South Korean Adopted At Age 3 Is To Be Deported Nearly 40 Years Later

[babylonsister]

This is heartbreaking imo.


http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/27/499573378/south-korean-adopted-at-age-3-is-to-be-deported-37-years-later?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social


South Korean Adopted At Age 3 Is To Be Deported Nearly 40 Years Later

October 27, 201612:44 PM ET

Camila Domonoske


South Korean adoptee Adam Crapser poses with his 1-year-old daughter, Christal, in the family's living room in Vancouver, Wash., in 2015. Crapser, who was flown to the U.S. 37 years ago and adopted by an American couple at age 3, has been ordered deported back to South Korea.
Gosia Wozniacka/AP


Adam Crapser was brought to the United States when he was 3, to start a new life — new parents, new culture, new country.

But his adoptive parents didn't complete his citizenship papers. Then they abandoned him to the foster care system.

And now, as a 41-year-old father of four, he's being deported. Despite his appeals for help, he has been ordered to be sent back to South Korea, a country The Associated Press describes as "completely alien to him."


more...

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/27/499573378/south-korean-adopted-at-age-3-is-to-be-deported-37-years-later?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Good gawd, this could not be more wrong.

[yeoman6987]

3. He has quite a criminal record including assault

The theft is no big deal but assault is not necessary.

[haele]

9. He's 41. Reading the article, it seems the criminal record was 15 - 20 years in the past.

According to the article:

The Times says Crapser later turned his life around, spending stints as a barbershop owner and in the insurance industry. He married and had several children; more recently, he was a stay-at-home father. But, the Times says, it was hard for him to hold a job without citizenship.
...
So Crapser had to apply for a Green Card to start down the path toward citizenship. When he did, his criminal convictions bumped up against a second law.

I've met a lot of people who were immigrants who overstayed their visa and could live regular lives; get driver's licenses, bank accounts, continue working, albeit through a lot of fast talking and gaming of the system claiming hardships. Before RealID was part of everything you did, as long as they kept their nose clean and taxes were paid, no one really cared. Because back in the day, it could take up to 12 years for citizenship, and typically, an employer, lender, or someone else in an organization's authority could waiver a requirement for a green card so long as there was sufficient reason to believe the person was going to stay, be productive, and was on the path to citizenship.

There's a potential for a lot of years between his assault charge and now; especially considering those jobs, the marriage, his kids and the efforts to get a green card when RealID began being enforced and he could no longer.
It's not like he was released from the county jail for assault, then ICE picked him up on the steps. No indication that he was on parole, or was considered a felon or hardened criminal that would potentially continue to commit serious crimes against persons and property. He paid for his crimes, spent his time in jail.
It sounds like he was rehabilitated, trying to do the right thing, for himself and his family. It also sounds like he's been a likable, productive guy for a significant period of time.
However, I guess since he has paid for being a petty criminal in the past - that he hit someone in anger back during a time where he was still suffering the effects of serious long-term abuse and negligence - that's enough to negate the wrong done to him by adoptive and foster parents who had criminally neglected to complete the citizenship paperwork, and enough to brand him irredeemable.
Just tear him away from his American family - his wife and kids - and send him back to a country where he had initially been abandoned, where he doesn't speak the language and doesn't know the culture. That's the Just thing to do, right?

Haele

[alarimer]

11. I know, right?

I think there are sufficient mitigating circumstances here to at least stop the deportation.

[central scrutinizer]

8. More details from local fishwrap

[link:http://registerguard.com/rg/news/local/34928348-75/adopted-at-3-by-oregon-couple-south-korean-man-to-be-deported.html.csp|

[barbtries]

10. they might as well pack me up and send me to south korea.

how is this possible?!

[StevieM]

12. This is horrifying. (eom)

[SaschaHM]

14. This is sickening and heartbreaking.

The foster parents (both the original adoptees and the Craspers) that abused and assaulted him and the other children all received lesser punishments for more heinous crimes.

[malaise]

16. We have lots of Caribbean people facing this madness

That's an awful story.