A stateless permanent resident?

July 9, 2017 5:49 PM

Suppose someone has citizenship of Country A and permanent residence in Country B. Then, for some reason (perhaps something political like speaking up against the Government or maybe just that country dissolves), this person no longer has citizenship of Country A. What happens to their Country B status? Do they get booted out too, rendering them truly stateless? Can they ask for citizenship from Country B?

I'd imagine this would be different based on country, as well as based on why Country A pulled their citizenship. Has there been precedence for this?

posted by divabat to Law & Government (12 answers total)

Here's the wiki page of statelessness generally.

Are you looking for something like this person's story?
posted by aniola at 5:56 PM on July 9, 2017

aniola: Mehran Karimi Nasseri doesn't seem to have permanent residency in any of the countries he was trying to get into. My question is about when you already have PR in some country, especially one you're currently living in, and then your passport country/country of citizenship decides you're not one of theirs anymore.
posted by divabat at 6:06 PM on July 9, 2017

I've known someone in more or less that position -- a citizen of a postsoviet state and PR or employment-visa-holder in the US who kinda lost her citizenship. She was on US refugee papers for a while until her US citizenship came through.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:31 PM on July 9, 2017

I'm pretty sure that it depends on the laws of Country B. And yeah, I think there's plenty of precedence. My grandparents were in this position, because in 1941 the Third Reich revoked the state membership of all German and Austrian Jews who had left Germany and Austria. (All Jews lost their citizenship under the Nuremberg Laws, but they had a second-class state membership, which is what was revoked in 1941 for Jews who had fled the country. I think my grandparents were issued some special document for stateless people, which they used in lieu of a passport.) After the war, Germany and Austria reinstated citizenship to stateless Jews who had lost their German or Austrian citizenship, and I know there's a clause in Austrian citizenship law that's meant to offer citizenship to the children of at-the-time-stateless Jewish refugees. I think that my dad may be eligible for Austrian citizenship because his parents were stateless at the time of his birth, even though under normal circumstances he wouldn't be.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:43 PM on July 9, 2017

Ooh, found some relevant stuff here:

The 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness oblige signatory states to treat stateless persons the same as other resident aliens, particularly with regard to work authorization and the issuance of identity and travel documents. They also require states to confer nationality upon individuals born in their territory who would otherwise be stateless at birth and prohibit states from allowing citizens to renounce their nationality if doing so would render them stateless.

Also, the UNHCR will issue documents to stateless people.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:00 PM on July 9, 2017

This happened to cityboy, a citizen of Yugoslavia when we married, and who later had a green card on the basis of our marriage. Perhaps a decade later the dissolution of Yugoslavia happened. To take up Croatian citizenship he would have had to enter the Croatian army and serve on active duty at a time of war. He chose not to do that - he had a family, children, and a job here. He decided to take US citizenship, something he'd vaguely thought of, but which he'd not thought necessary. He could continue indefinitely, he thought, as a legal permanent resident of the US. Except for voting, there seemed to be few differences between legal residency and citizenship.

Except for a passport. Problems would have occurred should he have decided to travel outside the US, since he would have needed a valid passport to enter another country and to return to the US. He did want to see his distant family again, and with kids here, he decided to become a US citizen.

Travel is the most obvious problem for the person you reference. He/she might be fine, as long as they don't leave or attempt to return to the US - as long as they actually do have a green card. For a more permanent and less stress-filled solution I personally would ask an immigration attorney skilled in political intrigue and the particular needs of "stateless" individuals. Perhaps a refugee organization can guide you in finding such a person, and they may take an interest in the case and offer support.
posted by citygirl at 7:42 PM on July 9, 2017

Sadly, this is more common than you think. Women especially are vulnerable to losing their citizenship upon marriage to a non-citizen (oftentimes they are not even aware it is a possibility). My experience is Canadian where in addition to people rendered stateless through no fault of their own (Roma and Bhutanese for example) we also had a spate of refugee claimants who renounced their citizenship in an Eastern European country and then when they landed in Canada there was no country to send them back to if their refugee clam was denied.

Within the Canadian refugee system the pressures of statelessness is recognized but I do not believe it is a factor when a Permanent Resident is applying for citizenship. Certainly PR status would not be stripped from someone for becoming stateless.

If you are Permanent Resident who is outside of Canada when you become stateless you are able to return to Canada via a commercial carrier (plane, boat, train) with just your PR card (it actually complicates things to show your citizenship from a non-Canadian country despite dual nationality being so common). In theory, you can cross into Canada at a land border without your PR card if you can prove your status to be in Canada with other documentation.
posted by saucysault at 7:55 PM on July 9, 2017

You might be interested in reading about how this plays out in Hong Kong.

In brief -

- Hong Kong has no citizenship of its own, only resident status, and living/being born here does not necessarily grant you the right of abode anywhere

- South Asian people have lived here since the city's founding in the 1840s because of commercial links with British-ruled India

- Before 1997, almost everyone here could apply for British National (Overseas) passports, the particular flavour of British nationality Hong Kongers were granted

- After the 1997 handover, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (HKSAR) passports became available to Hong Kong permanent residents if they met various criteria; many South Asian people here may not fulfill these - more here.
posted by mdonley at 9:50 PM on July 9, 2017

Happened to my brother-in-law: Filipino citizen, had to run for his life (was in the opposition to Marcos); after he was in the US the Philippines revoked his citizenship, leaving him stateless but with legal residency in the US. Married a US citizen; divorced her and married my sister. Lied on his immigration paperwork --- said he was single when he first arrived here, rather than divorced from his first (Filipino) wife --- which was enough to tangle up his paperwork for decades, although he continued to have a legal green card. Finally seems to be headed for US citizenship, after a mere forty-plus years here.
posted by easily confused at 1:41 AM on July 10, 2017

In Singapore you can be a stateless PR. I'm guessing that in general, retaining a PR is not an issue (just that it needs to be transferred in some way to your new "stateless" status) but that travel is more problematic.
posted by aielen at 2:47 AM on July 10, 2017

We some some exceptions here in the thread. Don't forget that often there were stings attached (e.g. could have gotten now X but did not want to serve in the Army).

As far as I know the situation you describe violates UN Regulations
http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/protection/statelessness/3bbb286d8/convention-reduction-statelessness.html
posted by yoyo_nyc at 6:38 AM on July 10, 2017

As far as I know the situation you describe violates UN Regulations

It violates the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, but only 67 member states (out of a total of almost 200) have signed that.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:10 AM on July 10, 2017