please help, need to know what more can be done for green card/citizenship

Firstly, I'm so sorry that you're going through something awful like this!!!!!!! ((hugs)) to you. I hope that everything about your adoption in Africa gets sorted out and you can prove to the US authorities that you've been here from 3 years old. Congrats on your graduation, and I'm sorry that you're not allowed to enjoy that!!!! Have you tried contacting a good attorney maybe who can advise you of how you can solve your problems or how you can keep your GC?? And what is the reason that they're not letting you keep your Green Card????? Doesn't your passport show that you entered when you were three???? Do you have any documentation from Africa about the adoption, etc.. ?? Well, I'm sorry that I'm not much help, except that I sympathize and feel for you and hope and pray that everything gets sorted out soon!!!!

First off, your best bet is to work with a good adoption/immigration attorney here in the U.S. He/she will be the best person to advise you of your rights. Second, based on what I can understand of your situation and not knowing all the facts, you committed a violation of U.S. immigration law (through no fault of your own). You entered the U.S., presumably, on a non-immigrant visa, such as a tourist visa, which has an expiration date. You were not allowed to stay in the U.S. when it expired. You would have had to go back to Sierra Leone, wait until your adoption was finalized under Sierra Leone law, and then immigrate on an adoption visa (IR-3 or IR-4) to the U.S. to live permanently with your adoptive parents. Since you did not enter the U.S. on an immigrant visa, you are considered to have overstayed your visa and can be a candidate for deportation. If you do not know any good immigration/adoption attorneys, I can PM you with the names of two people who might be able to help. Sharon

Let me go into a little more detail about how your birth and adoptive families may have violated U.S. law. This could explain why you cannot get citizenship or permanent resident status. Do remember that I am not an attorney, although I have a good bit of familiarity with adoption issues. Then I will tell you one possible thing you can do to persuade the government not to punish you for the mistakes of your parents and let you stay in the U.S. 1. Entering U.S. on false pretences. You did not mention, in your post, the class of visa you had when you entered the U.S., but I suspect it was a non-immigrant visa, such as a tourist visa. When your birthmother entered the U.S., she obviously intended for you to remain in this country permanently. She may also have intended for herself to remain in this country. If she obtained non-immigrant visas for you and her, such as tourist visas, then this is considered visa fraud, a federal crime under U.S. law. Once you overstayed your non-immigrant visa, you would be subject to deportation. I assume that this is why you are currently facing deportation. 2. Failure to disclose intent to place a baby for adoption. Under U.S. law, you cannot come to this country with the intention of giving birth and placing a child for adoption. You also cannot come to the U.S. with the intention of placing an already born child for adoption, unless you first go through your home country's legal relinquishment and adoption process and also the USCIS process for admitting an adopted child to the U.S. Women who are pregnant and apply for a visa are not allowed to enter the U.S., unless it is very clear that they are not doing so either to make an adoption plan or to get U.S. citizenship for the child. Women with small children may well be asked about their plans for the child, and if they disclose a plan to place the child for adoption, a visa will be denied. Lying or failing to disclose intent to place a child for adoption constitutes visa fraud. It does not matter whether or not your birthmother had already found a likely adoptive home for you. The U.S. has a well-developed international adoption/immigration process in place. The process is intended to protect foreign birthmothers from being exploited by U.S. citizens, and to ensure that children will go only to families who are morally and financially able to take care of them properly. The U.S. does not allow efforts to circumvent this system. It regards such efforts as visa fraud. 3. Failure to go through the relinquishment/adoption (or guardianship in countries that allow it) process in a child's country PRIOR to immigration. International adoption consists of two components -- adoption and immigration. I will address the adoption issue here. Adoption must be carried out according to the legal requirements of a child's country of citizenship. Basically, this process MUST result in a full relinquishment of birthparental rights. It must then result in the issuance of either an adoption decree or a decree of guardianship (only available in a few countries, and Sierra Leone is not one). There is no way that a child can be granted an adoption visa to enter the U.S. BEFORE a foreign judge has already terminated birthparental rights and issued an adoption decree or a decree of guardianship acceptable to the USCIS (issued only in the case of a few countries, such as Korea, where an adoption cannot be finalized there, and the child is sent to the U.S. under a decree of guardianship for adoption here). What your birthmother should have done was to remain in Sierra Leone, either keeping until your adoption was finalized or placing you with the prospective parents or into an orphanage or foster care situation, until the adoption was finalized; then, your adoptive parents could have applied for an adoption visa (IR-3 or IR-4) for you, if you qualified for one. This visa would not allow the birthmother to come to the U.S., as her rights would have been terminated. She would have had to apply under the normal procedure for a visa. It might have been possible for your birthmother to obtain a non-immigrant tourist visa for you and her to VISIT the U.S. before the adoption. However, you would both have had to return to Sierra Leone until after the adoption was finalized in that country, in order to get you an adoption visa later. 4. Failure to determine, prior to adoption, whether you met USCIS requirements for an adoption visa. Under U.S. immigration law, even if a child has already been legally adopted by an American family overseas, that child will NOT qualify for admission to the U.S. on an adoption visa unless he/she is an "eligible orphan" under the terms of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act. Basically, to be considered an "eligible orphan" you could NOT have been living with married parents, or with parents living together in a common-law relationship recognized by the foreign government, at the time your adoptive family proposed to adopt you. An eligible orphan, under the Act, is one who meets any of the following conditions: a) Child has been living with an unmarried woman who cannot support the child according to the normal standards of the foreign country. b) Birthparents are both deceased, and death certificates to that effect are available. c) Birthparents are unknown, because the child has been abandoned. Child must be living in an orphanage or foster care, with no contact with the birth family. d) Child has been removed from the birthparental home by a legitimate agency of the government, because of situations such as abuse or neglect. Child must be living in a situation where there is no contact with the birthparents. e) Child has been legally relinquished by the birthparents under the law of the foreign country, and has been living in a foster home or orphanage with no contact with the birth family. (The USCIS looks very carefully at such situations to ensure that the child was not simply placed in an orphanage for a short period of time, to circumvent the law.) Based on what you said in your post, it sounds as if you were adopted from two married or cohabiting birthparents, though I could be wrong. It doesn't matter that one attended the finalization and that one was in the U.S. The important thing is that they were together when the plan to adopt was made. If this is true, then even if your American adoptive family completed a legal adoption in Sierra Leone, they would NOT have been able to get an adoption visa for you under any circumstances. The only way the adoptive family could have brought you to the U.S. would have been for them to live overseas with you for two years, and then apply for a regular dependent visa for you. Needless to say, this might have constituted a hardship for your adoptive family, and they might even have decided not to adopt you had they known of this problem. Unfortunately, however, they did not have the legal right to circumvent the law by bringing you to the U.S. on a non-immigrant visa. If you did not qualify for an adoption visa, and if the USCIS proves that you were brought to the U.S. by your adoptive family in a way that knowingly circumvented the two-years-abroad requirement, then this would be considered visa fraud. You should also remember that the USCIS does NOT allow an adoption visa to be given to a child whose birthparental rights were not fully terminated. Even if you qualified for immigration as an "eligible orphan", your adoption -- although legal in Sierra Leone -- might not have qualified you for immigration to the U.S. if the USCIS believed that the adoption did not involve total relinquishment of birthparental rights. The fact that your birthparents were actively involved with your adoptive parents in attempts to get you to the U.S. could actually have been prejudicial in terms of getting you an adoption visa. In addition, you do not say when your adoptive parents obtained U.S. citizenship. At least one of the adoptive parents would have had to be a U.S. citizen at the time of the filing of the petition to bring a child to the U.S. on an adoption visa. A married couple in the U.S. on green cards, with neither parent being a citizen, CANNOT get an adoption visa for a child. 5. Assuming that you DID qualify for an adoption visa, failure to go through the correct process for obtaining such a visa. If you qualified for an adoption visa, your adoptive family would have needed to obtain such a visa for you. If you were already in the U.S. on another type of visa, such as a tourist visa, you would have had to return to Sierra Leone BEFORE such a visa was issued, and await the processing of such a visa. In the normal adoption visa process, your adoptive parents would have had a homestudy by a social worker/agency in their state qualified to perform one. I assume that they had one, since they probably needed it for your actual Sierra Leone adoption. The adoptive parents would then file the I-600A form, along with the homestudy report and other documents, with the USCIS. This form would allow the U.S. to determine that THEY met U.S. requirements for bringing a child to the U.S. -- for example, that they had no convictions for child abuse, that they had a stable income, that they had no serious medical issues, that they had suitable living space, etc. If satisfied that your adoptive parents were suitable, the USCIS would issue either the 171-H form or the 797-C form, approving them to bring a qualifying orphan to the U.S. Once they had this form and once they completed the overseas adoption, your adoptive parents would take the form and your paperwork (birth certificate, adoption decree, Sierra Leone passport, etc.) to the U.S. Embassy in your country. They would complete the I-600 form and various other forms. The U.S. would investigate to determine whether you, indeed, were an "eligible orphan", whether you were legally relinquished and adopted, that there was no bribing or coercing of birthparents, etc. If it was determined that all was in order, you would have been issued an IR-3 or IR-4 immigrant (adoption) visa and could have traveled to the U.S. The IR-3 is issued if both adoptive parents have seen the child prior to the overseas finalization, and the IR-4 is issued if they have not. When you travel to the U.S. on an IR-3 or IR-4 visa, you are immediately eligible for a permanent resident ("green") card. You can then apply for citizenship. If you were under 18 as of February, 2001, and came home on an IR-3, you actually would have qualified immediately for citizenship. With an IR-4, you would have needed readoption in order to qualify for citizenship. In short, it appears that numerous mistakes were made, and that the USCIS is regarding these mistakes as violations of U.S. law. Once you have committed a federal crime such as visa fraud, you are subject to deportation and will not be allowed to return to the U.S. NOW, clearly, YOU did not commit any federal crimes. YOU were a preschooler when all this happened. While this does not matter under federal law, it COULD matter in terms of public opinion. And if you are going to fight deportation, you may have to get people involved, who can make the case that you should not be punished for the mistakes of your birthparents and adoptive parents. First off, there IS a mechanism known as "humanitarian parole". Under humanitarian parole, a person may be eligible to stay in the U.S., even without a permanent resident card or certificate of citizenship. Humanitarian parole is difficult to obtain. It is usually granted in situations where it could be dangerous for a person to return to his/her home country, or where there are other circumstances that would make it a reasonable act of kindness to let a person stay on here. In my mind, you stand some chance if you make the case that YOU did not violate any laws. You also might be able to make the case that Sierra Leone has had a longtime civil war, which made it difficult for your adoptive family to complete your adoption and immigration properly and which could possibly make it difficult for you to return safely to the country. If you want to consider applying for humanitarian parole, you will need to contact an expert immigration lawyer, who can advise you as to whether it is even remotely possible, in your circumstances. If there is any chance at all, he/she will usually advise you to contact your Congressman or Senator to make your case, as it is usually the case that your Congressman or Senator will need to make a request for such parole on your behalf. Your lawyer will also suggest other people who may need to be contacted, such as people who know that you have no criminal record, that you have been a good student, etc. He/she will help you fill out any necessary forms. You will need to get started on this quickly, if deportation proceedings have already begun, so it is important not to delay contacting an immigration lawyer. There will be fees involved, so you probably will need to get help from your adoptive parents. It is possible that a lawyer may see fit to reduce his/her fees because of the sad situation in which you find yourself. Now, I don't want to get your hopes up too high. Humanitarian parole is very hard to get, especially in cases where deportation is likely. However, if a good lawyer feels that it is possible to get it, and if enough influential people make the case for it, you may have a chance. Sharon