Stranger in his own land

Monday, Aug. 15, 2005 | 11:20 a.m.

Ben Brownback is lucky, but he's not.

He's Asian, but he's white.

He's Republican, but until Friday he was ineligible to vote.

Until Friday, he was a "steak and potatoes" Midwesterner, but not a U.S. citizen.

Brownback, a 28-year-old whiz kid entrepreneur who runs DAV Productions, a $6 million-a-year Las Vegas entertainment and events production company, was sworn in Friday as a citizen at the George Federal Building downtown -- 2 1/2 years after discovering that he had spent his whole life in the United States without belonging to the country.

How did this happen?

The short answer is, we don't know.

But the long answer is:

Brownback was born in South Korea in 1976. Somehow -- a story passed down to him says -- he was left in an orphanage in Seoul.

The Midwestern couple who eventually became his parents were looking to adopt a child. They chose one baby; the baby got sick. They chose another; a Korean official "passed through and took the baby on his way out," Brownback said.

Brownback was next; this was his first stroke of luck, he said.

About 10 months later the new family went back to Palatine, Ill., a town of 65,000 residents located 30 miles northwest of Chicago.

Shortly afterward, his parents got divorced. He was raised by his adopted mother, a second grade schoolteacher.

"I grew up in the most typical American childhood you could have -- baseball, soccer ... no Asian culture whatsoever.

"Until I was 6, I didn't realize I was Asian."

After graduating from high school, where he was involved in track, swimming, the marching band and other activities that made for 15-hour days, Brownback enrolled in the University of Illinois. There, he studied molecular biology, but began working for McDonald's Corp. as a consultant producing events for corporate meetings.

From there, he wound up moving to Las Vegas, and with a college buddy, he started his own company barely in his 20s -- another stroke of good fortune, he says.

One day about 2 1/2 years ago, top-level people from General Motors of Mexico City -- a client of his company -- wanted to meet with him in Mexico. He applied for a passport, was asked for some documents and realized he didn't have them.

He soon realized he wasn't even a citizen.

Apparently -- though his mother doesn't remember exactly what happened -- Brownback's parents didn't fill out paperwork needed at that time for him to become a U.S. citizen.

Somehow, he had built his life on an Illinois state document registering his birth abroad, plus a Social Security card. From there, student loans, a driver's license, bank accounts, taxes and all the rest followed.

When he realized that he didn't have the rights and privileges, or the identity, that he thought he had, Brownback launched a process that included hiring a lawyer, taking trips to Illinois for paperwork, lots of waiting.

At one point, a clerk at the Las Vegas office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told him, "you speak such good English."

He didn't answer the clerk.

He checked off the box, "white," in paperwork involving his search for citizenship.

Finally, in February, he found himself in the interview required of candidates for citizenship.

After being grilled on history and government -- "that was easy, since I took those subjects in college" -- he was asked about an arrest for playing a prank on a neighbor when he was 14, caulking the guy's door.

"That's a deportable offense," the interviewer said.

"That freaked me out," Brownback said.

But he left the interview with a list of more paperwork he needed to assemble, and finally got word of his acceptance -- and of the date for the swearing-in ceremony.

Brownback calls the experience "confusing."

On the one hand, he said, "If there was someone like me, going through the same thing, in light of 9/11 and everything we're going through as a nation, I would hope they do the same thing.

"I slipped through the system without hiding, so imagine what could happen if someone was trying to hide," he said.

On the other hand, he said, he couldn't see "how others do this, without money, and if they don't speak English well."

In any case, Marie Sebrechts, spokeswoman for citizenship and immigration services, said that two laws, one of which became effective in 2001, and another, in 2004, make it easier for families like the Brownbacks.

Now, she said, U.S. citizens who adopt children abroad have their citizenship automatically transferred to the children, and the federal government sends out certificates of naturalization within 45 days of completing the adoption.

However, the law only applies to children adopted after February 2001.

Families who adopted children abroad before that date should make sure they have their paperwork in order, Sebrechts said -- though she also added that cases like Brownback's are rare.

Brownback's case is also just history now.

During a swearing-in ceremony at the federal court on Friday, Brownback became on paper what he thought he was most of his life.

Brownback, along with more than 90 other people from countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Uganda and Poland, was officially sworn in as a U.S. citizen.

"It's good to be a part of it," he said.

Brownback was joined at the ceremony by his wife, parents, brother and in-laws.

But Brownback added that unlike some of the participants at the ceremony who had spent upwards of eight years trying to become a citizen, he always thought of himself as an American, and therefore the swearing-in ceremony was "a formality."

His mother, Lynn Brownback, who had come to the federal courthouse in Las Vegas from Illinois, said she was just relieved that her son had finally become a citizen.

"Now he can go on with his life," she said.

"Now I want to go to the party," he said, referring to his Friday night "citizenship celebration" at the Laughing Jackalope bar on Las Vegas Boulevard South.

He said he's also going to return to the process of applying for a passport, so he can travel freely in the future.

One place he'd like to visit, as a U.S. tourist, is South Korea, "just to see what it's like."