Citizenship is man’s basic right for it is nothing less than the right to have rights. Remove this priceless possession and there remains a stateless person, disgraced and degraded in the eyes of his countrymen.… His very existence is at the sufferance of the state within whose borders he happens to be…[he] would presumably enjoy, at most, only the limited rights and privileges of aliens, and like the alien he might even be… deprived of the right to assert any rights.
—Chief Justice Earl Warren