Shirley Chung was just 16 months old when an American family adopted her from South Korea in 1966.
She was raised by a Black family in Texas, went to a mostly white school and attended a mostly Black church. Growing up in a mixed-race family, she became accustomed to questions about her identity.
“'What are you? What are you?' I’ve heard that my whole life,” she said. “From when I was a little girl, and my mother would have to answer the question.”
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But one thing she never questioned was her identity as an American.
That is, until she misplaced her Social Security card and tried to get a new one. She was 57 at the time.
“When I get to the Social Security office, that’s when they told me, ‘We can’t give you your card, you need to prove your status in this country,’” she recalled. “I didn’t know what that meant.”
It meant that Chung wasn’t actually an American citizen. Someone — either her adoptive parents or the adoption agency — never completed the paperwork required to establish citizenship, she said.
The shocking discovery triggered feelings of not belonging.
“You’re not white enough, you’re not Black enough, you’re not Korean enough,” she said. “And now you’re not American enough. Now your future is no longer secure.”
Advocates believe there are between 30,000 and 70,000 adoptees who never became U.S. citizens. Some have been deported to countries they have no memory of ever living in — sometimes to tragic consequences.
That includes Phillip Clay, a 42-year-old adoptee who committed suicide after being deported back to South Korea.
Emily Howe is a San Diego-based lawyer trying to help Chung and others like her adjust their immigration status.
“The concept of an undocumented adoptee is so egregious and appalling,” she said.
These are people who were “shipped overseas through no fault of their own” when they were babies, Howe added. Now that they are in their 40s, 50s and 60s, they’re discovering that they don’t have legal status in the U.S.
Howe has consulted with adoption attorneys, immigration lawyers, family law specialists and even international law attorneys to find a solution. But she said there is no easy fix.
America’s outdated immigration laws don’t offer an easy solution — there is no form adoptees can retroactively fill out and no appeals process. Instead, immigration lawyers have to find complicated work-arounds to establish citizenship — either through marriage, children, or some kind of humanitarian or employment visa program.
In 2000, Congress recognized that adoptee naturalization was an issue. They passed a law called the Child Citizenship Act, which streamlined the naturalization process for new adoptees. While the law helps children adopted after the year 2000, it did not provide retroactive relief to tens of thousands of people who were adopted decades earlier.
This lack of a quick fix is incredibly frustrating to people like Chung. Although friends and family understand her situation, she said new acquaintances are often dumbfounded by her immigration predicament.
“Part of their response was, ‘Well, why don’t you just go and apply for citizenship?’” she said. “And I just want to knock their teeth down their throat, because I’m a very intelligent woman. If you thought it was that easy, don’t you think I would have done it?”
Instead of literally knocking people’s teeth in, Chung has channeled that energy into advocacy.
She’s spent 10 years working with the Adoptee Rights Campaign, an organization that raises awareness of undocumented adoptees and lobbies for legislative action. Through that advocacy work, the organization has found thousands of undocumented adults.
Joy Alessi is the organization’s executive director. She said oftentimes families going through the lengthy adoption process simply forgot to complete that last filing for citizenship. Some thought it was automatic, or that an adoption agency took care of it.
There are impacted adoptees from all over the world, Alessi said.
But those from South Korea are overrepresented. That’s because after the Korean War, the U.S. and South Korean governments strongly encouraged international adoption.
More recently, the South Korean government created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate allegations of fraud in the adoption system since that time. The commission verified claims of fraud and abuse, and said those practices were caused by pressure to reduce welfare costs.
Alessi’s work on the Adoptee Rights Campaign is personal. She is a Korean adoptee who learned later in life that she wasn’t a U.S. citizen. Since then, she’s become a citizen, but continues to fight for those who haven’t.
“There’s a bit of survivor’s guilt,” she said.
Undocumented adoptees who are nearing retirement age are particularly vulnerable, Alessi said. They’ve worked in the U.S. for decades, paid taxes, contributed to Social Security, and suddenly learned that they may not be eligible for those benefits.
That’s the situation an Iranian adoptee named Raana finds herself in. KPBS is withholding her last name because of her immigration status.
“I just feel like I’ve been erased and I’m trying desperately to keep the life that I’ve built for myself,” she said.
Raana’s adoption from Iran was finalized when she was 4 years old. She didn’t discover that she wasn’t a U.S. citizen until she tried to get a passport when she was 38.
That discovery contradicted everything she had been told about adoption her entire childhood.
“Every adoptee will tell you that all you hear as a child is, ‘You’re so lucky, you’re so fortunate, you’re so blessed,’” she said.
President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies have given Raana a new level of stress and anxiety. She’s terrified of being sent to the new “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida or being deported to a prison in El Salvador.
Whenever advocates from the Adoptee Rights Campaign share their stories, people generally agree that the situation is messed up.
“Most of them are very sympathetic and willing to help,” Alessi said. “But Congress is a different beast.”
The group has been advocating for the passage of the Adoptee Citizenship Act. A 2022 version of the bill was included in the original CHIPS and Science Act, but was removed from the final version that President Joe Biden signed into law.
Currently, no one has reintroduced the legislation, but Alessi said that shouldn’t stop people from asking for it.
“People can still call their representatives,” she said.
