Julia Parker: Lady In Limbo

Dad Never Finished Naturalization Process

(CBS)  It's the stuff movies are made of.

You're going right along, minding your own business, fully confident that the one thing you know for sure is who you are, only to find out later that you really don't.

Julia Parker found that out. She has really lived the American dream in her young life. She has a house in the suburbs of New York City, she works on Wall Street, and seemingly has it all.

Except one thing: U.S. Citizenship.

"I love my life and I could lose all of this," Parker told CBS News Correspondent Richard Schlesinger. "All of a sudden, I'm not who I thought I was."

Who knew?

She thought she was an American, her mother thought so too. But they recently found out she is not.

Julia Parker was born between wars in Ethiopia. She was adopted by an American serviceman and his wife and taken to her new life in New Jersey.

From the time she was three months old, Julia was raised as an American girl by an American father and an American mother.

When she turned 17, she got her driver's license. When she turned 18, she got her voter registration card.

But as it turned out, her adoptive father, who died years ago, never completed the process to have Julia naturalized. And when she used that voter registration card to vote, thinking she was performing her civic duty, she had no idea she was committing a crime— voting without being a citizen.

Parker didn't learn this until years later, when she tried to complete the naturalization process on her own and she told an immigration officer about having voted. "He said, 'You voted? That's a felony. You're not allowed to do that.'"

And when she asked the officer whether this meant she could be denied her citizenship forever, his response was, "Oh yeah."

It gets worse. Now the Immigration and Naturalization Service is investigating the matter and it could decide to deport Parker.

"How do you get deported for voting?" Parker wondered. "How do you get in trouble, get sent away from the only place you've ever lived, the only place you know? It's completely surreal."

Parker was snagged by a four-year-old law designed to crack down on criminal aliens. Under the law, even though the crime the Magnolia, N.J. woman committed was more like an honest mistake, she has no right to a trial, no way to appear before a judge, and no place to plead her case.

And even if the INS decides to leave Parker alone today, opponents of the law say there are no guarantees about tomorrow.

And even though efforts are underway to change the law, Parker continues to wonder why she's being punished simply for being a good citizen, and voting.