When Family Isn't Family: DNA Tests Shake Immigrants

Naturalized citizens trying to bring overseas family members to the US are sometimes given DNA tests to prove their biological bond. The results can be painfully unexpected:

For 14 years, Isaac Owusu’s faraway boys have tugged at his heart.
They sent report cards from his hometown in Ghana and painstaking letters in fledgling English while he scrimped and saved to bring them here one day.

So when he became an American citizen and officials suggested taking a DNA test to prove his relationship to his four sons, he embraced the notion. Imagine, he marveled as a lab technician rubbed the inside of his cheek, a tiny swab of cotton would reunite his family.

But modern-day science often unearths secrets long buried. When the
DNA results landed on Isaac Owusu’s dinner table here last year, they showed that only one of the four boys — the oldest — was his biological child.

DNA Tests Offer Immigrants Hope or Despair [New York Times]
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Image: Krista Raj Natarajan*