“assimilation” because the treatment of foreigners or nationals need not necessarily be 60 uniform but depends in many instances upon the special status of the person: the length 61 of stay, the conditions of admission or the possession of certain documents by an alien, 62 or certain qualifications of the national. Article 7 Exemption from reciprocity 1. Except where this Convention contains more favourable provisions, a Contracting State shall accord to stateless persons the same treatment as is accorded to aliens generally. 2. After a period of three years’ residence, all stateless persons shall enjoy exemption from legislative reciprocity in the territory of the Contracting States. 3. Each Contracting State shall continue to accord to stateless persons the rights and benefits to which they were already entitled, in the absence of reciprocity, at the date of entry into force of this Convention for that State. 4. The Contracting States shall consider favourably the possibility of according to stateless persons, in the absence of reciprocity, rights and benefits beyond those to which they are entitled according to paragraphs 2 and 3, and to extending exemption from reciprocity to stateless persons who do not fulfil the conditions provided for in paragraphs 2 and 3. 5. The provisions of paragraphs 2 and 3 apply both to the rights and benefits referred to in Articles 13, 18, 19, 21 and 22 of this Convention and to rights and benefits for which this Convention does not provide. 1. This article is an incorporation of the same article of the Refugee Convention. The article was seriously challenged by many representatives in the conference. The Swedish representative said that Swedish law did not allow Sweden to accept all the obligations of the article. The main objection was that a stateless person was not a national of any state that could guarantee the same treatment to nationals of the state in which the stateless person was living; therefore, the question of reciprocity could not arise in their case. The French representative thought that it seemed difficult to accept a situation where a stateless person would enjoy more favourable treatment than an alien, whose treatment was entirely dependent on the attitude adopted by his own government on the subject. It was, however, pointed out that Article 7 dealt with legislative, not diplomatic, reciprocity arising out of a unilateral decision taken by each government; the fact that no government was responsible for a stateless person was therefore irrelevant. It was also admitted that the benefits granted subject to reciprocity, such as legal aid or exemption from the payment of judicatum solvi, were in fact slight and in way prejudicial to the country or the exercise of its judicial or administrative powers. 60 The Ad Hoc Committee stated that the phrase "in the same circumstances" means that the treatment of refugees should correspond to that granted to other aliens ceteris paribus (E/1618, Comments to Art. 8), and the Chairman suggested the inclusion of a special article stating that the phrase meant "aliens who have the same right to stay in the country with respect to duration, place and employment" (SR.36, p. 9). Later the Committee agreed to understand the words "in the same circumstances" to mean "with the same time-limit and other conditions as are required of other aliens for the enjoyment of the same privileges" (SR.42, pp. 24, 27). 61 For the Refugee Convention, see i.a., SR.5, p. 22 (British representative). The same representative contended that the "all-important aspect was that refugees should fulfil the requirement as to sojourn or residence, since for the rest they would be granted the same treatment as aliens generally" (SR.34, p. 17). 62 The Israel-U.K. document on Article 3 (b) of the draft of the Refugee Convention (A/CONF.2/84) cited as an example the requirement of Heimatrecht in certain Central-European countries for enjoyment of social security. Cf. also the statement by the representative of Israel in SR.5, p. 19.