International Adoption Harmonization Act of 2010

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5532) to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act with respect to adopted alien children, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I introduced H.R. 5532, the International Adoption Harmonization Act of 2010, to correct two longstanding problems and inconsistencies with respect to adoptions of foreign children by U.S. citizen parents.

First, the bill would harmonize the age requirements of such adoptions and provide some needed flexibility in cases where adoptions take longer than expected. Currently, our law contains two age requirements related to the adoption of foreign children. The general rule is that an adoption must be finalized before a child turns 16 in order for the child to qualify for legal status in the United States. For any sibling of such a child, the adoption must be finalized before the sibling's 18th birthday, but only if the sibling comes from the country that has not signed The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions. The age cutoff for siblings from signatory countries is 16. These different requirements create confusion; and, in particular, with respect to more stringent requirements for the signatory countries, the 16-year-old cutoff provision, failing to meet the cutoff can have disastrous consequences.

Every year, the 16-year-old age requirement prevents a small number of foreign children who have been adopted by U.S. citizen parents from obtaining legal status in the United States. If an adoption takes longer than expected, even for reasons outside the parent's control, and the deadline is missed even by 1 day, the child is left with no remedy whatsoever. Although the child may be legally adopted by U.S. citizen parents, he or she cannot legally remain with them in the United States. Obviously, this is a nonsensical result where one's child has to be removed from the United States or, more likely, the individual comes to us for private relief which we may or may not succeed in granting.

H.R. 5532 remedies the above problem by harmonizing the provisions to require that all adoptions be finalized before a child's 18th birthday. This would

provide an additional 2 years by which to complete an adoption before a child is barred from living in the United States with his or her parents. As adoptions for foreign children are rarely completed beyond a child's 16th birthday--China, for example, allows adoptions only up to the age of 14--this bill would affect very few children; but for those few children, this bill is critical.

Second, H.R. 5532 would also harmonize immunization requirements with respect to international adoptions. Current law requires adopted children to have certain vaccinations prior to arrival, but there is an exemption for children under 10 if the adoptive parents certify that necessary vaccinations will be obtained within 30 days of entry.

This exemption, which was created by Congress in 1997, was designed to prevent parents from having to subject their children to numerous and often unsafe immunizations in foreign nations and to allow them to safely immunize their children in the United States.

This exception, however, applies only to children adopted from countries that are not signatories to the Hague Convention. It does not apply to children from signatory countries. This bill fixes this nonsensical discrepancy by expanding the definition to also cover children regardless of whether their home country is a signatory to the Hague Convention.

I want to thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers; the ranking member, Lamar Smith; and Representative Jeff Fortenberry, for their support on this measure.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 4010) for the relief of Shigeru Yamada.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

S. 4010 is an immigration relief bill for Shigeru Yamada. The House passed a substantially identical version of this bill by voice vote in the 110th Congress, but the Senate was unable to take up the measure. I am pleased to see that the House will have an opportunity to vote on final passage today.

Shigeru was brought to the United States from Japan when he was 10 years old. Together with his mother and his two sisters, Shigeru entered the country on a non-immigrant visa and remained in the United States for over 3 years on his mother's student visa. During this period, Shigeru's mother became engaged to a U.S. citizen. Had she married her fiance, she and her children would have been able to obtain lawful permanent residence in the country. However, in September 1995, when Shigeru was only 13 years old, his mother was killed in a car accident.

After his mother's death, Shigeru and his sisters were raised by their maternal aunt and uncle in Chula Vista, California. Shigeru's natural father was an alcoholic who was physically abusive to Shigeru, his sisters, and their mother. There was no other viable caretaker in Japan.

Shigeru's aunt attempted to formally adopt him, but was unable to complete the adoption before his 16th birthday. Under current immigration law, virtually all adoptions of foreign children by U.S. citizens must be completed before the child's 16th birthday in order for the child to qualify for legal status in the United States. Although Shigeru's sisters obtained legal status through adoption and marriage, Shigeru continued to reside here without such status.

In the meantime, Shigeru became a model student, graduating from Eastlake High School with honors in 2010. At Eastlake, he served on student government, participated in numerous community service activities, and excelled at football and wrestling. He was an All- American Scholar and was named Outstanding English Student his freshman year. He was also voted the Most Inspirational Player of the Year in various sports, both at the junior varsity and varsity level. He served as vice president of the associated student body his senior year.

Shigeru also volunteered to coach the Eastlake High School softball team and obtained an associate's degree from Southwestern Community College.

It is through no fault of his own that Shigeru was raised in the United States without legal immigration status. Shigeru's mother died before she could regularize his status, and adoption proceedings by his aunt were completed too late to affect his immigration status. S. 4010 presents the only option for Shigeru to remain in the United States.

I commend Representative Bob Filner and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who each introduced their first private immigration bill on Shigeru's behalf back in the 108th Congress. I would also like to recognize Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith for their help in moving this bill to the floor today.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and

Customs Enforcement,

Washington, DC, Aug. 27, 2009.

Hon. Zoe Lofgren,

Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship,

Refugees, Border Security, & International Law, Committee

on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Washington,

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, Shigeru Yamada was brought to the United States from Japan when he was 10 years old. He entered the country on a non-immigrant visa with his mother and his two sisters, and remained here on his mother's student visa for over 3 years. Although his mother became engaged to a U.S. citizen, which would have resulted in lawful permanent resident status for Shigeru and his sisters, tragedy prevented this from coming to pass. When Shigeru was 13 years old, his mother was killed in a car accident, and he and his siblings were taken to live with their maternal aunt and uncle in Chula Vista, California.

When Shigeru's aunt attempted to formally adopt him, she was unable to complete the process before he turned 16 years old. Under current immigration law, virtually all adoptions of foreign children by U.S. citizens must be completed before the child's 16th birthday in order for the child to qualify for legal status in the United States. Although Shigeru's sisters obtained legal status through adoption and marriage, Shigeru continued to reside here without such status.

Despite these difficulties, Shigeru shined. He graduated with honors in 2000 from Eastlake High School, where he served on student government, participated in numerous community service activities, and excelled at football and wrestling. He was an All-American Scholar and was named ``Outstanding English Student'' his freshman year. He was also voted the ``Most Inspirational Player of the Year'' in various sports, both at the junior-varsity and varsity level. He served as vice president of the associated student body his senior year. Shigeru later obtained an associate's degree from Southwestern Community College.

Shigeru's story highlights so many things that are wrong with our current immigration system. First, Shigeru is just the type of young person who would benefit from the DREAM Act, which passed the House with bipartisan support 1 week ago today. More importantly, America is just the country that would benefit from providing Shigeru a path to lawful status, so that he could continue to excel and serve as a model to all those around him.

Second, Shigeru's story highlights the nonsensical inflexibility of our international adoption rules. Earlier this summer, the House passed H.R. 5532, the International Adoption Harmonization Act of 2010. H.R. 5532 would harmonize our international adoption rules by setting the uniform deadline by which all adoptions must be finalized at a child's 18th birthday. One purpose of H.R. 5532 is to ensure that when a child is legally adopted by U.S. citizen parents between the child's 16th and 18th birthdays, the child is permitted to remain with his or her parents in the United States. The need for this commonsense piece of legislation was demonstrated by the many private immigration laws enacted by previous Congresses to provide exactly this form of relief to just those individual children who came to our attention--bills just like the one before us today. H.R. 5532 remains stalled in the Senate, which represents a real failure to protect American families and adopted children.

I remain hopeful that our Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle will recognize that passage of the DREAM Act and H.R. 5532 are both in America's best interest. But under current law, S. 4010 represents the only option for Shigeru Yamada to remain in the United States, the country that he rightly calls home.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I cosponsored this legislation introduced by Congresswoman Lofgren, chair of the Immigration Subcommittee, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Our Nation has a wonderful tradition of welcoming newcomers. We admit more than 1 million legal immigrants a year, as many as all other nations combined. This legislation continues that generosity by ensuring that American parents who want to open their homes and hearts to children from around the world are able to do so.

The Immigration and Nationality Act provides that U.S. citizens can adopt foreign children and have the children considered immediate relatives for immigration purposes if the children are adopted while under the age of 16 years.

American families who initiated adoptions of foreign children by their 16th birthdays but were not able to complete the adoptions by that date have often sought relief from their Representatives in Congress. We have responded sympathetically.

Congress has routinely passed private bills over the years to allow these families to sponsor their adopted children for permanent resident status in the U.S. In fact, Congress has so routinely passed such private bills that it makes sense for us to simply modify the law and provide a broad remedy.

This legislation provides that for immigration purposes, adoptions by U.S. parents have to be completed by the age of 18 instead of 16. Under the bill, the parents are still obligated to finalize the adoption by the 18th birthday in order to receive immigration benefits for their child.

Of course, we expect U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to continue to be on guard against any possible fraud in the foreign adoption process.

This bill accomplishes one more objective by making a technical correction regarding the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions.

Under current law, prospective immigrants have to be vaccinated against certain diseases. The law provides an exemption to the general immunization requirement for adopted children if, one, a child is 10 years of age or younger and, two, the adoptive parents certify that the child will receive the necessary vaccinations within 30 days of entry into the U.S.

This exemption, enacted in 1997, is designed to ensure that parents don't have to subject their children to sometimes unsafe immunizations in foreign nations. Rather, they can more safely immunize their children in the United States.

However, when the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions was later adopted, this exception was not extended to the children from signatory countries. Ms. Lofgren's bill simply extends the exemption to cover children from these countries.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I'd like to thank Senator Feinstein, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Chairman Conyers, and Chairwoman Lofgren for their leadership in the passage of S. 4010, a bill for the relief of Shigeru Yamada, an extraordinary young man who is in danger of being deported back to Japan, despite living here for most of his life. Shigeru came to the U.S. legally in 1992 at the age of 10 with his mother and two younger sisters. In 1995, when Yamada was 13 years old, his mother was tragically killed in a car accident. Yamada and his sisters were suddenly orphaned, and due to a change in immigration laws, were stripped of their legal status. Notwithstanding personal adversities, Yamada excelled in high school where he was active in sports, student government, and the community, while maintaining almost a 4.00 GPA. Yamada has attended Southwestern College and is a model member of the Chula Vista, California community. His two younger sisters were able to become citizens. One married a U.S. citizen and the other one was adopted by family members. The family tried to adopt Shigeru, but they were not successful. Yamada does not have any family or home in Japan. His mother's side of the family is Korean which makes it extremely difficult for him to integrate into Japanese society. He would be virtually unemployable in Japan because he does not speak, read, or write Japanese. His situation shows that he would suffer extreme hardship if forced to return to Japan. The passage of this bill brings justice one step closer to Yamada. We want and need more people like Shigeru in our country and he deserves the opportunity to become a permanent U.S. citizen. Once again, I'd like to thank the leadership for passage of this critical bill.