Bhutanese Diaspora Citizenship and Legal Status Challenges

Lhotshampa refugees and their descendants face complex citizenship and legal status challenges across multiple countries. These challenges stem from Bhutan's systematic denationalisation of its Nepali-speaking population in the late 1980s and 1990s, which rendered over 100,000 people stateless. While third-country resettlement programmes — primarily to the United States — offered pathways to permanent residency and eventual citizenship, the process has been marked by bureaucratic obstacles, language barriers, and, since 2025, an unprecedented wave of deportations that has created a new statelessness crisis for some members of the diaspora.^[1]

Statelessness Under Bhutanese Law

Bhutan's citizenship law operates exclusively through jus sanguinis (right of blood) provisions, requiring that both parents be Bhutanese citizens for a child to acquire citizenship at birth, regardless of place of birth. Naturalisation requires a minimum of 20 years of registered residency (15 years if one parent is Bhutanese), proficiency in Dzongkha, demonstrated knowledge of Bhutanese culture and history, and renunciation of any prior citizenship. Dual citizenship is prohibited. There is no simplified or expedited process for stateless persons or refugees seeking to reclaim citizenship.^[1]

Bhutan reported zero stateless persons to UNHCR between 2019 and 2022, though UNHCR has noted that the country "possesses information about stateless persons but lacks any reliable data." The Statelessness Encyclopedia for Asia and the Pacific documents that in the late 1980s and 1990s, approximately 100,000 ethnic Nepali Lhotshampa were denationalised and expelled. As of 2022, approximately 6,365 remained in refugee camps in Nepal. Bhutan has not ratified either the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons or the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. It has ratified only the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).^[1]

Naturalization in the United States

The majority of resettled Bhutanese refugees entered the United States through the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which began large-scale Bhutanese resettlement in 2008. Under US immigration law, refugees are expected to apply for lawful permanent residency (a green card) one year after their date of entry. Refugees may then apply for US citizenship through naturalisation after five years of permanent residence. A provision known as "rollback" allows refugees to count their date of US entry as the beginning of their permanent residence, meaning time spent in refugee status counts toward the five-year residency requirement.^[2]

In practice, many Bhutanese refugees have successfully navigated this process, with significant numbers obtaining US citizenship by the mid-2010s. However, obstacles remain, particularly for older community members. The naturalization test requires English-language proficiency and knowledge of US civics and history, which poses challenges for elderly refugees who arrived with limited formal education and whose English-language acquisition has been slow. While accommodations exist for applicants over 50 who have held a green card for 20 years (or over 55 with 15 years), these timelines mean that many older Bhutanese refugees who arrived in 2008–2015 have not yet qualified for such exemptions.^[3]

Documentation challenges have also affected some applicants. Refugees who fled Bhutan with few or no identity documents, and who spent decades in camps where record-keeping was inconsistent, sometimes face difficulties providing the documentation that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) requires. For stateless individuals who lack government-issued identification from any country, standard identity verification processes can be particularly burdensome.

2025 Deportation Crisis

Beginning in March 2025, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) initiated what advocates described as an unprecedented crackdown on Bhutanese refugees with prior criminal convictions or removal orders. According to the Asian Law Caucus, at least 60 Bhutanese Americans were arrested across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, and other states, and at least 27 were deported by mid-2025. Prior to 2025, the United States had not deported a single person to Bhutan in years, as the Bhutanese government had historically been unwilling to accept deportees.^[4]

The deportations created a new statelessness crisis. According to reporting by NPR and CNN, individuals deported to Bhutan were not accepted by the Bhutanese government and were expelled to India within hours of arrival. These individuals found themselves stranded — unable to remain in Bhutan, lacking legal status in India or Nepal, and with no passport or citizenship in any country. Some made their way to Nepal, while others remained in India in hiding. Families in the United States reported losing contact with deported relatives.^[5]

NPR documented the case of a man identified as "Ray," who was born in a refugee camp in Nepal and came to the United States as a child. He had never lived in Bhutan. After deportation, Bhutanese authorities ordered him to leave within 24 hours. He subsequently went into hiding in India, where he had no legal status, family, or documentation.^[5]

Legal Response

In June 2025, the Asian Law Caucus filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of Asian Refugees United seeking records on agency policies, communications, and data related to the mass detention and deportation of Bhutanese refugees. When agencies failed to respond adequately, the organisation, together with co-counsel, filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of State (DOS), and other federal agencies to compel disclosure. Approximately 122 individuals had prior removal orders to Bhutan before March 2025.^[6]

Local officials also responded. A commissioner in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania — home to a large Bhutanese community — publicly called on ICE to pause deportations of Bhutanese refugees, citing the humanitarian consequences of rendering people stateless.^[7]

Status in Other Countries

Smaller numbers of Bhutanese refugees were resettled in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Each country has its own naturalization pathway. In Canada, permanent residents may apply for citizenship after three years. In Australia, the pathway from permanent residency to citizenship typically takes four years. In Nepal, where approximately 6,000 Bhutanese refugees remained in camps as of 2022, refugees have not been granted Nepali citizenship and face restrictions on employment, property ownership, and freedom of movement. India hosts an undetermined number of Bhutanese of Nepali origin, some of whom have lived in the country for decades without formal legal status.

See Also

• Bhutanese Refugee Crisis
• Bhutanese Nationality Law
• Lhotshampa
• Third-Country Resettlement Programme

References

1. Bhutan — Statelessness Encyclopedia Asia Pacific (SEAP)
2. How Soon an Asylee or Refugee Can Apply for U.S. Citizenship — Nolo
3. Bhutanese Refugees Find Home in America — The White House (2016)
4. Asian Law Caucus Seeks Records on Arrests and Deportations of Bhutanese American Refugees (2025)
5. A refugee deported to Bhutan by the U.S. finds himself stranded and stateless — NPR (16 July 2025)
6. Asian American Refugee Communities and Asian Law Caucus Sue DHS, State Department — Asian Law Caucus (2025)
7. Dauphin Commissioner calls for ICE to pause deportations of Bhutanese refugees — WITF (2 April 2025)