How to prove US citizenship

Edson 617

Edson 617

Member
Long and complex story. I was born in Brazil in 1979. Was adopted by US American citizens in Brazil and brought to America in 1987. LPR green card. Sometime in the 90s my father filed an n600 form on my behalf. Fast forward 2002 I get in legal trouble and end up incarcerated. I get called into an office with an INS agent who proceeds to tell me that my n600 file was not complete and missing a page or pages, so therefore I am not a US citizen and was eventually ordered removed and deported. I get released on OSUP and have to report in. At some point my father and I talk and realize that something doesn't seem right with this whole situation. We hire a lawyer and she files an FOIA with DHS and USCIS seeking all files related to my adoption and the missing pages from the n600 form. She received a CD with 400 pages of documents and a cover letter. The cover letter stated that they had found "potentially relevant documents" but had sent 2 pages in their entirety to the state department for their response to my attorney. My attorney sends a letter to the head of records keeping at the state department asking for the documents as part of the FOIA. She has to hand my case off to a fellow attorney due to personal reasons. The new attorney never gets in contact with me or my father and when I go searching for him, I find out he has closed his law firm down. Due to the current political climate I have filed an FOIA with DHS and the State Department myself recently asking for these documents. I am still required to report to ICE through email, but they are now asking people to report in person and most are not coming back home. I don't need this, I have a wife and a job, house all that. I am still waiting for my FOIA request to be processed, what do I do in the meantime? If I'm asked to report in person? I have been in touch with my country of births consulate since this started and they have refused to have me deported there as I am considered a citizen of the United States through my adoption. But the Trump administration is now deporting people to other countries and I don't want to die in a foreign country away from my family.
 
Since you were adopted between 1978 and 2001, turned 18 before 2001, and your adoptive parents were already US citizens at the time you were adopted, I believe the only way for you to become a US citizen through your parents is for your parent to have applied for naturalization for you as a minor under former INA 322 with former form N-643 (not N-600), and for it to have been approved and you to have taken the oath before you turned 18. So if the N-643 was not approved or you did not take the oath before you turned 18, I believe you never became a US citizen.
 
I believe my father filed the appropriate forms and I may have gotten the form name wrong. I was a child in a group home when he came to take pictures of me for the application. Under those circumstances and the fact that I was under 14 at the time, I believe the oath requirement was waived. I need to get to the bottom of this because something doesn't add up. If something was filed wrong or denied, would he not have gotten a notice of it? Or if the application was approved he would have gotten a certificate of citizenship?
 
I am not sure about whether the forms used may have changed in the 90s. If it was approved, he should have gotten a Certificate of Citizenship. Otherwise, how can he assume you got US citizenship?
 
Edson 617 said:
I believe my father filed the appropriate forms and I may have gotten the form name wrong. I was a child in a group home when he came to take pictures of me for the application. Under those circumstances and the fact that I was under 14 at the time, I believe the oath requirement was waived. I need to get to the bottom of this because something doesn't add up. If something was filed wrong or denied, would he not have gotten a notice of it? Or if the application was approved he would have gotten a certificate of citizenship?
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I am not sure if this particular requirement was different then but fyi my kid who was 11 at the time (about 5-6 years ago) had to take the oath before they issued a certificate of citizenship.

@newacct , what were the requirements then -would the fact that OP was not in custody of parent but living in a group home have been an issue? It does seem odd that they seem to have had no follow+up, either denial, RFE or issued certificate.
 
I was able to find my former immigration attorney. She says she never received a response from the state department before she had to hand my case off to her colleague who never got in touch with us before closing his office. My father said he filed an n600 in 1986. He found the adoption papers and said he clearly remembers some confusion at the time because some lawyers said they needed an N600 and others said they didn't. So he filed it but he filed late so that maybe what caused the paperwork to be lost or shuffled around. We are in touch with senators and representatives from my state about this issue. I will also be in touch with the consulate from my birth country. I think the 2 pages missing from my N600 are in the possession of the Department of State records keeping department. I need to track down the original FOIA number for the request from 2014 and get to the bottom of this
 
Prior to the CCA, adopted children generally needed to have their parents apply for a Certificate of Citizenship (Form N-600) after the adoption was finalized. However, the CCA established that some adopted children could automatically acquire citizenship if they met certain conditions, such as being under 18, having at least one U.S. citizen parent, and being a lawful permanent resident residing in the U.S. with their citizen parent
 
While the CCA streamlined the process for automatic citizenship, it didn't automatically issue certificates for those who had already acquired citizenship before its effective date (February 27, 2001). Therefore, if an adopted child became a U.S. citizen before this date, they may not have automatically received a Certificate of Citizenship, and their parents would have needed to apply for one if they desired official documentation of the child's citizenship. So I was not required to have a certificate back then
 
Edson 617 said:
While the CCA streamlined the process for automatic citizenship, it didn't automatically issue certificates for those who had already acquired citizenship before its effective date (February 27, 2001). Therefore, if an adopted child became a U.S. citizen before this date, they may not have automatically received a Certificate of Citizenship, and their parents would have needed to apply for one if they desired official documentation of the child's citizenship. So I was not required to have a certificate back then
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no one is ever “required” to have a certificate, but as you are discovering, it is desirable to have proof of citizenship, whether that is a certificate of citizenship or a passport. If your father applied for N600 (or N-whatever), that process should have resulted in a certificate. (The CCA does not automatically issue certificates either by the way - you still have to apply for one with an N600.]

If being in custody of your USC parent was a requirement for acquiring citizenship, as it seems to have been, the fact that you were living in a group home (so not in his physical custody) might be what the problem is.
 
An adoptive parent generally retains legal and physical custody of a child even if the child is placed in a group home. Adoption grants the adoptive parents full parental rights, which include both legal and physical custody, unless a court order explicitly modifies those rights. While the child may be temporarily residing in a group home, the adoptive parents maintain their legal standing as the child's parents and are ultimately responsible for the child's well-being. The group home placement was a temporary arrangement while I got the help I needed. Legally my parents still had full custody of me(by physical custody they mean my parents still had the right have me live with them. They retained all rights having to do with my health and well being, that's why he was allowed to come to the home and take the pictures of me for the application.
 
Edson 617 said:
An adoptive parent generally retains legal and physical custody of a child even if the child is placed in a group home. Adoption grants the adoptive parents full parental rights, which include both legal and physical custody, unless a court order explicitly modifies those rights. While the child may be temporarily residing in a group home, the adoptive parents maintain their legal standing as the child's parents and are ultimately responsible for the child's well-being. The group home placement was a temporary arrangement while I got the help I needed. Legally my parents still had full custody of me(by physical custody they mean my parents still had the right have me live with them. They retained all rights having to do with my health and well being, that's why he was allowed to come to the home and take the pictures of me for the application.
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Hm, unless the definition has changed, physical custody means actually residing with the parent, not just that they can. We had to submit evidence for that - things like school records that showed the child’s home address was the same as the parent’s, etc. see section 2 here https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-h-chapter-4 . Of course, if you were only in the home temporarily then presumably at some point you did actually reside with the parent, and they should have submitted something to that effect. Your description above of their legal standing while in the group home sounds like legal custody (also needed, but not enough by itself).
 
Edson 617 said:
Prior to the CCA, adopted children generally needed to have their parents apply for a Certificate of Citizenship (Form N-600) after the adoption was finalized.
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And more to the point, the application is needed for the children to become US citizens, i.e. it is an application for naturalization. The children do not automatically become citizens without going through the process.

Edson 617 said:
However, the CCA established that some adopted children could automatically acquire citizenship if they met certain conditions, such as being under 18, having at least one U.S. citizen parent, and being a lawful permanent resident residing in the U.S. with their citizen parent
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Why are you mentioning this, as CCA is not relevant to your case?

Edson 617 said:
While the CCA streamlined the process for automatic citizenship, it didn't automatically issue certificates for those who had already acquired citizenship before its effective date (February 27, 2001). Therefore, if an adopted child became a U.S. citizen before this date, they may not have automatically received a Certificate of Citizenship, and their parents would have needed to apply for one if they desired official documentation of the child's citizenship. So I was not required to have a certificate back then
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All this is predicated on "already acquired citizenship". Again, the issue here is that you probably didn't acquire citizenship, if your naturalization process was never approved.
 
I believe my father did everything he was supposed to do. Somewhere along the process something got mixed up. The start of this was due to a statement by an INS agent that pages where missing from my N600 form. When an FOIA was filed with DHS they said stated they had found "potentially relevant documents" but sent them to the department of state for some reason. We are now working on tracking these documents down as they maybe proof that my father did file a complete n600. I'll update as I learn more.
 
My father found a document he filed on May 5th 1989, form G-641 asking for confirmation of my status in the United States from records at the INS. I was 10 yrs old at the time. My father said that 95 percent of the documents he received through the immigration FOIA request were documents dealing with my legal issues that US immigration had filed in 2002. We may have to do another one because what we wanted was anything to do with my adoption and anything to do with citizenship such as N600 forms. I'll update again as I find out more things.
 
My father found an N400 form filled out and completed on my behalf by him when I was a child. USCIS sent him copies of these files on his FOIA CD
 
Edson 617 said:
My father found an N400 form filled out and completed on my behalf by him when I was a child. USCIS sent him copies of these files on his FOIA CD
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Is this what you thought was the N600 or another application? (You would do one or the other, not both)
 
SusieQQQ said:
Is this what you thought was the N600 or another application? (You would do one or the other, not both)
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Yes. There appears that there was some confusion on our part. This was what my father was filing when he took the pictures of me. He also said he does not recall filing an N600 but the INS agent back in 2002 claimed that the form was missing 2 pages. The FOIA CD shows the entire 16 pages of the n400 filled out. And if they sent it on the CD that means they received it at some point
 
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