents given to adopted children, Ms. Walls said. In 2001, the Child Citizenship Act automatically made IR-4 holders citizens, but the law was not retroactive — it did not benefit adoptees who were already legal adults. “Adam was over 18 and so missed the cutoff date, ” Ms. Walls said.
Mr. Crapser said he first spoke to his family in Korea during a series of FaceTime conversations last winter. He communicated with his birth mother through an interpreter because he does not speak Korean. (He said he planned to bring a tourist phrase book with him when he is deported “so I can read signs and stuff.”)
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His American family plans to join him in Korea next year after his wife, a Vietnamese immigrant, becomes a United States citizen. His stepfather in Korea owns a construction company where he hopes to work so he and his family can start a new life, he said.
Mr. Crapser’s positive attitude belies the Kafkaesque nature of his life in the United States. The decision to deport him was just the latest trying experience in a span that has been, by any measure, exceptionally difficult.
Mr. Crapser was adopted along with his sister by an American family that physically abused both children, he told The New York Times Magazine for an article that was published in April 2015.
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After six years, that family put both children up for adoption again. They were separated, and Mr. Crapser was adopted by new parents, Thomas and Dolly Crapser, who also abused him. They had several other foster and adopted children whom they also treated brutally. In 1992, they were both convicted of criminal mistreatment and assault, and Thomas Crapser was convicted of sexual abuse.
Adam Crapser was kicked out of the Crapser home at 16 and later broke back in to retrieve his personal belongings. He pleaded guilty to burglary and served 25 months in prison.
More brushes with the law followed. After his release, he was convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm. A couple of misdemeanors followed, and he was later convicted of assault after a fight, The Times magazine reported.
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Mr. Crapser said he did not realize there was a difference between being a permanent resident and a citizen until he was reunited with his sister, a naturalized citizen, in 2012.
Deportation proceedings began that year, shortly after he applied for residency documents and the authorities learned about his criminal record. The final decision was made on Oct. 24 at an immigration court in Tacoma, Ms. Walls said. Mr. Crapser said Monday that he expected to be deported within the next 30 days.
Mr. Crapser had never held down a steady job for more than 90 days because he could never prove his legal status, he said, something he always chalked up to a chaotic childhood. “I pretty much had to work under the table for most of my life, ” he said.
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“I guess in a sense the good thing is that I am a citizen of Korea so when I go back I will already be a citizen of some country, ” he said. “I guess that’s where I belong.”Earlier this week, an immigration judge ruled that Korean American adoptee, Adam Crapser, will not be granted relief from pending deportation to South Korea. Crapser, who is married and has three small children, was adopted by an American couple at the age of three and is alienated from his birth country and culture.
According to the Associated Press, Crapser survived years of childhood abuse and neglect. Seven years after he and his older sister were brought to the U.S. as transnational adoptees, their adoptive parents relinquished them, leaving them vulnerable to a foster care system that immediately separated the siblings.
While under the guardianship of Thomas and Dolly Crapser, the couple was arrested on charges of physical child abuse, sexual abuse, and rape. Although both denied the charges, Thomas Crapser served ninety days in jail; Dolly Crapser received three years of probation. One of the events that led to Adam Crapser being threatened with deportation was an arrest when he broke into the Crapsers' home to retrieve the few items that came with him from the Korean orphanage: a pair of shoes and a Korean bible.
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The combination of his initial adoptive parents' failure to procure naturalization statuses for their adopted children and the mistreatment Crapser endured once he arrived in the U.S. has created a nightmare situation, but one that is not unique. The Adoptee Rights Campaign estimates that approximately 35, 000 transnational adoptees who were brought to the U.S. and raised there do not hold American citizenship. Globally, the U.S. is one of the most prolific receiving nations of transnational adoptees. Americans have been adopting children born in Korea for nearly seventy-five years.
Although transnational adoption practices are slightly changing, at the time when Crapser and his sister were brought to the U.S., adoptive parents' goals (guided by adoption agencies and social workers) were to assimilate foreign-born children as quickly and thoroughly as possible. The majority of Korean adoptees were raised in white families and in predominantly white communities with limited exposure to Korean culture or other Korean Americans. The same is true for transnational adoptees from other birth nations. Added to this is the fact that Asian adoptees' cultural experiences differ in significant ways from other Asian/Americans; for instance, they sometimes face anti-Asian discrimination alone when their adoptive families are unable or unwilling to help. In some cases racism and/or Orientalism comes from adoptive family members themselves.
Crapser's experience illustrates the importance of the Adoptee Citizenship Act (2015) that is currently under consideration at Senate and the House of Representatives. This bill aims to close a loophole in the Child Citizenship Act (2000) which itself grants automatic U.S. citizenship to transnational adoptees adopted by American citizens. Importantly, that initial law excluded adoptees that were already eighteen years old in 2000. Crapser has been quoted saying, While I am disappointed in the judge's ruling and worried about my family's future, I hope that what has happened to me will further demonstrate the importance of passing the Adoptee Citizenship Act.
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He is currently being held in an immigration detention centre in Washington State and has waived his right to an appeal in an effort to be released from confinement.
While some supporters focus on the injustice of Crapser's deportation because of the adoption circumstances that led to his arrival in the U.S. and his unfamiliarity with Korean culture, others insist that, instead of viewing adopted people as an exception to the rule, we must challenge acts of deportation more broadly.
Jenny Heijun Wills is associate professor of English at the University of Winnipeg. Her research and teaching focus on Asian/American and African American literatures and cultures. Born in Seoul, she was raised in Ontario, Canada as a Korean adoptee.Where have we been this year? Everywhere, it seems! It's been a busy 2016 and BKA members are active in the community, attending many Korean and Adoptee related conferences and events.
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