A Filipino Adoptee’s Plea to Not Be Erased

Dear Intercountry Adoption Board (ICAB) of the Philippines,

I’m a 33-year-old Filipino American adoptee and I refuse to be erased. I refuse to be ignored. I was born in the Philippines and it was not my choice to leave. But it is my choice to return as an adult and to regain my citizenship. Because, ICAB, I am still here. And I am a human being with civil rights and I deserve this choice.

To date, I’ve been requesting your assistance for dual citizenship and to also retrieve my Filipino birth certificate, but I haven’t heard back from you nor received support for my requests.

Why you, you ask? Why do I keep reaching out and consulting you? And, why is this important, you wonder?

I seek you out, ICAB, because you have been the keeper of my biological records. You have been the storehouse of my Filipino history and the last remains of my Filipino identity. You are the legal witness to my orphaned situation. You have been the writer and transcriber of my last remaining Filipino past. You have been the watcher, overseeing my welfare as I’d lived in an orphanage in the Philippines from infancy until I was two years old. You have been the manager of my international adoption process from the Philippines to the United States. You have been the selector, approving my very adoptive parents and sole caretakers.

You have been the landlord switching over my vacant Filipino estate to another country, transferring me to Holt International’s adoption process in the United States, for me to be naturalized. You are now my living treasury of the last of me, holding my human files, history, heritage and remaining rights of my birth country. So, please don’t ignore me now, when I need you most, to help me recover my history. You are the one that knows best, of what was lost. Please, don’t abandon me now.

I know I am just one adoptee, sharing a plea to not be erased. But one adoptee is vital to the Philippines, because one erasure, is an entire lineage of Filipino heritage and descent. One adoptee, represents all Filipino adoptees because neglecting one, is allowing a different administrative direction to take shape, and human values will be lost with this attitude and transaction of erasure. Neglecting one Filipino adoptee’s needs–will be lowering the bar for others. This action will degrade the virtues that all our adoption agencies, global humanities and civil rights reflect.

Please, grant me access to my Filipino birth certificate. Please, allow my information to be retrievable in an expedited manner, please don’t give me obstacles in my requests. Please, endorse me for citizenship since you are the only one who can prove my Filipino heritage. Please, support me. Please, listen to my needs today, and tomorrow. Please, assist me in trying to make a new pathway to citizenship and a better relation with immigration in the Philippines, because of what this action stands for. For, I am not just one Filipino adoptee, but all Filipino adoptees. And you are the last remaining world and glue holding all of our remains, together.

You, ICAB, are the keeper of all of our futures in the Philippines, and nobody else can govern our past and future citizenship but you.

Thus, today, I push for another step in reunion. Today, I push for more recognition of my human history. Today, I push for regulated acknowledgement of my civil rights. And today, I push for a pathway back to citizenship in my homeland, my motherland, my birth country from where I was born, in the Philippines.

This to date, is a vital goal as to why keeping all Filipino adoptee birth records and information legitimate, accessible and retrievable at all times is important. As in this collective, positively goal-minded action, we, together, keep ICAB erected with the intrinsic values that our global community and sense of Philippine Kapwa is built off of.

Dear ICAB, we will need to work together now, to be able to knit identity back together in the Philippines because the goal of adoption is not to give away, nor to erase, but to restructure, and to rebuild. Adoption is a positive solution, and so is this request, which aligns with the goal of all international adoptions.

The very nature of all adoption efforts combined, is compassion.

On a positive note, I can imagine Filipino adoptees able to give back what we’ve learned on our journey abroad. We are not entirely lost to the Philippines. We can relearn what it is we forgot having lived away from our birth country for so long. We can build new connections and relations with the culture of the Philippines, and regain a new sense of repurposed identity to help the Philippines become a stronger leader in diversity. We can help the Philippine and global economy. We can learn from each other. We can heal the past and that painful separation, with hope.

So please ICAB, don’t erase me. Please, don’t ignore me. Please, see me as still a part of our country, the Philippines, the homeland that had shaped my fate and the country I had been born into as a citizen, long ago. I implore you. Please, don’t forget what it is you’ve been responsible for, taking me in all those years ago. Please, don’t see my requests and questions today, as trivial. Please, don’t ignore my emails. Please, don’t ignore my heart’s calling to reinstate my civil rights to my birth country. I know I’ve been away for quite some time, but I’m still here, and I haven’t forgotten where I come from. Please, don’t give up on me, Philippines.

Because I refuse to give up on you.

Stephanie Flood

Birth name: Desiree Maru
Birth country: The Philippines
Relinquishment: Day of birth in Cebu, Philippines
Orphanage circa 1985: Asilo de la Milagrosa
U.S. Adoption Agency used circa 1987: Holt International