The Extraordinary Statelessness of Deepan Budlakoti 11 Deepan Budlakoti’s Journey to Statelessness How does a person who is born in Canada, has a Canadian birth certificate and passport, and who has spent his entire life in this country as a documented citizen face extinguishment of his citizenship and exile because of a “technicality”? Utilizing the logic of ANT, the production of Deepan Budlakoti’s statelessness can be traced through networks or “rhizomes” involving immigration administrative tribunals, citizenship law, discourses of fit citizenship, racial profiling and bordering processes, documents in more than one country, other realms of (e.g., criminal, anti-terrorism) law, the courts, and authorities connected with penal law. Budlakoti was born in Ottawa’s Grace Hospital on October 17, 1989. He has been resident in Canada throughout his life. His parents were Indian nationals who came to Canada in 1985 to work as private household help – gardening, cleaning and cooking for the Indian High Commissioner. As the judgment by Mr. Justice Phelan in Federal Court states, the parents’ “employment [with the Indian High Commission] terminated at some point in 1989 – the exact date is hotly contested and the facts in this record are difficult to make out” (Budlakoti v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2014 FC 855, para. 17). According to one set of documents, submitted by Budlakoti’s lawyers (discussed below), his parents began working for a medical doctor in Nepean, Ontario beginning in June 1989.15 According to the documentary evidence favoured by the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) and courts, one or both parents continued to work for the Indian High Commissioner until December 1989, two months after Budlakoti’s birth. In 1992, Budlakoti’s parents applied for and were granted permanent residence (PR) for themselves and for Deepan, whom they listed as a dependant child in their application16 In 1995-97, his parents applied for and received Canadian citizenship for themselves; they did not submit a citizenship application for Deepan since by then they understood that through his birth in Ottawa, he already had (jus soli) Canadian citizenship. This 15 “In the IRB proceedings, the mother claimed that while pregnant with the Applicant, she had stopped working for the High Commission. The father testified that he had left his job in June 1989, applied for a Canadian work visa in Boston and moved into his new employer’s home. Additionally, their new employer (Dr. Dehejia) testified that he travelled to Boston with the Applicant’s father in the summer of 1989 to regularize the father’s status” (Budlakoti v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2014 FC 855, para. 11). 16 If Deepan had jus soli citizenship, his inclusion in his parents’ application for permanent residence was redundant. The courts have decided that the inclusion of Deepan in his parents’ PR application is evidence that they were employed by the Indian High Commission at the time of his birth, rather than based on an error on their part. The courts have also decided that the noninclusion of his name in his parents’ citizenship application is simply a neutral fact or at best an unfortunate circumstance, rather than evidence supporting his claim to jus soli citizenship. See Budlakoti, 2015, FCA, 139, para 5: “It is not clear why the appellant did not apply or why no application was made on his behalf. In any event, only the parents were granted Canadian citizenship.” Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1-26, 2017