The Stateless Legacy of the Armenian Genocide Isn’t History. It’s Still Ours

by Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough, Executive Director, United Stateless

Pictured: Karina's Armenian great grandparents, Varvara & Isaiah, Armenian Genocide Survivors, with their children in Tbilisi, Georgia SSR.

When we talk about the Armenian Genocide, we talk about memory. We talk about survival, about loss, about people scattered across the world.

But we don’t often talk about statelessness, to be a ‘citizen of nowhere’. 

We don’t talk about what it meant, and still means, for Armenians to be left without a country, without legal recognition, without a place that fully claims them.

In the years following the Genocide, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were left without citizenship. It was Fridtjof Nansen who created the “Nansen passport,” allowing over 300,000 Armenians to travel, work, and rebuild their lives. It was a lifeline but also an acknowledgment: survival without legal identity is not enough.

A century later, that legacy has not disappeared. It has simply changed form.

I know this not just as history, but as lived experience.

I became stateless when my country dissolved. I was born in Soviet Ukraine, part of an Ukrainian Armenian mixed ethnic background. Like many of us, I grew up with stories; fragmented, heavy, not always fully explained.

Only later did I come to understand more of my father’s experience. He was Armenian, from Tbilisi, the descendant of Genocide survivors. He carried that history in his name, his accent, his appearance.

He was stopped at airports. Arrested.

Beaten in the streets. Treated as someone who did not belong.

My mother would call in favors just to get him released.

For many Armenians, this feeling is familiar, even if we don’t always name it. The sense that belonging can be fragile. That identity can be questioned. That safety is not guaranteed.

But for some of us, this is not just emotional or historical. It is legal.

Across the Armenian diaspora, statelessness still exists. In communities shaped by displacement from those expelled from Artsakh to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. There are Armenians who live without full citizenship, without protection, without certainty.

And here in the United States, it happens too.

At United Stateless, we work with people navigating exactly this reality. Many come from complex migration histories shaped by conflict and displacement. Some are Armenian. Many are not. But the pattern is the same: they exist, but in the eyes of the law, they do not fully belong anywhere.

Sometimes, these cases reach the courts. Most remain invisible.

In Eskilian v. Bondi, the legal system was forced to confront what happens when someone does not fit into any country’s framework. 

And then there are the human stories.

Mikhail Sebastian lived for years in limbo, unable to enter the United States or return anywhere else. His life became a symbol of what it means to exist without legal recognition. Another well-known stateless case only resulted in asylum after years of uncertainty—proof that relief often comes late, and only after prolonged harm.

And then there is my own case.

It took more than a decade of navigating the U.S. immigration system to secure something that should have been straightforward: the right, through my U.S.-born husband, to live with legal recognition.

After years of uncertainty, I was granted parole in place. My motion to reopen was approved. My 19 year final removal order was canceled. In the process, my case helped set a precedent, creating a pathway that others can now follow.

But it should not take ten years. It should not take extraordinary effort.

And it should not depend on whether a case becomes exceptional enough to break through.

This is not just about individual stories.

It is about a system that still does not know how to respond to statelessness.

As Armenians, we understand what it means to survive displacement. We understand what it means to rebuild.

But we should also recognize that for some in our community, displacement never fully ended. It simply became harder to see.

And now, we are at another turning point.

As the United States debates the future of birthright citizenship, we are once again asking: who gets to belong?

This is not an abstract question. It is one with real consequences.

There are solutions in front of us.

The Stateless Protection Act would, for the first time, create a clear legal pathway for stateless people in the United States to be identified and protected. It would ensure that people are not left in limbo for years, or decades, waiting for recognition.

And just as importantly, protecting birthright citizenship and ensuring universal birth registration are how we prevent statelessness before it begins. These are the safeguards that ensure no one grows up without a country.

For Armenians, this should feel familiar.

We know what happens when people are left without protection.We know what it means to rebuild without recognition.

The legacy of the Armenian Genocide is not only something we remember.It is something we are still living.

Some of us inherited stories of migration.Some of us are still navigating them.

Statelessness is not just part of our past.It is part of our present.

And it is something we have the power—and the responsibility—to address.