How does a citizen become stateless?

Curious1usa

Allow me to add the following legal requirements and implications:

The process by which a United States citizen may renounce US citizenship is found in Section 349(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Essentially, you must voluntarily and knowingly appear before a Department of State representative, while outside of the United States, and make a formal renunciation of nationality.

Bear in mind, there is no requirement that a Department of State representative has to meet with you, or that your renunciation must be accepted by the US government; if you did renounce US citizenship, you would lose all privileges of citizenship, including right of entry into, and to remain in, the US; you would still be responsible for any existing US tax and/or military obligations; and the renunciation of US citizenship is essentially considered as irrevocable.

Finally, you should be aware that as a stateless person, you would lack the protection of any government, find it very difficult to live legally in any country, and find it equally difficult to travel legally between countries.

Bottom line - the real world is not yet ready for the Utopian concept of world citizenship.

For more information, see the following:

http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html

Alex_F

The US generally will not allow you to become stateless unless you have another nationality, or are about to aquire another nationality.

Furthermore, you cannot renounce US citizenship whilst in the US (except in times of war), you must do it at a US embassy abroad.

Since you will have no citizenship, you would then not be able to return to the US, or live in the US. You would not have a passport to travel with. Similarly, you would not be legally entitled to live in any country at all, and so would end up bouncing around the world until you could get asylum somewhere.

In short, its not a good idea.

George L

Most people are born that way, and much prefer they weren't. Palestinians in many countries, for example, cannot acquire citizenship in the local country. Middle Eastern countries normally recognize the child as acquiring the nationality of the father, so if your father isn't Lebanese, or whatever, there's no way for you to become one either. At least now the Palestinians can acquire Palestinian Authoriity passports, but that wasn't true for over 50 years. Another example are the Bidoon in Kuwait, a group of people who don't have Kuwaiti citizenship, or any other, but have lived there for some time. Bidoon in Arabic stands for "without".

If you want to renounce your citizenship, as an American, you have the right to do that. Not every country allows for it. And unless you're eligible for something else, you become, in effect, stateless. The Black Hebrews did that in Israel a while back to keep from being deported back to the US.

However, while you might consider yourself a citizen of the world, that has no legal meaning, unlike stateless. There are some documents issued by various entities that purport to show world citizenship, but they have no legal value and are rarely recognized as valid for travel. If you renounced your US citizenship, why do you think you would be allowed to stay here? If you have no status, you make yourself illegal. The only way you might stay would be that there would be no place to deport you, which is not a joke. If you did manage to leave the US, you would not be able to re-enter. So, renouncing your citizenship without acquiring any other is no joke. It makes your world a much more difficult, unfriendly place when you make yourself "Bidoon". But, like I said, you're an American, and free to do what you wish, at least for now.

splenderful_ed

wow you sound very idealistic
a refreshing thing in today's world
anyway the way to become stateless is to have your citizenship revoked which is kinda hard if you're a decent, law-abiding citizen
how about you travel the world, that sounds more your like type of thing
I myself have been to India, Malaysia and Singapore. Its great to travel the world because being a tourist is the one genuinely socially acceptable 'position' where you can just randomly approach people and start up conversations-without being regarded as on early release from the 'institute', drunk or stoned-It's great!
yay for travellers. I salute you, hopefully soon-stateless dude!

sparkles

I guess you don't care about voting.

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