38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 1/16/2021 12:59 PM 283 elements and factors that States broadly find relevant. 287 State agents incorporate other elements and factors beyond the statelessness definition when weighing statelessness claims, including the applicant's residence and actions. For example, Hungarian law 288 requires applicants to be residing in Hungary before their stateless status is determined, implicitly including legal residence as an indispensable condition of statelessness. States also look into an applicant's actions. In Fedorovski, Re Judicial Review, the UK's High Court (Northern Ireland) said that since statelessness is "not a condition that can be wished upon one's self," a person cannot claim to be stateless if they had refused to apply for citizenship in the State or States that they are most closely connected with. 289 Similarly, in Z.L. c. Procureur Général près de la Cour d'appel de Bruxelles, a determination officer in Belgium denied stateless status to an applicant who had renounced his nationality. 290 A State could also decide based on whether an applicant fits the "other," as a judgment of someone who is different from oneself. 291 Thus, States have resorted to differing ways in the exercise of their discretion to include or exclude the individual in polity. International law's definition of statelessness has linked the general discretion of States in granting and revoking citizenship to determining statelessness. While international law has shifted to a rights perspective on nationality matters and limited discretion on citizenship matters, the 1954 Statelessness Convention's definition anachronistically retains a remnant of a State-centric era that breeds discretionism. 292 States consider vital interests in the determination of statelessness, such as the prevention of 287. UNHCR Submission in AS (Guinea), supra note 206, ¶ 23 (citing the U.K. case of Hesham Ali (Iraq) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, (2016) U.K.S.C. 60 (Nov. 16)). 288. Hungary's Act II of 2007, supra note 197, sec. 76(1); see UNHCR, Observations of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Case of X v Office of Immigration and Nationality (17.K.32.297/2013) before the Constitutional Court of Hungary (2014), https://www.refworld.org/docid/547c69434.htm (last visited May 2, 2019) (arguing that the law is incompatible with the 1954 Convention). 289. Fedorovski, Re Judicial Review, (2007) N.I.Q.B. 119, United Kingdom: High Court (Northern Ireland), ¶¶ 12–13 (Nov. 23); see also R v. Secretary of State for The Home Department, ex p Valentina Bradshaw, (1994) Imm.A.R.359 (asserting that upon the withdrawal of her residence). 290. See Z.L. c. Procureur Général près de la Cour d'appel de Bruxelles, 5–6, C.07.0385.F, Belgium: Cour de cassation (Jun. 6, 2008). The first chamber of the Belgian Court of Cassation overruled the denial of status, reasoning that the judgment added a condition to the 1954 Statelessness Convention that it does not contain. 291. See Antony Anghie, The Heart of My Home: Colonialism, Environmental Damage, and the Nauru Case, 34 HARV. INT'L. L. J. 445, 499 (1993) (citing EDWARD SAID, ORIENTALISM (1978)). Orientalism views the Other as "inferior, incapable, and disorganized and therefore a suitable object for conquest and control." Id. Studies show that political procedures even use quantities of time to confer and deny citizenship rights. See ELIZABETH COHEN, THE POLITICAL VALUE OF TIME: CITIZENSHIP, DURATION, AND DEMOCRATIC JUSTICE (2018). 292. Peter J. Spiro, A New International Law of Citizenship, 105 AM. J. INT'L L. 694, 694–95 (2011).