Man of no nation
advised of the consequences, including ‘‘the possibility of statelessness should they no longer be a citizen of any country and unable to secure a passport’’.
But the choice is up to them. The only way to get it back is to follow the same path available to any other immigrant – Lady Liberty smiles equally on former citizens and new applicants alike.
Wilfred may have severed ties with his former country, but like great swathes of the world population he took an active interest in the 2016 presidential election. The CIA ‘‘financial conspiracy’’ he supposedly outed to the US Justice Department in 1999 was, Wilfred claims, also sponsored by the Clintons. He did not want to see Hillary Clinton elected.
And so, in the open letter referred to above, he set out his story to thenpresidential candidate Donald Trump. To ‘‘Make America Great Again’’, he told the New York realtor, ‘‘you have to first defeat the Clinton political cartel’’.
And Wilfred offered his assistance to do so. ‘‘It is my sincere hope that with your help, my story will be confirmed and can be told without further fear, intimidation or retribution by the Clinton political juggernaut’’.
He also told the future president about the forced separation from his wife, Carolyn Dare-Wilfred, who was denied re-entry to New Zealand after leaving the country to visit family in Canada in September, 2015.
The Dare Foods heiress’s business visa had expired, and an application for residency under an investor provision was later declined by Immigration NZ, leaving the Wilfreds separated by a vast expanse of ocean.
It has not been confirmed whether a proffered meeting with Trump was accepted as Wilfred declined to answer questions for this story – this despite the
What is statelessness?
In short, being stateless means a person does not have a nationality of any country. Some people are born stateless, while others – like Wilfred – become stateless. ‘‘Legally they don’t exist,’’ a video on the UNHCR website states.
The body attributes several causes, including discrimination against particular ethnic or religious groups, the collapse of and emergence of states and changing borders, and gaps in nationality laws (27 countries, for instance, do not allow women to pass on their nationality).
Due to their lack of legal standing, stateless people are ‘‘denied a legal identity when they are born, access to education, health care, marriage and job opportunities during their lifetime and even the dignity of an official burial and a death certificate when they die,’’ a UNHCR report on the subject said.
The plight of stateless people has been described as inhumane and a blemish on international law, while late US Supreme Court justice Earl Warren described it as a ‘‘form of punishment more primitive than torture’’.
In the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar, the Rohingya ethnic group – described as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world by the UN – are denied nationality through the country’s citizenship laws.
The UNHCR are almost midway through a 10-year project to end statelessness by 2024. To do so it has set 10 goals that must be achieved, one of which is for states to sign up to two UN conventions on statelessness.
New Zealand is a party to one of these, the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. The New Zealand Citizenship Act apparently gets the tick of approval in complying with the convention.
The act allows children born in New Zealand who would otherwise be stateless to acquire citizenship automatically; children born abroad to a New Zealand citizen by descent also become citizens if they would otherwise be stateless.
And the Minister for Internal Affairs also has the power to grant anyone who would otherwise be stateless citizenship.
However, the issue is a rare one in New Zealand.
Christchurch immigration adviser Mike Bell said, being surrounded by ocean, almost everyone entered the country by air – allowing authorities to vet who came in.
Immigration NZ’s Peter Devoy said stateless people could still travel to New Zealand if they had travel documents and met visa conditions. United Nations travel documents would be sufficient, he said.
However, Bell said it would be rare for stateless people to arrive in the country. If they managed to so without a visa, he said there was ‘‘no safety net’’.
They would not be able to work, nor would they be able to receive any benefits. ‘‘Being in a stateless position in New Zealand would not be a good position to be in. ‘‘You’d be falling through every crack there is.’’