5 Finding a solution for clients: immigration status and citizenship In ideal scenarios, you may resolve the client's problem while trying to determine if the client is indeed stateless – sometimes, a competent authority will reply to your inquiries to confirm that a client merely needs to complete certain administrative steps to access citizenship. Other times, the competent authority will simply be more cooperative in assisting your client when contacted by an attorney. However, in other cases, you will find that contacting the competent authority is just the first step in what becomes a long battle to try to access nationality for your client. The next step is to find a solution for that client. Sometimes this can prove a very challenging task. However, do not lose hope. There are many cases where legal practitioners can assist clients in resolving their problem. We hope that readers will share with us effective methods they have employed, so we may update this guide in the future with more tools to help the stateless. This section covers how to assist people in accessing immigration status and a path to citizenship. We have broken the section into two main categories: (1) people who have an unrecognised claim to South African citizenship and (2) people who have no claim to South African citizenship. 56 Promoting citizenship and preventing statelessness in South Africa: A practitioner’s guide