statelessness, immigration benefits they sought, possession of national identity documents, and basic demographic information like age, place of birth, ethnicity, race, religion and languages spoken. CMS initially circulated a draft of the survey to large legal and refugee service networks that (it believed) would be likely to encounter stateless persons. These included Kids in Need of Defense, Catholic Charities Community Services of the Archdiocese of New York, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration, Refugee Council USA member agencies, and the Vera Institute for Justice. Ultimately, it shared the survey with more than 340 organizations that work with immigrants and refugees, focusing on communities that the project advisory group identified as potentially having high concentrations of stateless persons. CMS also followed up via phone calls with these entities to encourage responses.16 Forty-one of these organizations reported having worked with stateless people in recent years. Thirty-seven agencies fully completed the survey. Twenty-eight of these organizations reported providing legal services to immigrants. Five provided resettlement and integration assistance to refugees. Eleven reported that they work with stateless individuals a few times a year, four at least once a month, two on a weekly basis, and one every day. The 37 organizations reported having contact with more than 45 stateless persons, from 32 countries and territories and representing more than 25 ethnic groups. Palestinians deemed to be stateless by these agencies represented the largest group (seven persons) described in the survey. Attachment B provides a short description of survey respondents focused on the causes of their statelessness and their legal status in the United States. CMS also conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 48 stateless persons in Chicago, Illinois, New York, New York, and Manchester and Concord, New Hampshire. In order to identify respondents, CMS used a snowball sampling method. In particular, it contacted CBOs and NGOs to inform them about the project and request their support to locate potential interviewees. Given the vulnerability and marginalization of stateless persons, CMS needed to rely on the trust and rapport of these organizations with the relevant communities to establish contact with potential respondents. United Stateless, a national organization led by stateless persons, helped CMS to locate interviewees for this project. Pervasive anti-immigrant rhetoric in the public sphere and harsh enforcement policies made it difficult to obtain a high number of interviewees. Some organizations were unwilling to cooperate due to the perception of risk for participants, despite assurances of full anonymity. Even on occasions when organizational staff wished to cooperate, some organizations reported receiving no response from members or clients to participate in the study, which they attributed to the fear engendered by the current US administration’s immigration and refugee policies and its antiimmigrant rhetoric. Attachment C contains the interview questionnaire. The CMS research team also conducted several interviews by phone with individuals in other locations. The interviews provided insights into the lived experiences and challenges of stateless persons, and supplemented the CMS profiles of the potentially stateless or those potentially at risk of statelessness in the United States. Section IV of the report highlights insights from these 16 Many of the groups to which CMS spoke did not believe that their communities included stateless persons. Some groups were not familiar with the issue of statelessness, mistaking it for lack of immigration status or homelessness. 7