A petition to keep Adam Crapser in the U.S. has been signed by over 10,000 individuals.
Over 10,000 people signed a petition help keep Adam Crapser, who is facing a deportation case, in the United States. Crapser is a Korean adoptee and undocumented immigrant due to the fact that his two adoptive families had neglected to complete the paperwork during his childhood to naturalize him as a citizen.
Crapser, who is now married with three children, endured harsh and traumatic experiences of abuse from both of his adoptive families, who physically, emotionally, and sexually abused him. His second adoptive parents, the Crapsers, were eventually arrested for “multiple counts of child abuse, child sex abuse, and child rape,” according to the petition on his behalf.
After being kicked out of the Crapsers’ home at the age of 16, Adam Crapser lived many difficult years being homeless and making “a lot of mistakes,” in his own words.
“At seventeen, I worked three fast food jobs and slept in the back of a Yugo,” Crasper recounted in an interview with Gazillion Voices Radio. “That was a hard year for me … it’s the first time I experimented with drugs. It was the first time I seriously contemplated suicide. It was the time I felt the most hopeless and despair that I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Since living on his own on the streets, Crapser had gone into prison twice – once for breaking into the Crapser home to retrieve his adoption papers and the Korean Bible and rubber shoes that came with him from the Korean orphanage, and once during the years that he had stolen to live day to day.
Despite his painful past and the mistakes that he had made, however, Crapser said, “I have a good life right now, with the exception of the deportation issue. I’ve worked very hard to create my own family and to be a good person as best I can. I try really hard to not be bitter, or to feel sorry for myself, or to be angry at the circumstances.”
The petition asks Raphael Sanchez of the Office of the Chief Counsel (OCC) to call for administrative closure on Crapser’s case, which would close the case and allow Crapser to renew his green card indefinitely.
Furthermore, advocates are pushing legislators to amend the Child Citizenship Act (CCA) of 2000 to grant citizenship retroactively to all international adoptees, including individuals like Crasper who were already 18 by the time the CCA was first implemented. The CCA automatically grants citizenship to children who were under the age of 18 in the year 2000 and who are adopted into American families. At the time of Crapser’s adoption, however, the law required the parents to complete paperwork in order to naturalize the children, which both of his adoptive parents refused to do.
Crapser's deportation case will be heard in court on April 2. For more information on his story and the petition, visit http://action.18mr.org/crapser/.
