Stateless most of her life, 72-year-old Marjorie Fuller is finally an American citizen and headed to a home country she has never seen.
Fuller was en route Friday from China, where she was born and lived all her life. She was headed for Baltimore, where she will be hospitalized for temporary care and to get settled into her new country, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.Hatch's office reported that the State Department, after reviewing Fuller's status, declared her a citizen and issued her a U.S. passport. Her trip home and care are being funded by private donors, Hatch aides said.
U.S. officials have kept tabs on Fuller for years at her nursing home in northern China. But until this year, the former concentration camp inmate had never expressed a desire to resettle in the United States.
Charles Paglee of Baltimore met Fuller while traveling in China and said she told him in September she was eager to leave for the United States. Paglee contacted Ross Perot for help, and Perot brought the case to Hatch's attention.
Fuller was born to a Polish mother in China in the 1920s, but later they were abandoned by the father, a U.S. citizen who had lived abroad since birth, Hatch aides explained. That left Fuller's citizenship unclear and she spent her life in China, where she was considered a stateless person.
She has been at a rest home for 14 years, after spending the previous 23 confined to concentration camps, victim of anti-rightist campaigns led by Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung.