nor are there any specific protections for stateless people under domestic American law. There is no definition of a stateless person in US law, although the US Supreme Court has defined statelessness as the ‘possession of no citizenship at all.’cxxxix There have, however, been considerable developments in establishing and implementing a process for assessing statelessness in the past few years. In 2021 the US pledged to adopt a formal definition of statelessness for immigration purposes and develop, for the first time, an official process to identify and improve the protection of stateless people living in the U.S.cxl In October 2023 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) implemented a new policy requiring statelessness to be considered as a factor in discretionary decisions about immigration relief (the ‘USCIS Guidelines on Statelessness’).cxli This includes an internal “statelessness assessment” process to provide decision makers with any Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency with information regarding a person’s likelihood of statelessness. While not as ideal as a legislative process for providing stateless people with a pathway to citizenship, the DHS policy and procedure for producing ‘stateless assessments’ represents important and strategic progress on the issue, paving the way for future potential developments. For example, United Stateless used the announcement of the new USCIS Guidelines on Statelessness to call on Congress to pass the Stateless Protection Act, which would provide stateless people with protected status, green card eligibility and a pathway to permanent citizenship.cxlii Australia can learn from the strategic gains of the United States, driven primarily by the advocacy of United Stateless (a national organisation led by stateless people, discussed below) with support of the USA UNHCR office. 69