Citizen of Nowhere

Deepan Budlakoti was Canadian one day, stateless the next. Who is responsible for someone no country wants to claim?

- ADNAN KHAN

DEEPAN BUDLAKOTI’S immigration troubles began with a brawl.

In 2009, he was living in the Ottawa- Carleton Detention Centre, serving a four-month sentence for breaking and entering. One day, after Budlakoti had been tossed into solitary confinement for fighting with other inmates, a corrections officer asked about his citizenship. On its face, the question wasn’t strange: the center is often tasked by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) with sorting through immigration detainees.

Budlakoti answered that he was Canadian. Born in Ottawa on October 17, 1989, he grew up in the city. His parents moved from India four years before his birth, brought on as cooks and cleaners for the Indian High Commission (THC). He was thus Canadian by right of jus soli, or “law of the soil,” according to which any child born within a country automatically becomes a citizen of that nation — a principle Canada adheres to.