This tradition is a credit to our country and warrants protection. My amendment seeks to correct a problem first raised by an 1987 INS memorandum. Until that memo. authored by the acting general counsel of INS. that agency had never considered the foreign fathers of illegitimate children when clearing these children for immigration as orphans. INS presumed that these men were out of the picture. and required only the mother. it she were present. to release her child for emigration and adoption. The 1987 memo gave putative foreign fathers a right to approve the emigration and adoption of their birth children. This change caused two dilemmas: First. standards for compliance were unclear and possibly insurmountable. How does one find these fathers? What must one do before INS acknowledges that the father cant be found? Second. finding the father could make the child ineligible for immigration even if the father agrees to the adoption. If one finds the father and there is also a mother. the child cant be declared an orphan because then the child would have two parents. and the Immigration and Nationality Act specifies that an orphan have no more than one parent. These restrictions on designating a child as an orphan are significant because virtually all the foreign children adopted in this country come here as orphans. and a large percentage of these are illegitimate children. Requiring agencies and American families to track down the putative fathers would. under existing law. greatly restrict foreign adoptions.
Keywords matched
Immigration immigration emigration