Travel Guide for Stateless People | Hacker News Reader

Travel Guide for Stateless People

taejun.substack.com

31 pointsmrcgnc43 comments

If you're wondering how the author became stateless, their CV has a line at the end about this:

I am legally stateless, as my grandparents came to Japan before WWII and became stateless after it

Basically, Koreans who were in Japan before the Korean war and did not wish to become South Korean became stateless, since Korea was no longer a Japanese colony and Japan does not recognize the North. Only around 23,000 out of some 500,000 still remain stateless, since these days it's quite straightforward for them to become Japanese or South Korean if they so wish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%8Dsen-seki

And I'm a bit curious about why the author has not done so, although the fact that they attended the North Korean-supported Tokyo Korean High School, complete with portraits of the Kims in each room etc, suggests at least his parents were DPRK supporters.

Update: The author expounds on the topic at length here: https://taejun.substack.com/p/founders-peak-speech-script

A few quotes:

"However, until recently, there was a rule requiring us to change the pronunciation of our name to the Japanese reading of the Chinese characters. .. Even though the rules have relaxed somewhat now, I have lived with this identity for so long that I’m not inclined to alter it for now."

"Remaining stateless has become a constant reminder for me to stay mindful of those who are underprivileged. It also works as a promotion for the 10 million stateless people worldwide, living with uncertain legal status and limited protections. If I had not been born stateless, I would not be as serious about equality of opportunity as I am today." "

I find it interesting how much the idea of a name can be between different cultures. In the UK, your name is defined by use (although these days there are more databases and records). The courts acknowledge that a person can be known by two different names and names are defined by usage.

In Japan, generally speaking, you're not allowed to change your own name. You have to ask a judge for permission and have a valid reason. I personally, having not grown up in Japan, find it very odd that the state enforces what your name is, perhaps even under protest.

Asking the state for permission to travel and jumping through hoops thereby is obnoxious and offensive to me, and that’s even with the circumstance where the US recognizes me as a citizen.

I can imagine a lot of philosophical reasons why someone might not wish to jump through hoops to simply exist and receive the same treatment as everyone else.

In the OP’s case:

> Another question I often hear is: “Why don’t you just acquire Japanese citizenship?” Yes, it is an option. However, until recently, there was a rule requiring us to change the pronunciation of our name to the Japanese reading of the Chinese characters.

> For example, Masayoshi Son, the founder of SoftBank. He once held the same status as mine. His original name was Son Jeong-ui, which is how you would pronounce those Chinese characters in Korean. When he naturalized, he became Masayoshi Son.

> For me, Taejun Shin would become “Yasutoshi Shin.” Taejun Shin, Yasutoshi Shin. Hmm, not.

> So, I decided not to change it. Even though the rules have relaxed somewhat now, I have lived with this identity for so long that I’m not inclined to alter it for now.

Sure. But the Korean War was in the 50s, all Chosen-seki in Japan are third generation by now, meaning both they and their parents grew up in Japan and have barely any connection to the Choson their grandparents left, much less the DPRK of today. So it just seems to be a bit of an odd hill to die on? If you feel more Korean, get a South Korean passport; if you feel more Japanese, get a Japanese one. (Hell, North Korea will happily issue them passports as well, they're just kind of useless for going anywhere!)

Also, for what it's worth, Chosen-seki in Japan are "special permanent residents" that can do basically anything a Japanese citizen can except vote. The travel restrictions for being stateless are not imposed on them by Japan, but by other countries, who generally view the stateless as extremely high risk for overstaying and/or claiming asylum.

>So it just seems to be a bit of an odd hill to die on? If you feel more Korean, get a South Korean passport; if you feel more Japanese, get a Japanese one

Could it be that getting a South Korean passport will mean losing the special status and residence in Japan?

No, the vast majority of Special Permanent Residents are South Korean citizens.

there are so many american jews who have a "legal english name" and a "jewish hebrew one". Sometimes they are similar (i.e. the anglification of the hebrew name, Yehoshua -> Joshua, Daveed (though generally just written David) -> David, Moshe -> Moses, Avraham -> Abraham, with varying degrees of closeness. And sometimes they are not really related at all (perhaps just by similar phonemes, but not by real meaning).

Therefore, to me it feels a strange hill to die on. Even if one had to have their "legal name" be pronounced X, I'm not sure what exactly changes. 1) how you want to refer to yourself will still be how you refer to yourself 2) If the characters are pronounced differently in Japan than elsewhere, won't regular Japanese people already "mispronounce it". (my only guess is that there's some form of characvter mapping going on with different pronounciations for the different character sets?)

How does one become stateless, and how does one correct that?

Just to use one example I'm familiar with, by some estimates there are as many as 600,000 stateless people living in Thailand. There are lots of reasons but war refugees are a big chunk; hill tribe people who the government has been unwilling to issue citizenship to for generations are a big chunk.

There is reform under discussion to grant PR and/or citizenship to a majority of them - https://thailand.un.org/en/285279-unhcr-supports-thailand-ma...

Entire families live and die stateless. Alien travel documents exist in some circumstances (as referenced by this guide) but are a very obscure thing, hard to obtain and the process may be arbitrary, airline staff and border immigration officers are frequently not familiar with them, etc.

This is usually not a status that anyone holds voluntarily; they are displaced at some point and the government which controls the territory they are displaced into does not want to enfranchise them, or even their descendants.

All told globally there are 4-5 million stateless people.

"Taejun Shin was born and raised in Japan as the son of Korean immigrants who became stateless around the time of Japan's surrender in WWII. He found himself in the difficult position of being a stateless entrepreneur but ultimately founded Gojo & Company – a non-profit focused on promoting global financial inclusion."

From an interview with the author: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/09/young-global-leaders...

Born and raised in Japan and Japan won't give him citizenship? Jesus I knew they were xenophobic but wow.

The author can get citizenship[1] but chooses not to for what seems like activist reasons.

[1]: https://taejun.substack.com/p/founders-peak-speech-script

> Born and raised in Japan and Japan won't give him citizenship?

Unrestricted jus soli (extending nationality unconditionally to those born in the territory of the state, regardless of ancestry) is largely an American (as in "of the Americas", not merely "of the United States of America", though the latter is a significant reason why it is true of the former) thing, though there are a few countries outside of the Americas who do it as well.

Some more countries have restricted jus soli, extended to those born in the territory of the state only if the government judges them to be ineligible for nationality by the law of any other state, or perhaps only if the parents are actually stateless, as a way to mitigate statelessness. (And states who have adopted a rule of this type for this purpose may have done so after the UN Convention on stateless persons in 1954, and may not have applied it retroactively.)

Unconditional jus soli is rare, but a lot of countries have a good approximation of that for a practical reason -- to not have the administrative burden of dealing with people who already live there, participate in the society, pay taxes and all that, but don't get the right papers.

It varies a lot. It does happen that people are refused citizen ship of, even expelled from, the country they were born and grew up in many countries. It is not common, but it does happen.

I am surprised by his situation as I know of the Zainichi Koreans here (Korean citizens who were born and raised in Japan and live here as an ethnic minority). My understanding of the situation is that they legally are able to naturalize and a significant minority of them do so, but many don't as they would have to renounce Korean citizenship.

I do find it quite unusual that he would not be allowed to naturalize after living all his life here and being married to a Japanese citizen, so perhaps there are other exceptional circumstances. Or perhaps his statelessness isn't something he is actively trying to resolve, having found ways to work around it when he needs to travel and do other things.

The immigration system in Japan is quite open and straightforward on paper, but can be far more challenging in real life.

I know someone who tried to start the naturalization process but was instantly shot down for his Japanese skill (he speaks Japanese well). I know others who have lived in Japan for decades but cannot apply for permanent residency because they only receive short visas, making them ineligible.

Immigration officers have ultimate discretion and will not explain themselves to applicants. I assume this is by design so that particular 'standards' can be subtly applied without being reflected in statistics or receiving any criticism.

Birthright citizenship is increasingly controversial in a lot of countries, not just Japan.

Japan doesn't have birthright citizenship (unrestricted jus soli) in the first place, it is a jus sanguinis jurisdiction with a very limited fallback jus soli (extending nationality on the basis of birth in Japan, rather than Japanese parentage, only to those whose parents are both either stateless or unknown.)

There is a spectrum between giving citizenship to everyone born in a country (US) and not giving it at all (e.g. Thailand) and every country is somewhere inbetween with some kind of a qualifier and a procedure. Sometimes it's enough that both parents are in the country legally or have a residence there, sometimes you have to wait it out until you are 18 without hiding from reach of the state.

Practically, there is no point for the state to deny you citizenship if you went to school there and can do some kind of a job and pay taxes, because they can't even deport you to a country of origin if you are stateless and born there.

Technically even the US has the jurisdiction qualifier, which the orange clown wants to abuse.

I believe it's a fairly common approach, so singling out Japan this way sounds a bit unfair. For sore Switzerland does it the same manner, for example.

I knew someone in the 90s who was born in Sarajevo and was stateless after whatever country he was born in (I'm going to say Yugoslavia?) ceased to exist. Searching this now I see the UNHCR had a campaign to get such people papers[1] so I guess he would have resolved this by now. Anyway at the time he was living in Britain as a refugee and couldn't or didn't want to leave the country, fearing that he either wouldn't be able to leave (because no other country would let him enter), or wouldn't be able to return.

[1] https://bosniaherzegovina.un.org/en/234262-live-without-nati...

Jordan made almost 1 million people stateless in 1988 when they revoked citizenship of their citizens who resided in the west bank.

The US is one of very few countries not signed up to various anti-statelessness conventions, and they will allow you to renounce your citizenship without having another to fall back on.[0] This has been used a handful of times over the decades by activists (particularly during the Vietnam War). Perhaps the most recent prominent recent examples are Mike Gogulski,[1] who now resides in Slovakia, and Glen Lee Roberts,[2] who resides in Paraguay.

But the US is, of course, a fairly unique case here. Most people become stateless due to state persecution (famously many Jews were stripped of their German citizenship by the 1935 Nuremberg laws, and many Kurds were denied Syrian citizenship under Assad) or by falling through weird administrative cracks (for example, see the cases of Mehran Karimi Nasseri [3] and Shamima Begum [4]). There are also cases (e.g. many Druze in Israel and the occupied Golan Heights) who refuse to accept citizenship they are offered on political grounds,[5] who would be considered de facto stateless if they do not have another recognised citizenship (though I'm not sure how Israeli citizenship works; the US considers you a citizen with worldwide tax obligations whether you accept it or not).

The interim solution is to get a 1954 Convention Travel Document[6] from one of the signatory states, which functions like a passport (and taxes in most countries are levied based on residence, rather than citizenship, so you'll still be paying them already). For a permanent solution, you'd need to go through the normal naturalisation process to become a citizen of a new country.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness#United_States

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-bum-without-a-country-0000...

[2] https://dollarvigilante.com/2015/07/20/interview-with-glen-r...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri#Life_in_...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamima_Begum#Citizenship

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze_in_Israel#Status_of_Druz...

[6] https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/8745

Shamima Begum was not a "weird administrative crack", it was intentional persecution of someone born in the UK who was roped into terrorism as a minor.

I was referring to the government's stated case (whether or not one believes that they really believed it) that it was not in breach of its legal obligations to strip her of British citizenship because she was eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship, which the government of Bangladesh denied, leaving her stateless.

Palestinian aren't de facto stateless too?

Not all of them, but somewhere around half of them are.

I'm not entirely sure how that works out and which citizenship someone living in Gaza or the Westbank would fall under. In any case I can't imagine that a Palestinian passport holds much value.

You can be technically a citizen, but unable to prove that due to administrative errors or your parents bullshit. One weird case I remember from the news was people believing in the "sovereign citizens" thing and not exchanging their ussr passports to Ukrainian passport, than having a child and either not registering their birth or doing something of that kind.

As a result the parents can get citizenship, but don't want to, as authorities don't bother them much, but their now adult child is technically a citizen, but doesn't have paperwork to prove their status.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness

Generally, one has no choice in the matter. It happens during times of war, or under narrow legal circumstances beyone one's control. Those who claim to deliberately make themselves stateless (to avoid being drafted or avoid paying taxes) are ussually very misinformed about relevant laws. Citizenship is not an asset to be doffed or traded away when it no longer suits.

> I’m not sure how many frequent travelers actually travel without a passport

If you actually bothered for 3 seconds with checking actual article, its very first line

That doesn't answer either of his questions.

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