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Not only that, the State Department revoked his only citizenship and made him stateless. This is a huge deal and it's crazy this is possible (legally and bureau

Not only that, the State Department revoked his only citizenship and made him stateless. This is a huge deal and it's crazy this is possible (legally and bureaucratically) in the United States. The article makes it sound like an anonymous member of the bureaucracy checked a box in a form and now this man is a ghost. No legal proceedings, no transparency, no accountability.

lnxg33k1 3y ago
AFAIK it is disallowed by the universal declaration of human rights to leave people stateless isn’t the us a signee?
- askiiart 3y ago
  I looked over the universal declaration of human rights and didn't see anything about statelessness, but the UNHCR has a page on it: https://reporting.unhcr.org/spotlight/statelessness https://reporting.unhcr.org/spotlight/statelessness
  - lnxg33k1 3y ago
    It has an article about everyone having the right to have a nationality, so I suppose making anyone stateless would be against it? See article 15 https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
- EEBio 3y ago
  While US has ratified the Universal Declaration of Human rights[1], I am not sure how binding it is. There are also two Conventions about statelessness that US has not signed, and maybe that’s why similar revocations of citizenship has happened in the past[2] Even though link discusses a case where a terrorist lost the citizenship, not a law-abiding doctor, the grounds for revocation were the same - diplomatic immunity at the time). [1]:https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/670964?ln=en https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/670964?ln=en [2]:https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/37463/is-revoking-citizenship-for-affiliation-with-a-terrorist-group-a-violation-of-in https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/37463/is-revoking-ci...
  - lnxg33k1 3y ago
    Thanks for the links! Very informative
junofan 3y ago
I mean it’s in the Constitution. This guy isn’t stateless, and his citizenship wasn’t revoked. As far as the article goes, I suspect there’s more to the story. You don’t study at Fort Leavenworth and then casually pop over to your embassy for a few months as an accredited diplomat. His brother was a professor at Georgetown, and both are politically active.
- vidarh 3y ago
  1961 was during the rule of the Shah, which was a US ally, so I don't see why it'd be unsurprising if an Iranian military officer was able to study in the US and was subsequently able to obtain a temporary position at the embassy. The US does not require you to be an accredited diplomat to get immunity - members of technical and administrative staff can also get it. As for being stateless, he may well technically not be, but if he can not safely move to Iran that is a cruel technicality to lean on when someone has lived the vast majority of their life somewhere else.
  - cheese_van 3y ago
    >The US does not require you to be an accredited diplomat to get immunity - members of technical and administrative staff can also get it. Having had diplomatic "immunity" as a technical staff member, there are nuances. Technical staff do not enjoy "full" immunity, but only immunity for acts committed as part of their official duties - this is called "functional immunity". That status does not protect "functionaries" against civil liabilities for activities outside specific duties. In contrast, members of the diplomatic staff who deal directly with host country officials such as ambassadors or registered diplomats (political officer, econ officer etc) enjoy full immunity and that immunity devolves to their dependents.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      This gets tricky for several reasons: The current law on the matter is largely dictated by the Vienna Convention on Diplimatic Relations, 1961. He was born in 1961. While the US and Iran both signed the Vienna Convention in 1961, the US ratified in 1972, and Iran in 1965. Current US law on the matter (22 USC § 254) is pretty much entirely defined in terms of the Vienna convention. As such, current US law on the matter is pretty irrelevant. I have no idea what the legal situation was when he was born. Likely there was still a distinction, but even today the Vienna Convention, to the extent one can use it to guess whether it's believable that he might be affected (and it's perfectly possible the US State Department official who caused this is just wrong), in article 37 grants "members of the administrative and technical staff of the mission, together with members of their families forming part of their respective households" who "are not nationals of or permanently resident in the receiving State" limited immunity. So you're right they would not have full immunity under the terms of the Vienna Convention, but some immunity does extend to family, and the question then becomes how much immunity did they have under pre-Vienna Convention US law, and how much immunity is sufficient to justify legally withholding citizenship. My best guess is that this guy will get his citizenship back, and that it will turn out some overzealous bureaucrat saw that the dad was embassy staff, saw the word immunity, saw the word immunity on some checklist and didn't check the details - whether or not there'd be some technical possible justification for withholding it or not. Hopefully for this guy someone decides it's a stupid waste of both money and political capital to pursue this before he ends up spending even more on lawyers...
vidarh 3y ago
Under Iranian law, any child of an Iranian man is an Iranian citizen unless they've explicitly renounced their citizenship after the age of 25 and the Iranian government has accepted their renunciation, and the US State Department would lean on that to insist he is technically not stateless. To be clear, I think this is a cruel act, and shouldn't be legal, and he may well be right that he practically can't risk to try to claim his Iranian citizenship even if he wanted to, but purely technically he's probably not legally stateless.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

AFAIK it is disallowed by the universal declaration of human rights to leave people stateless isn’t the us a signee?

askiiart 3y ago
I looked over the universal declaration of human rights and didn't see anything about statelessness, but the UNHCR has a page on it: https://reporting.unhcr.org/spotlight/statelessness https://reporting.unhcr.org/spotlight/statelessness
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  It has an article about everyone having the right to have a nationality, so I suppose making anyone stateless would be against it? See article 15 https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
EEBio 3y ago
While US has ratified the Universal Declaration of Human rights[1], I am not sure how binding it is. There are also two Conventions about statelessness that US has not signed, and maybe that’s why similar revocations of citizenship has happened in the past[2] Even though link discusses a case where a terrorist lost the citizenship, not a law-abiding doctor, the grounds for revocation were the same - diplomatic immunity at the time). [1]:https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/670964?ln=en https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/670964?ln=en [2]:https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/37463/is-revoking-citizenship-for-affiliation-with-a-terrorist-group-a-violation-of-in https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/37463/is-revoking-ci...
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  Thanks for the links! Very informative

junofan 3y ago

I mean it’s in the Constitution. This guy isn’t stateless, and his citizenship wasn’t revoked. As far as the article goes, I suspect there’s more to the story. You don’t study at Fort Leavenworth and then casually pop over to your embassy for a few months as an accredited diplomat. His brother was a professor at Georgetown, and both are politically active.

vidarh 3y ago
1961 was during the rule of the Shah, which was a US ally, so I don't see why it'd be unsurprising if an Iranian military officer was able to study in the US and was subsequently able to obtain a temporary position at the embassy. The US does not require you to be an accredited diplomat to get immunity - members of technical and administrative staff can also get it. As for being stateless, he may well technically not be, but if he can not safely move to Iran that is a cruel technicality to lean on when someone has lived the vast majority of their life somewhere else.
- cheese_van 3y ago
  >The US does not require you to be an accredited diplomat to get immunity - members of technical and administrative staff can also get it. Having had diplomatic "immunity" as a technical staff member, there are nuances. Technical staff do not enjoy "full" immunity, but only immunity for acts committed as part of their official duties - this is called "functional immunity". That status does not protect "functionaries" against civil liabilities for activities outside specific duties. In contrast, members of the diplomatic staff who deal directly with host country officials such as ambassadors or registered diplomats (political officer, econ officer etc) enjoy full immunity and that immunity devolves to their dependents.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    This gets tricky for several reasons: The current law on the matter is largely dictated by the Vienna Convention on Diplimatic Relations, 1961. He was born in 1961. While the US and Iran both signed the Vienna Convention in 1961, the US ratified in 1972, and Iran in 1965. Current US law on the matter (22 USC § 254) is pretty much entirely defined in terms of the Vienna convention. As such, current US law on the matter is pretty irrelevant. I have no idea what the legal situation was when he was born. Likely there was still a distinction, but even today the Vienna Convention, to the extent one can use it to guess whether it's believable that he might be affected (and it's perfectly possible the US State Department official who caused this is just wrong), in article 37 grants "members of the administrative and technical staff of the mission, together with members of their families forming part of their respective households" who "are not nationals of or permanently resident in the receiving State" limited immunity. So you're right they would not have full immunity under the terms of the Vienna Convention, but some immunity does extend to family, and the question then becomes how much immunity did they have under pre-Vienna Convention US law, and how much immunity is sufficient to justify legally withholding citizenship. My best guess is that this guy will get his citizenship back, and that it will turn out some overzealous bureaucrat saw that the dad was embassy staff, saw the word immunity, saw the word immunity on some checklist and didn't check the details - whether or not there'd be some technical possible justification for withholding it or not. Hopefully for this guy someone decides it's a stupid waste of both money and political capital to pursue this before he ends up spending even more on lawyers...

vidarh 3y ago

Under Iranian law, any child of an Iranian man is an Iranian citizen unless they've explicitly renounced their citizenship after the age of 25 and the Iranian government has accepted their renunciation, and the US State Department would lean on that to insist he is technically not stateless. To be clear, I think this is a cruel act, and shouldn't be legal, and he may well be right that he practically can't risk to try to claim his Iranian citizenship even if he wanted to, but purely technically he's probably not legally stateless.