Immigration and Deportation

Have you heard of Adam Crapser? His story made my cry. He was adopted at 3 yrs old from South Korea to the US. His original adoptive parents returned him to the adoption agency for some unknown reason, then for a brief time he was with a surrogate family for a year and a half who was kind to him (they wanted to adopt him), but they were refused because there was a long waiting list.

He was removed from their caring environment and was sent to a life of torture, adopted to a pseudo-Christian, abusive couple—the “Crapsers” (what a perfectly descriptive name) that physically and sexually abused their adopted children. There are too many monsters in this world that adopt children for depraved reasons but someday they’ll come face to face with God and they’ll finally receive the justice that they avoided on earth.

“He was beat with a 2×4, burned and thrown in piles of dog feces. The Crapsers had several adoptive kids and none of them were spared.”

When Adam was a teenager he broke into the Crapser’s house to retrieve the only things he had brought from Korea: rubber shoes and a korean language Bible, and for that petty crime he was sentenced to 2 years in prison. It didn’t matter that he was a teenager and he wasn’t stealing anything from those abusive monsters—how can you steal what already belongs to you?

The abuse he experienced from the Crapsers unfortunately created a vicious cycle in his life; he committed other offenses, (including domestic violence) which caused him to become ineligible for US naturalization, (none of his adoptive families had filed the necessary paperwork for his US citizenship). So after living in the US for 37 years, Adam was deported at age 41, back to South Korea—a country that was completely foreign to him.

The latest news I could find about Adam is that he moved to Mexico to be closer to his wife and children. He is suing the Holt adoption agency for mismanaging his naturalization. I hope he wins his case, he deserves justice, not punishment. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/18/south-korea-adoptee-adam-crapser-holt/

The injustices that he suffered brought up personal memories of the struggles that my family and I experienced as a legal immigrants. Korean-Americans have endured persecution silently for several generations and many of us carry a feeling of lost identity—both within our adopted country and within the country we left.

I felt like an outsider for most of my life because I stood out as an Asian in predominantly Caucasian environments, I was 1 out of 5-10 asians in my entire high school but I also didn’t fit in among Korean-Americans because I couldn’t properly speak Korean. I could understand a majority of it and I could read/write in Korean, but my accent was so terrible that out of shame, I abandoned the effort to speak it.

In the US, I was constantly asked, “Where are you from?” or “Are you Chinese or Japanese?”—I got so annoyed with being treated like a foreigner in my own country that I ended up replying, “I’m from planet Earth” and “I’m a human being, just like you.” When I said those unexpected responses, people seemed shocked, they couldn’t understand why I found their question alienating. Times have finally changed and I don’t hear those questions anymore—but the psychological scars of being treated like an outsider remain.

When I compare Adam Crapser’s deportation experience to what is currently happening in the US—the complete lawlessness of migrants that live rent-free in hotels, throw away the free food they’re given and that mob attack police (and are quickly released)—I’m perplexed at the inequality of the immigration system. https://www.nysun.com/article/viral-video-footage-shows-migrants-screaming-throwing-objects-at-police-officers-in-new-york-shelter. Our hard-earned, mandatory US taxes is spent on non-citizens while those that have a legally obscured but ethical right to be here are being deported? https://nypost.com/2024/02/19/opinion/inside-mayor-adams-migrant-debit-card-boondoggle-no-bid-bank-gets-50-million-border-crossers-up-to-10000-each/

Many people assume the new migration is a humane response to escaping corruption in “third world countries” but illegal immigration benefits the cartels that traffick drugs and migrants through US borders. Women and children become sex slaves or worse, and the cartels seem to own the border. US citizens have had to arm themselves and barricade inside their homes to protect their homesteads.

I believe legal immigration is a positive ideal but what’s happening at the US border is not immigration, it’s a lawless invasion. My parents came to the US legally, and it wasn’t an easy process for them. They never received unemployment, paid an exuberant amount of taxes, started businesses and they raised hardworking, self-responsible children without any assistance from the US government. They earned their right to become US citizens through great effort.

I think too often when things are arbitrarily given, those free gifts are unappreciated, they’re even complained over—a sense of entitlement makes people weaker, not stronger. In contrast, my parents never lost their gratitude or loyalty for their US citizenship. They had to pass a difficult citizenship test when they could barely speak english but they abided by all of the rules that they were tasked with and they succeeded.

My parents survived wartime in Korea when they were children—they were survivors, who didn’t rely on excuses of victimhood. When they put their hand to their heart and made a patriotic oath of loyalty to the USA, they were sincere in their promise. They proudly displayed a US flag on their house and they made a conscious effort to integrate American culture into their lives. They even ended up preferring American foods to Korean cuisine during their retirement years. They overcame racism both at work and in public situations, (there was much overt and covert bigotry during the 70s and 80s) but they took the higher ground and resisted the natural ego urge to retaliate against their oppressors.

I’m proud of their steadfast resilience and I’m grateful that they raised me in the US, despite the racism we all experienced. I sometimes still get funny looks from strangers (there aren’t many Asians in Texas), but I’ve had a lifetime of practice in finding peace as an anomaly in society. It’s no wonder that I unashamedly post on controversial topics and I battle trolls on WP—I’m used to being the oddball; and I’m numb to being taunted by ignorant people. The ongoing political issues that America now faces depresses me but I cling to the patriotic ideal that this country was founded as—the land of the free and home of the brave. I hope we can all respect and somehow revive that faded dream, before it’s irreversibly too late.