Adopted by my US citizen father outside the country

nhbikerider

New Member
While filling out the N400, I read through N600 and wasn't 100% I actually may qualify to become an automatic citizen?

The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 states that a child born outside of the United States automatically becomes a citizen of the United States when all of the following conditions have been fulfilled:

(1) At least one parent of the child is a citizen of the United States, whether by birth or naturalization.

(2) The child is under the age of eighteen years.

(3) The child is residing in the United States in the legal and physical custody of the citizen parent pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence.

My father is US citizen at birth; I've known him since I was two years of age and my mother (non US Citizen) and him married when I was nine living in Japan as well as adopting me at the same time. My father was in the US military at the time and we moved to the US in 1995. My mother and I got our green card shortly after.

Official adoption was done through the Japanese city hall. No other adoption paperwork was done in US I believe.

Do I still qualify or just go through with the N400?
 
Generally, as long as the adoption was final before you were age 16, and you resided in the US with your adoptive father for 2 years, then you are considered a child for citizenship purposes and you should have automatically gained US citizenship. There may be issues regarding the manner of adoption and whether it is considered an adoption for US citizenship purposes; for example, adoption by only one spouse of a couple is not enough, and the child would need to be "re-adopted" after entering the US. See 7 FAM 1159.2 for more details. It seems you can tell based on what category of immigrant visa you entered on. For example, if it was IH4, then you need to have been re-adopted before age 18.
 
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