by Michael Posner
Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough and her parents came to the United States in 1996 when she was 8 years old. Her parents, who had been citizens of the former Soviet Union, applied for political asylum, but American authorities denied their application under a strict standard requiring refugees to demonstrate that their home country would single them out for persecution. Karina and her mother applied for Ukrainian citizenship, but Ukrainian officials told them that they did not qualify. This left Karina and her family stateless: people without a nationality.