I chose the podcast, Waiting in No Man’s Land. The podcast starts off with a discussion around the overturn of Roe v. Wade ends the constitutional right to abortion in the United States. This is shocking because this is the first time the court has ever rolled back a right that was previously granted to people in the United States. It has also put in question the right to privacy, gay rights, contraception, and marriage equality. The tables are then turned onto another subject of law, as tens of thousands of children who were adopted from other countries by United States parents, discovered that as adults they were never guaranteed American citizenship. In February of 2001, a law that was passed by congress was enacted, giving automatic citizenship to foreign born adoptees. However, this law did not pertain to everyone, if you were born before February in 1983 that was older than 18 did not get automatic citizenship. Before this law, citizenship was the parents’ responsibility due to either neglect or ignorance. Immigration lawyer and adoptee, Greg Loose, stated that there are an estimated 35,000 to 70,000 who grew up in the U.S. without citizenship.
There is a bill that can fix all of this. It is a provision in a larger piece of legislation called the Competes Act, with measures that are supposed to promote research, innovation and manufacturing in the U.S. A small piece called the adoptee citizen act snuck in this overall bill. It would give automatic U.S. citizenship to those adoptees. The House passed its own version of the act, senate passed a different act, and now the competes act is in a congressional committee where both the senate and house are negotiating which parts stay and go with the end goal being one reconciled Competes Act as early of July 2022 (this podcast was posted on June 29, 2022). I tried doing my own research to see the current status of this bill and couldn’t really find a definitive answer.