My Home is the U.S.
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My Home is the U.S.
My name is Elizabeth Rahlan-Ksor. I am 18 years old and currently a senior at Page High School in North Carolina. I am Cambodian & Montagnard, who was abandoned in a hospital and adopted by my Montagnard-Jarai parents. My parents fled to Cambodia from Vietnam to escape religious persecution. Since immigration here at 6 months old, Greensboro has always been my home and I want to pursue dentistry after I graduate. However, my life has been placed on a halt because of my case and paperwork. My family and I have been fighting my case for 5 years. This has taken a toll on us and we are not financially stable to keep on fighting. All of the money I am raising is for legal aid in getting my adoption paperwork corrected in Cambodia and North Carolina so that I can re-file my green card.
Background Story:
I was born on December 16, 2001, in Ratanakiri Province, an extremely rural part of Cambodia. I was abandoned at the hospital by my birth family and adopted by my parents, who are Montagnard, specifically Jarai refugees from Vietnam. They were living in the refugee camp in Ratanakiri where I was born and adopted me there. Eventually, they received permission to immigrate to the United States.
I traveled with them under Humanitarian Parole, instead of refugee status, when I was six months old. All the steps that my parents and other family member took for me were approved by the US immigration officials who supervised and reviewed my case, my parents did what those officials directed them to do.
I was adopted again in North Carolina in 2009 and my dad applied to the Immigration Service for my green card in 2017, but the Immigration Service notified us that they were going to deny my case because the North Carolina adoption order did not meet their requirements. This was around the same time that I found out for the first time that I was adopted.
In order for me to finally get lawful permanent resident status in the U.S., we need to hire an immigration attorney and a family law attorney to reopen the adoption case, contact the adoption authorities in Cambodia, fix the North Carolina adoption order and re-file my immigration case.
Reopening my adoption case and re-filing my immigration case will be an expensive process. We will need to pay legal fees to the attorneys as well as “filing fees” to the Immigration Service, which alone are almost $2,000.
Until I have my green card, I’m in legal limbo in the country where I’ve lived since I was six months old. I can’t legally work. I graduated from high school this year, and I plan to go on to college, but I need to be able to work to support myself while I do that.
Now that I'm 18, I could be detained and deported at any time. That's why it's very urgent for my family and I to raise $8,000 to pay for an adoption attorney and immigration attorneys, so that ICE can't separate us. My parents have already spent a lot of money to try to properly adopt me and get me a green card, so I'm asking for help from anyone who can afford to give. Any little bit helps, and even if you can't afford to give please consider sharing my story.
Love
Elizabeth Rahlan-Ksor 18
My name is Elizabeth Rahlan-Ksor. I am 18 years old and currently a senior at Page High School in North Carolina. I am Cambodian & Montagnard, who was abandoned in a hospital and adopted by my Montagnard-Jarai parents. My parents fled to Cambodia from Vietnam to escape religious persecution. Since immigration here at 6 months old, Greensboro has always been my home and I want to pursue dentistry after I graduate. However, my life has been placed on a halt because of my case and paperwork. My family and I have been fighting my case for 5 years. This has taken a toll on us and we are not financially stable to keep on fighting. All of the money I am raising is for legal aid in getting my adoption paperwork corrected in Cambodia and North Carolina so that I can re-file my green card.
Background Story:
I was born on December 16, 2001, in Ratanakiri Province, an extremely rural part of Cambodia. I was abandoned at the hospital by my birth family and adopted by my parents, who are Montagnard, specifically Jarai refugees from Vietnam. They were living in the refugee camp in Ratanakiri where I was born and adopted me there. Eventually, they received permission to immigrate to the United States.
I traveled with them under Humanitarian Parole, instead of refugee status, when I was six months old. All the steps that my parents and other family member took for me were approved by the US immigration officials who supervised and reviewed my case, my parents did what those officials directed them to do.
I was adopted again in North Carolina in 2009 and my dad applied to the Immigration Service for my green card in 2017, but the Immigration Service notified us that they were going to deny my case because the North Carolina adoption order did not meet their requirements. This was around the same time that I found out for the first time that I was adopted.
In order for me to finally get lawful permanent resident status in the U.S., we need to hire an immigration attorney and a family law attorney to reopen the adoption case, contact the adoption authorities in Cambodia, fix the North Carolina adoption order and re-file my immigration case.
Reopening my adoption case and re-filing my immigration case will be an expensive process. We will need to pay legal fees to the attorneys as well as “filing fees” to the Immigration Service, which alone are almost $2,000.
Until I have my green card, I’m in legal limbo in the country where I’ve lived since I was six months old. I can’t legally work. I graduated from high school this year, and I plan to go on to college, but I need to be able to work to support myself while I do that.
Now that I'm 18, I could be detained and deported at any time. That's why it's very urgent for my family and I to raise $8,000 to pay for an adoption attorney and immigration attorneys, so that ICE can't separate us. My parents have already spent a lot of money to try to properly adopt me and get me a green card, so I'm asking for help from anyone who can afford to give. Any little bit helps, and even if you can't afford to give please consider sharing my story.
Love
Elizabeth Rahlan-Ksor 18
Organizer
Elizabeth Ksor
Organizer
Greensboro, NC