Sec. 2. Findings; sense of Congress

335 words·~2 min read·/bill/118/hr/7755/ih/section-2

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Congress makes the following findings: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a party, provides that every child has the right to acquire a nationality, and numerous other treaties and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognize the right to a nationality. Statelessness is an abhorrent affront to human dignity and may lead to the violation of human rights. The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized that denationalization, as a form of punishment, is more primitive than torture.

Government action and inaction causes statelessness; therefore, governments have the power to resolve and prevent statelessness. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees— is a United Nations agency responsible for identifying stateless persons, preventing and reducing statelessness, and protecting stateless persons; and estimates that there are at least 10,000,000 stateless persons worldwide. A 2020 study conducted by the Center for Migration Studies found that there are approximately 218,000 individuals living in the United States who are stateless or at risk of statelessness.

Stateless individuals live in all 50 States, and many such individuals have lived in the United States for years or decades without relief. Despite the presence of stateless persons in the United States, there is no law relating to the identification of stateless persons in the United States or to provide stateless persons with a path to legal status. Stateless persons often— live without the means to work legally or to travel; and face barriers in opening bank accounts, pursuing higher education, accessing justice, and obtaining health care.

If detained for removal from the United States, a stateless person is often subjected to prolonged detention and, in some instances, cannot be removed because no country recognizes the person as its national. It is the sense of Congress that to resolve statelessness and its related human suffering, lost potential, and societal impacts, the United States should— provide a legal status to protect stateless persons; and urge the international community to take strong action to prevent statelessness globally.