[rippercushions]

Uniquely, American Samoans are US "nationals" but not "citizens", which makes a whole lot of things very weird.

I think we should just jettison the colonial baggage and hand the islands back to actual Samoa next door, but here we are.

[bee_rider]

So what do we tell those US nationals "become citizens of Samoa or become stateless," because that's obviously not a viable path forward.

[rippercushions]

The "US national" status is a legacy of the Insular Cases, and all the other cases formerly in this bucket have either gained independence (Philippines) or become full US citizens (Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands).

So in the hypothetical case that American Samoa is returned to Samoa, the logical options are to either make all American Samoans citizens of Samoa, or to give them the option to choose between Samoan and American citizenship. In either case the weird "national" status will cease to exist.