28 Sep 2012

American Samoa's Faleomavaega writes to US over stateless man

6:44 pm on 28 September 2012

American Samoa's congressman Faleomavaega Eni Hunkin has written to the US Secretary of Homeland Security expressing disappointment at the refusal to allow re-entry to the stateless man, Mikhail Sebastian.

Mr Sebastian has been in American Samoa since last December and has applied unsuccessfully to Homeland Security to re-enter the US under humanitarian conditions.

US immigration law doesn't allow for stateless people to apply for permanent status.

Faleomavaega says congress is trying to change this for the estimated 4,000 stateless individuals in the US.

He told the secretary Janet Napolitano that Mikhail Sebastian's case warrants every consideration for humanitarian reasons knowing that he has lived as a law-abiding citizen in the US since arriving from Azerbaijan in 1995 .