There are ex-Americans living stateless lives. Harmon Wilford was a whistleblower to expose alleged corruption during the resolution of the 1980s and 1990s savings and loan crisis. He sought asylum in New Zealand around about 2001. In 2005 he renounced is US citizenship, rendering himself stateless. He started a process to gain NZ citizenship, but has not been granted it.He's been on overstay since 2004. NZ started a process to deport him in 2011, but found that the US refused to issue travel documents, which is slightly ironic in the current climate (one of the impediments to deporting illegal immigrants is that the country where they claim they are from doesn't want them back. And guess what sovereignty means.....).. In a strange case, Thomas Jolley was a Vietnam War protestor. He fled to Canada, and renounced his citizenship, but didn't become a Canadian citizen. Some time later, he re-entered the US, and was found working in Florida.. The American government wanted him deported, and a complex court case found that he was deportable. But to be deported, a third country had to accept him. Canada didn't want him. He died in his 70s, as a deportable alien in the country of his birth. The reason, predictably, why this state of affairs exists, is because of American exceptionalism; the US refuses to ratify the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
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