ESTA: Previous Citizenship/Passport? (for both Stateless and Soviet Union ex. nationals)

Question

We're travelling as a group, currently we are all EU citizens with no other nationality/passports issued by other countries.

Though there's a bit of confusion relating to questions asking about the past:

• Have you ever been issued a passport or national identity card for travel by any other country?
• Have you ever been a citizen or national of any other country?

So far, for our group of travellers, for the above two questions all of the below apply:

• Prev. Citizenship: Stateless
• Prev. Passport: Alien
• Prev. "national identity card": Residence permit card (for Stateless national, valid for travel within Schengen Area)
• Prev. Citizenship: Soviet Union
• Prev. "national identity card": Soviet Union (internal passport - valid for travel only within the union)
• Prev. Passport: Soviet Union (ordinary/foreign passport - valid for travel to other countries outside the union)
• Prev. Passport: Soviet Union (civil service passport - valid for travel to other countries outside the union)

But I'm confused as to these are not exactly being present in the dropdown options that the ESTA application provides. And for the passport question, not sure if we're expected to insert a new "row" for each passport that we had issued by the other country? In the above case with the Soviet Union, you could in theory insert at least 3 "rows" for each type of passport and are we expected to add the renewed ones as well? Too confused with this. :(

Answer 1

Prev. Citizenship: Stateless

Stateless is not a citizenship. It is a lack of citizenship.

Prev. Passport: Alien

An alien's passport is probably not a passport within the meaning of this question, but you can certainly list it if you want, provided that it is possible to list it without implying that you were a national of the issuing country.

Prev. "national identity card": Residence permit card (for Stateless national, valid for travel within Schengen Area)

A residence permit is not a national identity card. A national identity card is a card issued to a country's own nationals, while a residence permit is issued to foreigners.

Prev. Citizenship: Soviet Union

Prev. "national identity card": Soviet Union (internal passport - valid for travel only within the union)

Prev. Passport: Soviet Union (ordinary/foreign passport - valid for travel to other countries outside the union)

Prev. Passport: Soviet Union (civil service passport - valid for travel to other countries outside the union)

There should be no problem with these unless it isn't possible to list Soviet Union. If that is the case, you should ask the helpdesk how to respond to the question.

And for the passport question, not sure if we're expected to insert a new "row" for each passport that we had issued by the other country?

In general, it's better to err on the side of offering too much information rather than too little. I would be inclined to add a row for the most recent of each class of document. I would not add a separate row for each renewal.