As described by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “The applicant must understand that he or she is sincerely and absolutely renouncing all foreign allegiance.”72 The Certificate of Naturalization lists the person’s country of nationality as a “former” nationality. Today, as traditional normative constraints on executive discretion are shrinking, the government’s equivocal position on a concept so foundational to citizenship as allegiance gives rise to potential abuse. United States Certificate of Naturalization The United States in Comparative Perspective: Nationality and Human Rights The United States has played a pivotal role in the development of modern human rights law, including in shaping important protections for the right to a nationality. The country has undertaken human rights obligations, codified in treaty law, and related to the implementation of immigration and nationality law, both within and beyond its borders.73 International law is surveyed briefly here as a framework for understanding the global and comparative context in which the policies and practices described in this report operate. In brief, nationality is the most durable status available under international law.74 Citizenship is not understood, legally, as a privilege that may be taken away at will. Rather, deprivation or denial of nationality may occur only in extremely rare cases, and is further restricted where its I. History and Context 27