Questioning de facto Statelessness 281 surrounding their rights situation is considered in relation to that of citizens, rather than non-citizens or illegal immigrants, as is common in the statelessness field. As such, these comparisons reinforce the position of the de facto citizenship of the population. For those who advocate for an incorporation of (in)effective citizenship into the statelessness discourse, this group, based on the effective citizenship principle, should be considered de facto citizens and thus as a consequence should not warrant our concern as a stateless population. Yet, to claim that their de facto citizenship means that their de jure statelessness is inconsequential would be to greatly under appreciate the consequences of being de jure stateless for this population. First, consider that all the rights received by the stateless Estonians of Russian origin can be removed arbitrarily, at any time. This is not a farfetched notion, as even the rejection of the renewal of residency permits for these ‘aliens’ can occur ‘if a person represents a threat to national security or public order, or if he or she has committed a serious crime and his or her criminal record has not expired’.17 As stateless persons they would not be able to challenge the removal of rights based on a claim that they were previously de facto citizens. Their de facto citizenship provides them with no protection, while those with ineffective citizenship, commonly referred to as the de facto stateless, still have this legal bond on which to base claims for protection and challenge its ineffectiveness. It was this legal bond and the claim that all citizens should be valued equally and have equally effective citizenship that was central to the criticism of the United States government in its response to Katrina. By comparison the Estonian government grant these rights more as a gift than as rights. De facto citizenship, though it may allow for the enjoyment of rights on a temporary basis, does not counter the incredible vulnerability that a person faces due to their de jure statelessness. Second, by moving the understanding of citizenship (and by association statelessness) away from its legal base, and instead focusing on whether the stateless are enjoying de facto citizenship, we may not only be perpetuating de jure statelessness, but failing to reduce new cases. For example, ‘at the end of 2011, there were about 1,500 stateless children under the age of 15 in Estonia’18 What this number of young de jure stateless persons in Estonia shows is the perpetuation of statelessness through to the next generation because, despite their de facto citizenship, their de jure statelessness has not been dealt with. De facto citizenship does not resolve the central element of statelessness for the Estonians of Russian origin, their lack of a legal bond of citizenship to 17 18 UNHCR (n 15) 10. Human Rights Europe (n 11). tilburg law review 19 (2014) 276-284