By Arjun Sing
WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it will rescind a policy adopted during the Biden administration that grants reprieve to “stateless” persons in the United States from heavy immigration scrutiny.
“Statelessness” is a situation where an individual does not possess the nationality of any country, or who previously did but had that nationality unilaterally revoked by the country’s government, often due to political reasons. In the United States, U.S. citizens who renounce their citizenship can become stateless if they do not possess the nationality of any other country.
Statelessness can be a complication during travel and immigration to other countries, which usually require the presentation of a passport or travel document issued by another state (usually, only to their citizens).
During the Biden administration, USCIS had adopted a policy that would allow stateless persons to apply for immigration benefits with marginally less difficulty, in terms of the documentation required to prove statelessness.
On June 5, USCIS announced that it would rescind that previous policy, consistent with Executive Order 14161 signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office. The order requires the government “to prevent any refugee or stateless individual from being admitted to the United States without undergoing stringent identification verification beyond that required of any other alien seeking admission.”
“By rescinding the [earlier] guidance, USCIS removes an unnecessary bureaucratic process for making determinations and recognizes that a determination of statelessness is a finding of fact,” wrote USCIS in its statement about the change.
Many asylum seekers and refugees who travel to the United States, including those who enter the country illegally, claim they are stateless. A finding of statelessness may prevent the removal of a non-citizen to a foreign country, since such countries are usually averse to accepting anyone but their own nationals as deportees from the United States.
The USCIS statement indicates that statelessness may be used as a “discretionary factor” in the adjudication of an application for an immigration benefit. This means that statelessness could form the basis of a denial.
In 2021, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced that the statelessness policy was drafted in order to “enhance recognition of, and protections for, vulnerable populations.”
The action is the latest in a series of policy changes regarding immigration by the Trump administration.
On June 4, Trump signed a proclamation that banned the entry of foreign nationals of several countries—Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—from entering the United States over issues of national security.
