"The calamity of the rightless is not that they are deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or of equality before the law and freedom of opinion — formulas which were designed to solve problems within given communities—but that they no longer belong to any community whatsoever."

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

There are the persons who have a nationality. And there are the stateless persons, who don't have one. Whether your state was destroyed, your country doesn't want you anymore or you passed through breaks in nationality laws, you ended up without nationality.

This became common with the rise of nationalism and citizenship, as having papers signified access to property, voting rights, bank accounts and inheritance, lack of access to which wreak havoc on citizens. This became especially common in the 20th century, when wars and revolutions meant your country could no longer exist or a dictatorship could expel you and/or strip you of your nationality. It's a Cyclical Trope in the media and stories, rising and ebbing with increasing and lowered international tensions, as a result of poor diplomatic relations, sanctions, and wars and revolutions. Since the end of the Cold War the treaties were redacted to reduce cases in which someone could end up without nationality; nevertheless, some might end up stateless by not having their birth registered.

Is likely to be a status for Space Cossacks, or anyone else who is migrating or Settling the Frontier. Sometimes it is kind of the point as the reason they went into the wilderness was specifically to get away from the state. If the person(s) remain(s) loyal to the old country of their birth despite their statelessness, they become a Patriot in Exile.

One variety of the Flying Dutchman, in the "The Man With No Country" section.

May lead into Invading Refugees.

The Knight Errant and Rōnin are a smaller scale version who lack a Lord to serve under (which is essentially the same thing in a feudal system). The Germanic concept of the Outlaw is something of a precursor trope.

This trope has nothing to see with the Mukokuseki trope, although it literally means "stateless."

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-: Fai D. Flourite. With his home country gone, he has no place to officially call home. Syaoran lacks a nationality, as well. Thankfully, they both have loved ones in welcoming countries, and perhaps someday they will become citizens of one of them.
Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Several of the characters in Celestial Being have no known national allegiance. While most of them are citizens either of Earth or a Space Colony who joined the organization, it is an open question whether Tieria or the other Innovades (Artificial Humans) are legally registered anywhere. Feldt Grace was literally born and raised in the covert organization, so it is rather unlikely that she has been given nationality anywhere either.

Comic Books

In the aftermath of the Secret Empire (a conspiracy to take control of the United States led by a thinly-veiled version of then-president Richard Nixon), Steve Rogers lost faith in his country and abandoned his identity as Captain America, adopting the persona "Nomad".
In a story, "The Incident", Superman plans to renounce his American citizenship so that his world-saving skills are not used against The United States (more about this here). In the Silver Age, the UN appointed Superman a "Citizen of the World". None of this, of course, affects Clark Kent's citizenship.
This was actually used by Magneto as a justification for most of his atrocities when he was brought to trial. Because his German nationality was revoked by the Nuremberg Laws, he argued that he was a state of one and was engaging in legitimate acts of war against aggressive foreign powers. Because he was not a citizen of any country (and therefore could not have broken any laws, as he was not subject to them), the International Court of Justice was forced to concede this stance and (after some typical Comic Book shenanigans) he was ultimately released after they determined that he had not violated the Geneva Convention and had, therefore, committed no war crimes (such as targeting civilians or mistreating prisoners of war, for example).

Film

Arch of Triumph is about Dr. Ravic, an Austrian refugee in 1938 Paris who has no passport and no way to get one, his country, Austria, having been absorbed by Nazi Germany.
In Casino Royale (2006), Le Chiffre's nationality is given as 'stateless' on the MI6 file Bond is seen reading.
Count Dracula is welcome nowhere on Earth in Dracula 2000, because it's revealed that he's actually Judas Iscariot, sentenced to deathlessly Walking the Earth, forever hated, hounded and hunted.
In Robinson Crusoeland, the last Laurel and Hardy film, Antoine is a stateless refugee aboard a boat and ends up citizen of "Crusoeland", an island found by the boat.
The premise of The Terminal is as follows: Viktor Navorski's passport is no longer valid because, while he was on an airplane, a revolution occurred in his home country, Krakozhia. That means he's trapped in the airport because he can't enter the US without a valid passport, but he also can't be deported, because the nation he was a citizen of no longer exists.
Thunderball has SPECTRE using the "International Brotherhood for Assistance of Stateless Persons" as a front. It appears to actually help stateless people in Europe - but in the back rooms, Blofeld, Largo, and others discuss extortion, murder, and their plot to acquire nuclear weapons.
The Mariner from Waterworld has no nationality. Many characters in this film have only their boat as their "nation," since all nations as we know them have been submerged after the polar ice caps melted. The closest thing to nations in this universe are the Atoll, while it lasts, and Deacon's oar-powered supertanker.

Literature

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. The Frank family, along with fellow Jews of German origin, were deprived of their citizenship by the Nazi-imposed Nuremberg Laws (see Real Life below).
In the world of William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy a lot of people have slipped through the cracks of society and lack a Single Identification Number (SIN), without one they can't vote, can't get a credit chip, so far as the government is concerned they don't exist.
In Casino Royale the villain flaunts his statelessness, claiming to have lost his memory during World War II and calling himself Le Chiffre or any other equivalents in other languages (because "I am only a number on a passport").
In Thunderball, the cover for SPECTRE's Paris headquarters is an NGO for assisting the stateless.
Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is suggested to have exiled himself from the world after an encounter with the forces occupying his country had devastating effects on his family.
Vorkosigan Saga:
- In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance Lady Moira ghem Estif renounced her Cetagandan citizenship when she and her husband expatriated to Komarr in the wake of the disastrous invasion of Barrayar. Her husband took Komarran citizenship, and she had residency as his spouse. Since then, she has lived with House Cordonah on Jackson's Whole, and as a resident alien on Earth, but specifically calls out her status as someone who's been stateless for over a century.
- Arguably, the many Houseless residents of Jackson's Whole (collectively referred to as Grubbers) would also count, as the Houses Major and Minor are effectively the governments of that planet, so anyone who hasn't got House allegiance/protection is effectively stateless.
Miriam meets several stateless persons along her aboard in Das Schiff ohne Hafen. Justified since many of them are fleeing Nazi Germany and the rest of Central Europe to go to Latin America.
The Arch Of Triumph of Erich Maria Remarque features Ravic, a skilled German surgeon who was stripped of his nationality by the Nazis due to being Jewish, and who is unable to legally exist anywhere else in pre-war Western Europe. He is one of many displaced persons without passports or any other documents, who live under a constant threat of being captured and deported from one country to the next, and back again.
Remarque's earlier novel Flotsam (or Love thy Neighbour in other languages) tells the stories of people either exiled from Hitler's Germany or unable to return after their citizenship was voided.
In the backstory of The Belgariad, the Ulgos (and the beasts who populate the region where they live) were the product of the gods screwing around with their creation powers. The god UL refused to let His children destroy those poor folks when they'd finished playing around with them, but the other gods refused to claim them, having already chosen their own followers, so those godless people were forced to wander around for centuries until finally the prophet Gorim convinced UL to take them in. Alas, when Gorim went to tell his fellow godless that they now had a new god, only a minority agreed accept UL and follow Gorim to their new home. The rest remained godless, and Gorim made them barren so that they'd all eventually die off; he considered this far more merciful than letting their race persist.
In Outlaw of Gor, the second book in the series, Tarl Cabot is returned to Gor and discovers that his city-state Ko-ro-ba has been destroyed by the Physical Gods of the world and no person from Ko-ro-ba may associate with any other; hence he is literally an outlaw, someone outside the law of any city-state. This situation remains until the end of the third book, at which point Korobans are allowed to rebuild their city.
Gerard Gales from The Death Ship lost his legal documentation and, as a result, is repeatedly deported and cannot find any legal work, apart from on the Yorikke, where he finds other seamen with the same issue as him and where the workers are treated as expendable assets.
In Captain French, or the Quest for Paradise, the titular space trader explains that, after his first historic interstellar flight, he got quickly tired of resting on his laurels on Earth and decided to abscond with the ship that he flew, which was being claimed by three different owners after NASA's shutdown. He tricked them into loading the ship with food and drink (supposedly for a party) and then left orbit, proclaiming that he was renouncing his US citizenship and all property on Earth, thus becoming the first of the Space People. He later tells his new wife that, aboard the Circe, he is the absolute monarch with her as his queen. Anyone who visits the ship has to abide by his rules, even if the ship is orbiting a planet at the time. It's mentioned that it's possible for a citizen of a planet not to be allowed back after a sufficient time has passed and if strict immigration laws are in place to combat overpopulation. It's also common enough on many planets to disenfranchise people, removing their citizenship status. This usually applies to criminals, cult members, doom-sayers, and other undesirables.
In Lucifer's Star, Cassius Mass is a citizen of the now-destroyed Archduchy of Crius. The former Archduchy reforms into the Republic of Crius but it is a Puppet State of the Commonwealth that conquered it. Cassius is considered a war criminal by the Commonwealth and considers his homeland destroyed.
Witcher neutrality means that, in theory at least, witchers are not meant to be allied to any particular fiefdom, effectively making them stateless. In practice, however, many witchers adopt home cities to make themselves more marketable and Wolf School witchers could technically be considered Kaedweni. During the second Nilfgaardian invasion, Coen ends up fighting for the Northern Kingdoms at the Battle of Brenna. Nobody seems to mind it, but it is considered quite surprising.
In the Stone Age world of Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, everyone belongs to a clan. Mothers decree which clan their babies belong to, and they are given clan-tattoos to signify their clan once they're old enough. However, it's revealed in the fourth book that Torak, who believed himself to be a member of the Wolf Clan all his life, is actually clanless and has on his clan-tattoo a scar to subtly prove this. Once his exile is nullified, his Mark of Shame is altered to make him belong to all the clans. The next book reveals that his mother decreed him clanless because the World Spirit demanded it in exchange for making him a Spirit Walker because no clan must rise above others by having such a powerful being on their side.
One of the defining features of the (purportedly) utopian society of Terra Ignota is that it's become possible to be one of these and still live a normal life. In fact, it's the default: people are born stateless, into the protection of the Universal Laws, which apply to all humans everywhere regardless of status, and only when they come of age does it become possible to apply for citizenship to a nation of their choice. And if that nation later makes decisions they disagree with, they can renounce their citizenship and join another, or go back to none at all. Such stateless people are even represented in the Universal Free Alliance Senate alongside the world's other nations.

Live-Action TV

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Due to half of Earth's population being erased from existence in Avengers: Infinity War, borders worldwide were opened so that countries desperate for workers could get them. Then, in Avengers: Endgame, the missing half of the population was suddenly restored and the world's governments prioritized giving them their lives back over the people who had taken their roles, leaving the un-Blipped to be herded into refugee camps, unable to either stay or go home.

Mythology and Religion

The Bible. Ruth is this after the death of her husband, when she chooses to leave with Naomi. Naomi is returning to her homeland, although it's unclear whether she has any family left or would be welcome in her community. Although there were no legal statutes determining citizenship, someone without family members was essentially stateless. Jesus was effectively this for the first few years of his life, along with his parents Joseph and Mary although they were still within the borders of The Roman Empire (probably), so they were in some ways shielded from the usual consequences. This was due to the King in their homeland being Axe-Crazy.
The Iliad. Patroclus is this, having been exiled by his home city after committing murder. This is sort of the point, as Patroclus is the one person sympathetic to the problems of the ordinary Argive soldiers thanks to not having his own agenda. Namely that they are getting their butts kicked, without the leadership of Agamemnon and Achilles.

Tabletop Games

Shadowrun borrowed the concept of SINs from Gibson, along with other things, and turns being SINless into an advantage, given the lifestyle of the typical Shadowrunner. Though fake SINs are also fairly easy to come by on the black market. And the two Matrix crashes wiped most SIN databases so there are quite a few people are stuck outside the system. The game treats being SINless as the "natural state" of a Shadowrunner as every Player Character starts Creation as SINless, with SINs as a disadvantage (you have to pay taxes, information about you are in the system and so on) with some advantages (you have an actual SIN you don't need to worry about being fake, and can easily use the advantages of the Government and Megacorps).
Similarly, Cyberpunk has the same concept of people locked outside the system.

Video Games

In Darklands, the Player Party aren't citizens of any city in the Empire. As a result, they are legally only permitted to live in inns while inside city walls, and are forbidden from staying in any town for more than 30 days before suffering penalties to their local Alliance Meter.
In Diablo III, almost all demons are associated and in service to one of the 7 Evils or their Sin Lords. The only exceptions are the Mallet Lords. These are monstrous 4-armed greater demons that are too powerful to control and wander as they please, they will work with other demons but only because they wish to at the time. The Siege Breaker demons are also this too a lesser extent. With only a handful in existence, these powerful demons can be controlled by the Sin Lords and above but only with constant, enormous effort so they can only handle one at a time and never for too long.
One Star Trek Online Foundry mission, "Crimes of the Many" by voporak, features a Starfish Alien prisoner at Facility 4028 who was arrested for drug smuggling and had his citizenship revoked by his home nation.
One can start the Dwarf Fortress Adventure mode as a Human Outsider, that is, in the wilderness, outside of any village or civilization.
Metal Gear: Legendary soldier Big Boss became tired of states using and then discarding soldiers, so he worked to create a system where soldiers could live outside of any country's influence. There were several groups formed by Big Boss that follow this ideology, and this eventually lead to the creation of Outer Heaven.
Tekken: According to their biographies, both Kazuya Mishima and his father Heihachi have had their citizenship revoked by the Japanese government since at least the fifth game. Curiously, Jin Kazama is still a Japanese citizen, even though his reputation in the world is much worse (good or not, the world still sees him as a warmongering conqueror, after all).

Visual Novels

In Double Homework, this is a strong possibility with Dr. Mosely/Zeta, who travels the world conducting unethical and illegal experiments at the behest of governments around the world.

Real Life

In 1935, Nazi Germany passed the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped all Jewish people living in Germany of their citizenship. Several Jews across Europe, intellectuals, philosophers, scientists and artists, including Hannah Arendt and the Frank family ended up victims of this order. Exiled opponents were also deprived of their German citizenship; future German chancellor Willy Brandt and Kurt Tucholsky are just two of many examples.
- The Assassination of Nazi Ambassador Ernst vom Rath at the German Embassy in Paris was the result of these laws. A Polish Orthodox Jew named Hershel Grynzpan was stranded and destitute since he couldn't access his money in German bank accounts, and had no means of contacting his relatives in Poland. After months of protest, he finally broke down and assassinated vom Rath and turned himself in. The Nazis used this as their justification for the state pogrom of Kristallnacht, which would prove to be the beginning of worse things to come for not only the Jewish people of Germany, but Jews in every territory that the Nazis controlled.
- In response, the post-war German constitution actively aimed to avert this trope, making it illegal for the German government to strip citizens of their citizenship and permitting the involuntary loss of German citizenship only under very strictly defined criteria. Even when these criteria are fulfilled, it is still illegal if it would leave the subject stateless.
Soviet Union and other Communist countries deprived some dissidents of their citizenship before deporting them. For example, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Mstislav Rostropovitch.
- The White Russians exiled after Red October did not have Soviet citizenship, for obvious reasons. This didn't stop the Allies from turning over White Russians who fought alongside the Germans to Stalin, along with the Soviet defectors. Of course their fate is obvious.
- Nicholas Romanovich Romanov, born in 1922 in Cap d'Antibes, France, remained stateless until obtaining Italian nationality in 1988.
Sometimes conflicting nationality laws can do the trick.
- Some countries ask for the renunciation to any previous nationality before the naturalization process is complete. While it can be only temporary, it could be a real concern when the decision is negative.
- Strict application of jus soli (right by soil — you get citizenship by being born in that country; this rule is predominantly in the Americas) or jus sanguinis (right by blood — you get citizenship at birth if your parents were) can help too — depending on a country's exact rules, gaps in coverage may form.
- Children (either by birth or through parents' naturalization) with dual citizenship of two countries that do not allow multiple citizenship. They are excepted until they come of age, when they must choose one citizenship over another. Failure to renounce either, or forgetting to follow through with paperwork proving they have renounced the other citizenship could lead to this.^note
- Renouncing your nationality without having another one.^note
- Simply being non-registered or being the child of a stateless person.^note
In 1945, the Formosans and Koreans residing in Japan were stripped of their Japanese nationality with the intent to give them the nationalities of their new countries. At the time of Japan's surrender, there were about 2.4 million Koreans living in Japan. Within a year most had left to return to (South) Korea, but issues rose when the Korean peninsula was divided — those still living in Japan had to choose between whether to affiliate with the pro-South Mindan or pro-North Chongryon. As Japan only recognizes the Republic of Korea in the South, those who had chosen to align with the North are effectively stateless since 2010 due to a South Korean court ruling them not to be citizens of the Republic of Korea.
Adolf Hitler was stateless from 1926 — when he renounced his Austrian nationality — to 1932, when he got the German one.
Friedrich Nietzsche renounced his Prussian citizenship in 1869 and remained stateless until his death. Likewise, Karl Marx, an exile and refugee living in London renounced his German citizenship after the end of the 1848 Revolutions.
Mehran Karimi Nasseri became effectively stateless in 1988 when his documents, including his Iranian passport were stolen at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. He ended up living in the airport for the next 18 years since he could neither legally enter France nor be expelled (without the passport, he could not return to Iran) and was the inspiration for The Terminal. He later died of a heart attack in 2022 while still at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Free French people were de-naturalized by Vichy.
Albert Trop was deprived of his nationality in 1944 for deserting while in Morocco; he found this out when his request for a passport was denied. He then appealed and, in Trop v. Dulles, his denaturalization was reversed for being a cruel and unusual punishment. Since the US has the death penalty for soldiers deserting during wartime, this means the official position of SCOTUS is that statelessness is a Fate Worse than Death. The later Afroyim v. Rusk decision basically made it impossible for someone to lose US citizenship involuntarily for just about any reason (that case involved a naturalized citizen voting in an Israeli election).
In 1926, Fascist Italy de-naturalized anyone found "unworthy of Italian nationality", e.g., exiled dissenters.
In September 2014, the Dominican Supreme Court declared anyone born to illegal immigrants since 1929 didn't legally have Dominican citizenship. The reason given was that being a foreigner "in transit",^note which was restricted to people who stayed fewer than ten days, was broadened to people without legal permanent residence (see here), making 210,000 people stateless.
Many Russian-speaking and ethnically Russian inhabitants of Estonia and Latvia are not citizens of these countries but rather stateless, holding the status of "permanent residents". This is because these states only allow naturalization for those holding a correct level of fluency in the national language. It is rather notable in Latvia because Riga (its capital city) was primarily a Russian city until 2006, and Daugavpils (its second-largest city) still is.
Since the Palestinian Authority is not technically a state, around half of Palestinians are stateless. Those who do have citizenship are mainly citizens of Israel (yes, Palestinian Israelis do exist, although some of them identify themselves as simply "Arab") or the diasporic community, mainly in Jordan.^note
Johnny Weissmuller, along with his family, and to the exception of his younger brother, born in Pennsylvania, were stateless when Austria-Hungary fell.
Bahrain has the habit of revoking the nationality of dissenters, as 72 people suffered in March 2015 for violation of the anti-terrorism statutes. Included among the real extremists were peaceful dissidents.
Recently, many countries have adopted a law that de-naturalizes people accused of participating in terrorism, especially if they go as far as leaving their country.
- As early as 1995, Saudi Arabia revoked Osama bin Laden's citizenship for his activities in al-Qaeda.
- As of 2015, the Australian government is discussing cancelling the citizenship of people accused of terrorism.
- As of May 2016, the Dutch Parliament voted for the de-naturalization of terrorists.
- Although UK law does not allow that an individual is made stateless, female Islamic State member Shamima Begum had her citizenship revoked in 2019 when declaring her desire to return. Bangladesh also made a point that she is ineligible for its citizenship (Bangladesh adopts jus sanguinis. Since Shamima's parents are both Bangladeshi citizens, she was technically eligible for one).
- Making terrorists, or terrorist suspects, stateless is a huge problem. Closing Guantanamo Bay is such a difficult task because most inmates there do not have citizenship; countries where they originated from have by and large refused to take them back.
During The Apartheid Era, black South Africans were de-naturalized and made "citizens" of Bantustans (the black puppet states set up by the government within South Africa, which no other country recognized). This caused great trouble to exiles such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had no valid passport. Arrangements were finally made for them by different governments.
Jean-Paul Alata, who was a Frenchman who became a friend of Ahmed Sékou Touré and consequently lost his French citizenship in 1962, subsequently lost his Guinean nationality after being secretly sentenced to life imprisonment on bogus charges during a purge, and was thus stateless.
From the birth of Romania and until 1921, only Christians could get Romanian nationality, leaving the local Jews stateless; a procedure was eventually introduced, but it required the consent of the legislature and was slow and cumbersome.
The approximately 1.5 to 2 million Rohingya people who live in Rakhine State of western Myanmar do not have Burmese citizenship. They have been described as the world's least-wanted people group — Myanmar's government considers them foreign migrants from present-day Bangladesh (the views of ethnic Rakhines regarding Rohingya are on average considerably less kind)^note while already-overcrowded Bangladesh^note has accused Myanmar of shoving Rohingya that were originally living in Rakhine State onto them. The situation has gone so bad that some Rohingya have attempted to Take a Third Option and leave both countries in boats towards Southeast Asian countries, many of whom have not signed the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and as a result do not want to host them either. As a result of the 2017 crackdown by Burmese troops, 75% of the world's Rohingnya today live in UN-sanctioned refugee camps in Bangladesh (who reluctantly hosts them, even though it also didn't sign the refugee convention). However, the world seems to have finally taken notice as Myanmar has been constantly criticized and pressured to take the Rohingya back, although it still refuses to give them citizenship.
Three of the boys and the coach trapped in the Tham Luang cave in Thailand in 2018 were revealed to be this trope. More specifically, the boys are refugees from a war-torn region in Myanmar while the coach trapped belongs to an ethnic group that the Thai government does not consider to be its citizens.
Hedy Lamarr was stateless from the time her Austrian citizenship was revoked by the Nazis in 1938 until she became an American citizen in 1953. She had already moved to London before the latter happened and her film contract gave her a green card to move to America.
Greek NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo was effectively stateless for the first 18-plus years of his life. Born in Athens to Nigerian immigrants, he had no papers from Nigeria, and he was born without Greek citizenship because that country's nationality law is based on jus sanguinis. Averted when he received Greek citizenship in 2013, shortly before he began his NBA career.
Another NBA player, Enes Kanter, was effectively stateless from 2017 until he became a US citizen on November 29, 2021, keeping his birth name but adopting "Freedom" as his new surname at that time. Born a Turkish citizen,^note he lost that citizenship for all practical purposes when he was one of about 50,000 people whose passports were revoked by the government of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Kanter/Freedom is a vocal critic of Erdoğan and a public supporter of the Gülen movement, which Erdoğan blamed for an attempted coup in 2016. At the time, he was on an overseas tour of youth basketball camps, and discovered that his passport was canceled when he was briefly detained in Romania. He was able to return to the US, where he then held permanent resident status, but has received so many credible death threats that the FBI has issued him a communications device that allows him to contact the agency at a moment's notice. He became an American citizen shortly after meeting the residency requirement. See this ESPN story for more details.
Colonel Tom Parker possibly may have been. He emigrated to the US from The Netherlands illegally at age 19, changing his name from Andreas van Kuijk and inventing a false biography of being from West Virginia. Shortly after arriving in the country, he enlisted in the US Army. Generally, someone who enlists in a foreign country's military is viewed as a forfeiting their citizenship in their birth country. But, for reasons he never explained, Parker refused to pursue American citizenship, despite being qualified via his Army service (though that was complicated by a desertion charge) and marrying a citizen, with an apparently fear of having his true identity exposed. In 1982 Parker tried to invoke his Dutch citizenship to get a lawsuit against him dismissed, but the court ruled that because of the Army service, he was no longer a citizen. However, one Elvis researcher asked the Dutch Ministry of the Interior^note about this, and they said they'd never received an official notice that he'd served in the US Army, so his citizenship was still on record. Basically, Parker was de jure a Dutch citizen until his death, but de facto stateless.
Francis Pegahmegahbow was born in Canada in the Perry Island Band of the Ojibwe people (now Wasauksing First Nation), which meant he was not legally a Canadian citizen at the time. After volunteering for the Canadian Army in World War I and becoming a decorated sniper — the deadliest of the war, as chronicled in Sabaton's song "A Ghost in the Trenches" — he became an activist for indigenous rights and lived to see the First Nations be granted full citizenship.
Some self-professed "sovereign citizens" have tried to make themselves stateless, believing that this would let them avoid owing taxes to whatever country they may live in. Needless to say, tax laws do not work that way and tax agencies do not appreciate anyone trying to renounce their citizenship solely to avoid paying what they owe.

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