A Personal Story About Statelessness 259 I was shaking and I remember I kept telling Susan that I didn’t feel anything. At that moment, I thought that he was a god; he was the only one in the world that could give me freedom and equality. I introduced myself, Susan introduced herself and he just said, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ He was a big guy and his voice was really scary – really loud. I was panicked. I didn’t know what to say first. I started to tell him, ‘My name is Srinuan Saokhamnuan, I am stateless and I am 22 years old. I study in the United States.’ That was it. He was shocked. He asked, ‘How can I help you?’ I said that he could give me Thai citizenship. He said, ‘Okay, I will give you Thai citizenship. Thailand should support you.’ I didn’t want to let myself hope. I wouldn’t let myself believe until I actually saw my name and my picture on a Thai I.D. When we were working with the new head of District Office, he told me that my case was the first Thai citizenship case that he had worked on. We discovered that he had no experience giving stateless people Thai citizenship, he had never worked in a city near a border where statelessness is more of an issue and he didn’t know how many people statelessness effected in Thailand, but he wanted to learn. We talked to him about why Thai citizenship is important to stateless people. Less than two months after my first meeting with the new officer, I was standing in the District Office holding my Thai I.D. and crying. 13 Multiplying the Impact After I returned to the U.S. my mother told me that they had had a meeting in my community. The new head of the District Office had started an initiative in honor of the King of Thailand’s birthday; he wanted to give stateless people citizenship. Thai law already said that whoever was born in Thailand within a particular time frame could get Thai citizenship; he was just going to move cases forward faster. The news spread everywhere in Mae Sai. About 400 people obtained Thai citizenship within a few months and 300 more were in line to get citizenship. A few months later, I heard that the head of the District Office was transferred to a different location. 14 The True Benefit of Education I have seen a lot of people in my life, including people in my family, not have a chance to go to school or get a higher education. If children get the chance to go to school, they will learn how to read and write, which will help them to make their own decisions. They will learn what is right and what is wrong. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 248-260