Born in South Sudan, major South Sudanese
ethnic groups, arrived in 2011 or later
Banyarwanda
and Banyamulenge from the Democratic Republic
of Congo
TOTAL
83
19,612
117,370
Source: RPC (Refugee Processing Center). 2019. “Interactive Reporting.” http://ireports.wrapsnet.org/
WRAPS data does not permit the calculation of estimates for all groups for which CMS compiled
ACS-based estimates. It only contains records of individuals admitted as refugees. Nor does it
pick up many who are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness for reasons other
than ethnic or religious persecution, like persons from the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia
who are stateless due to state succession. Furthermore, groups who are potentially stateless due
to gender-discriminatory nationality laws, such as Nepalis born to non-Nepali fathers, or due to
registration requirements, such as Bahamian Haitians, cannot be identified.
Moreover, WRAPS data is only available from 2002 through the present. Thus, tabulations based
on WRAPS data may undercount the population of those who are potentially stateless or at risk
of statelessness if some or all refugees from a given profile arrived before 2002.
Finally, many WRAPS ethnic categories are too broad to permit the calculation of estimates. In
particular, WRAPS does not generally distinguish across “Arab” ethnic groups. Palestinians and
Syrians are grouped together with all other Arab nationalities, making it impossible for CMS to
tabulate estimates of stateless Palestinians and children born to Syrian refugees. Moreover, data
from some countries and territories—including India, Malaysia, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, and
Madagascar, Brunei, the Western Sahara, and the Dominican Republic—is either missing entirely
or insufficiently detailed to produce estimates.
CMS’s analysis of WRAPS data reveals 117,370 refugees that fit the profiles set forth in Section II.
20,320 belong to profiles for which ACS estimates were zero or incalculable, including Roma from
the Balkans (165), Black Mauritanians (165), Dinka and Nuer from the Republic of Sudan (295),
South Sudanese (83), and Banyarwanda and Banyamulenge from the Democratic Republic of
Congo (19,612). Adding these 20,320 individuals from WRAPS to the total ACS estimate of those
who are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness yields a combined total of
about 218,000 persons.
CMS also secured federal refugee and immigration data—some of it publicly available and some
provided by TRAC at Syracuse University—on populations listed as “stateless,” “unknown” or “no”
nationality who:
•
Sought asylum “affirmatively” before USCIS;
•
Sought asylum in removal proceedings;
•
Were placed in removal proceedings between 2001 and 2018; and,
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