The Extraordinary Statelessness of Deepan Budlakoti 17 birthright citizenship policy that denies U.S. citizenship by birth to no one, including children born to foreign diplomats” (Feere, 2011, p. 2). The suggestion that the practice also occurs in Canada is reflected on the Global Affairs Canada website (n.d.) which provides redress instructions to diplomat parents of children “born in Canada who did not acquire Canadian citizenship,” and yet who had obtained a Canadian passport warning that “application for such a passport can be construed as misconduct,” and that any such passport should be surrendered. The “error” of granting birthright citizenship to children of diplomats is created through a chain of documents. As Global Affairs Canada (n.d.), notes, “children born of foreign representatives would normally obtain a provincial birth certificate.” The birth certificate in turn permits acquisition of a social insurance number and a Canadian passport. Notably, birth certificate request forms do not require declaration of parental diplomatic status. This practice is significant insofar as a Canadian long-form birth certificate in fact is a portal to citizenship – the key identity document to establishing one’s access to Canadian passports for children. It is not known how many Canadian-born children of foreign diplomats have followed the network of documents issued by Canadian federal and provincial government agencies from Canadian provincial birth certificate to acquisition of Canadian passport and access to a lifetime of treatment by all levels of the Canadian state as a Canadian citizen. In Canada, the issue of ethically questionable application of jus soli has focused primarily on socalled “birth tourism” and “passport babies,” born to foreign women who come to Canada for the express reason of gaining Canadian citizenship for their Canadian-born children rather than children of foreign diplomats or employees (Wong, 2014). In the United States, the heated debate over intended scope of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has focused primarily on U.S.-born children of “illegal immigrants.” Interestingly, in the U.S. context, Feere argues that the State Department has determined that birth to a foreign diplomat “may not necessarily bar an individual from being considered a U.S. citizen at birth.” The U.S. State Department’s determination “required a fact based analysis to determine whether he/she was born subject to the laws of the United States,” skirting the issue of whether such a child was “subject to the jurisdiction of” the U.S. (quoted in Feere, 2011, p. 5, emphasis added). How has the issue of birthright citizenship and the diplomatic exception been applied in the case of Deepan Budlakoti? As mentioned earlier, Deepan’s parents were never part of diplomatic staff; rather they were employed as low-level household workers for the Indian High Commissioner. Citizenship and Immigration officials, the IRB and the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal have all agreed that Budlakoti’s parents’ employment ended after their son’s birth, concluding that he had never been a Canadian citizen under S. 3(1)(a) of the Citizenship Act, his lack of such status governed by S. 3(2) of the Citizenship Act. Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1-26, 2017