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A stateless person is someone with no Citizen ship or Nationality . It may be because the state that gave their previous nationality has ceased to exist and there is no Successor State , or their nationality has been Repudiated by their own state, effectively making them Refugee s. People may also be stateless if they are members of a group which is denied citizen status in the country on whose territory they are born, if they are born in disputed territories, if they are born in an area ruled by an entity whose independence is not internationally recognized, or if they are born on territory over which no modern state claims sovereignty. Individuals may also become stateless voluntarily, by formally renouncing their citizenship while on foreign soil; however, not all states recognize such renunciations on the part of their citizens. Often, depending on the specific laws of the countries involved, one may not renounce a citizenship unless one is a Dual Citizen and can show citizenship in a country other than that of the undesired citizenship. Consulates do not want to deal with the complications associated with statelessness if they can avoid it. However, consular officials are unlikely to be familiar with all citizenship laws of all countries, so there still can be situations where statelessness might arise. For example, children born outside Canada to a Canadian parent or parents are, under certain circumstances, required to establish Canadian residency by age 28 or lose Canadian Citizenship . If such a person held Dual Citizenship and, as a young adult, renounced the second citizenship on the strength of his or her Canadian passport, and then subsequently failed to establish the required Canadian residency, he or she could end up stateless. Some areas are home to stateless persons. In some cases, such as That Of Ethnic Russians In Latvia , conditions for citizenship may be problematic or difficult to satisfy. In some enclave areas, such as the FARC -ruled areas of Colombia, and parts of Sudan and Afghanistan , people may have no practical contact with a potentially passport-issuing state which nominally claims sovereignty over them. While stateless persons were more common before the , Kurdish , Palestinian and Sahrawi refugees who claim asylum due to statelessness, for example. ''DE FACTO'' STATELESSNESS Cases of ''de facto'' statelessness have arisen due to Historical Provisions Of British Nationality Law which led to cases where people have had a British Passport without Right Of Abode in the United Kingdom . Those with such status who did not have citizenship or residence rights in any other country were effectively stateless despite holding British nationality. Examples of this include ethnic Indians in Hong Kong after the turnover to the People's Republic Of China in 1997. Effective . CAPTIVES IN GUANTANAMO BAY See Also: No longer enemy combatant While captives in the , members of a western Chinese ethnic group who refuse to return to China for fear of government persecution. A few of these captives have been granted asylum by Albania, but others still remain captive in Guantanamo. Other countries refusing to accept Guantanamo prisoners include Yemen and Algeria; the '' Washington Post '' reports, "Foreign governments have questioned why U.S. officials should expect other countries to pitch in, given that Washington won't offer asylum to detainees either." United States law bans the government from shipping people to countries in which they could be persecuted or tortured; each individual case is individually reviewed, adding to the length of the extremely slow legal process. But even prisoners coming from a Western country are not guaranteed admittance: Britain, for example, has refused to accept six immigrants captive in Guantanamo. Human rights advocates have proposed that the US could shorten the stateless limbo in which the prisoners are held by appealing for help from an international group such as the United Nations, but the US has not done so. IN POPULAR CULTURE A slightly tragicomic portrayal of this condition is the film '' The Terminal '', in which a man is forced to live in an airport due to his unrecognized citizenship status (his homeland has ceased to exist while he was in transit). This story was inspired in part on the real-life story of Merhan Karimi Nasseri , who spent almost two decades in the Charles De Gaulle Airport , originally due to conflicts with French law (he refused to claim being an Iranian refugee) plus also the fact he was not welcome in his countries of origin ( Iran and Belgium ) nor his destination (the United Kingdom ). He was eventually granted and served with French immigration documents, but subsequently refused to leave the building. In the made for TV movie, The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story, the famed flight attendant Uli, played by Lindsay Wagner , is seen in a late scene singing "Heimatlos" to Castro, the ringleader of the hijackers. "Heimatlos" is a German song referring to the homeless people of the world. Which is why once the lullaby ends, Castro says, "It could be about us." FAMOUS STATELESS/FORMERLY STATELESS PEOPLE SEE ALSO
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