Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 53 (2021) Ghosts in America: Working Towards Building a Legal Framework for Stateless Individuals in the United States has been largely perceived as a “technical problem” that can be solved by remedies involving the “harmonization of laws and co-ordination [of] rules” by many scholars rather than a human rights issue.42 Consequently, international solutions that solely focus on technical solutions while ignoring the human rights implications of statelessness have been largely unproductive. 43 Although the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been dedicating itself to ending statelessness by 2024,44 individual countries should put a more active effort into establishing domestic legal frameworks to alleviate statelessness. Currently, individual State responses to statelessness have been inconsistent and often contradictory to the UNHCR’s efforts to end statelessness.45 While countries like Spain and France have established residency permit programs to confer legal residence to stateless individuals,46 other countries like Australia have been placing stateless individuals in indefinite detention. 47 In Part Three, I start to explore options for the United States in the face of international inaction. Currently, the United States lacks a consistent legal framework for recognizing stateless individuals and have largely ignored their political and economic needs. 48 Stateless individuals are currently not recognized or protected under United States immigration legal framework. 49 Furthermore, despite being a recipient of a substantial number of stateless individuals, the United States has mostly adopted unwelcoming approaches to stateless individuals. 50 Stateless individuals unable to obtain legal status through the existing immigration legal framework often find themselves subjected to a life living in limbo. 51 Although they are unable to obtain 42. Foster & Lambert, supra note 30, at 565 (quoting GS Goodwin-Gill, The Rights of Refugees and Stateless Persons, in HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE AND CHALLENGES (IN 1990 AND BEYOND) 378, 389 (1994)). 43. Id. 44. U.N. High Comm’r for Refugees (UNHCR), Global Action Plan to End Statelessness 2014–2024, at 4 (2013). 45. See Corgan, supra note 18, at 3. 46. Id. 47. Ben Doherty, Stateless in Australia: New Centre to Shine Light on Those Incarcerated without Hope, THE GUARDIAN (Mar. 26, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/27/stateless-inaustralia-new-centre-to-shine-light-on-those-incarcerated-without-hope [https://perma.cc/7RH5-7ZAH]. 48. Corgan, supra note 18, at 6. 49. Baluarte, supra note 20, at 352. 50. See id. at 352–53. 51. Id. 363