Serious question as I have no idea what the answer is and it seems related:
If a British citizen lives outside the UK, let’s say Brazil, and has a child then can he/she pass ob full British citizenship? If so, can that child, when it has grown up, do so to his/her children? If so, is it possible to have generations of Brits that have full citizenship in Brazil but have never actually ever lived in the UK.
The position in Ireland was very different from that in Scotland currently. In 1948 No-one had the status of British Citizen all people were Briish subjects. Since then all people born or naturalised in the UK are British Citizens with the right to live and work in the UK and with the right to pass on that citizenship to their children. On the day before Independence every such person living in the United Kingdom will possess a passport or the right to a passport that allows them to live and work in the UK. Now what will happen after that date? By your reckoning there would be Scotish Nationals living in rump UK, Scottish Nationals living in Scotland, Scottish Nationals living outside the old UK. Additionally there would be Rump UK nationslas living in rump UK, in Scotland and Abroad.
Now please place those into two categories- who would have the right to hand their own citizenship to their children. Would this apply to children already possessing their own passport but not to those born after Independence, or would existing children be stripped of their nationality for fairness.
What you are suggesting is that decisions on nationality are going to be based on accidents of birth and residence in a totally chaotic manner. In Ireland there was a 35 year intervening period before British Subject status was redefined. trying to do the same for June 2016 would create an impossible illogical mess and is not going to happen.
Effectively it would mean that Tony Blair (Born Scotland) would have a reduced citizenship and someone born in England but having never lived there since moving as a child to Scotland would have full citizenship. And how do you define where people live for this purpose? Suppose I live in Scotland but have property in England- suppose I was Scots born, working in Scotland and declare that English House as my residence- would my children inherit my right to live in England though born in Scotland.
And for naturalised citizens, would their citizenship be Scottish or Rump UK?
The whole mess would be impossible to untangle.
What will happen is that all people at independence will retain their residence and work rights due to citizenship that they had prior to Independence.Children born after Independence will still have the right to British Citizenship no matter where born.
Using Ireland as an example is missing the point both in culture (people are far more travelled now) and elapsed time between Independence and change to the law.
The child must be registered with the local Embassy or Consulate (although this can be retrospective. They receive a full British Passport with right to abode and to pass on their nationality to their children.
So technically, yes, there could be a small class of people with full British citizenship who were never resident in the UK.
No. A person who has British citizenship “otherwise than by descent” may pass that on to his or her children. But unless that child actually spends time living in the UK, citizenship would not normally pass on to the following generation.
There are more complex specifics involved but no, citizenship “by descent” doesn’t continue indefinitely.
[Bolding mine]
I do not believe this is correct. While children of UKCs “otherwise than by descent” will be entitled to British Citizenship, those children can’t automatically pass this on to their children.
Of course, if the children come to live in the UK then things would be different.
Usually not. I don’t know about the UK, but the US and Canada allow one generation of foreign-born citizens. That foreign-born citizen may sponsor his / her children for immigration, thus creating another generation, but it’s not automatic. The rules are designed to prevent exactly the scenario you imagine.
As far as British citizens, the Canadian situation seems relevant. My mother was born a British subject before a completely separate Canadian citizenship was created. As of now, she has no right to reside in the UK and no claim on British citizenship, even though she was born with it. (Sort of: she was still a Canadian, it’s just that all Canadians were British subjects at the time.) There’s a difference in that as far as I know, Scots do not have a separate category of citizenship, but there’s certainly a precedent for removing access to British citizenship.
It’s amazing how quietly laws change. I found out something they don’t shout about in Europe. I’m Irish, my wife is Welsh (hence British). We liive in France.
One day we received a wedding invitation for a marriage in England. Our son, was born in France and we didn’t have a passport for him. We applied for a French passport. To our surprise we were refused because he was not a French citizen.
They went on to exolain that the law changed on the 1st of January 2005. All people born within the EU (European Union) after this date did not get automatic citizenship of the country they were born in. They were only entitled to the citizenship of their parents. He now has an Irish passport. It’s funny really because now we have Polish born in Dublin, Irish born in Paris and French born in Copenhagen.
Well, this new law hasn’t had a drastic impact on our lives for the simple reason that both parents have a natiionality of a country within the EU.
What they don’t mention is those children that are born in the EU where their parents don’t have a EU nationality. Eg Morrocan, Pakistani, Turkish, Norwegian and yes even American.
Funny how there was not one bleet from the main stream media.
Could you provide some more information about this, preferably some sort of cite? Plenty of European nations don’t automatically grant citizenship to children born there to foreign parents, but this has been the case for decades, perhaps centuries.
Indians weren’t citizens before 1947 anyway. They were British subjects but had no right of abode in Britain.
No, they can’t. Think about it; if what you say were true, then British citizenship could descend generation after generation to ever-larger numbers in families that had left the UK many generations ago and never returned. But, as we know, it can’t.
In general, if you’re born outside the UK, being the child of a UK citizen is not enough to give you UK citizenship yourself unless your parent is a British citizen “otherwise than by descent”. So if your parent was born in the UK, or immigrated to the UK and was naturalised there, you’re good. But if your parent was a British citizen because their parent was born in the UK - i.e. your parent is a UK citizen by descent - then you’re not so good. (In certain cases your parent - the one who is a British citizen by descent - may be able to register you as a British citizen, provided they do so before you turn 18, and provided they themselves have lived for some time in the UK or in a British Overseas Territory. Or there are a couple of other conditions they may be able to satisfy. The point is that as British citizens by descent there is no general right for them to register their children as British citizens; they need a further connection with the UK. )
[quote=“Pjen, post:495, topic:685820”]
What you are suggesting is that someone born in Scotland living in California would not be affected by the decision of part of the country purely dependent on the whims of the people left in Scotland, but someone born in Scotland living in Scotland would not.
[quote=“Pjen, post:495, topic:685820”]
No, I’m not saying that. The rule will have nothing to do with your parent’s residence. As I have said before, residence does not enter into it at all. It will have to do with your parent’s place of birth.
Assume A is born in Edinburgh in 1990. In 2012 A has a child, B1, born in Edinburgh. In 2014 A has a second child, B2, born in Paris. In 2015 Scotland becomes independent; A acquires Scottish citizenship but does not lose UK citizenship. In 2020 A has a third child, B3, born in Edinburgh. In 2022 A has a fourth child, B4, born in Paris. It will work like this:
A is a British citizen by virtue of birth in the UK, and therefore under current law is a “British citizen otherwise than by descent”.
B1 is born in the UK; by virtue of that, B1 is a British citizen. And, since B1 is a British citizen “otherwise than by descent”, any children that B1 may have, if born outside the UK, will also be British citizens (but by descent, so the automatic transmission of citizenship will stop with them).
B2 is born outside the UK, but has a parent who is a British citizen otherwise than by descent; B2 is a British citizen by descent. Any children B2 may have, if born outside the UK, will not be British citizens. (However if B2 lives for a period in the UK or a British overseas territory, he should be able to register his children as citizens before they turn 18.)
B3 is born outside the UK, but has a parent who is a British citizen otherwise than by descent. If the law is unchanged, B3 will be a British citizen by descent, and cannot transmit British citizenship to any children they may have outside the UK. (But, if the conditions are satisfied, the possibility of registration arises.)
B4 is born outside the UK, but has a parent who is a British citizen otherwise than by descent. If the law is unchanged, B3 will be a British citizen by descent, and cannot transmit British citizenship to any children they may have outside the UK. (But, if the conditions are satisfied, the possibility of registration arises.)
The first point to note here is that the situation of B3 and B4 is identical. It makes no difference that one was born in Scotland and one was born in a third country. All that matters is that both are borne outside the UK.
If the law changes to assimilate the treatment of independent Scotland to that of independent Ireland, it will change for B3 and B4 alike. Again, it will make no difference that B3 is born in Scotland and B4 is born in Ireland.
Why should the law change? Well, because they did change it with respect to Ireland, and the change makes a certain amount of sense. The question of whether British citizens passes down the generations depends on the nature and degree of the British citizen parent’s connection with the UK. If your parent was born in (say) Galway, and Galway is not in the UK, the fact that it once was, and the fact that it was when your parent was born, is not seen as a close enough connection with the UK to justify conferring UK citizenship on you. On your parent, yes, but not on you. By the time you are born, your connection through your parent is to a place which is not in the UK. So, under current law, a person born in in Galway before 1922 is not considered to be a “British citizen otherwise than by descent”, and their children are not British citizens.
As I’ve said already, it’s not a given that they will assimilate the treatment of independent Scotland in this regard to that of independent Ireland. But it’s obviously something that they might do.
Yes, they did.
Up until the late 1940s, throughout the British Empire/Commonwealth there were only two statuses: “British subjects” (basically, people born or naturalised in any possession of the British crown) and “British Protected Persons” (people born or naturalised in states which were nominally sovereign, but were under the protection or administration of the British government). People from the princely states of India were British Protected Persons, but people from British India proper were British Subjects and (if they could raise the fare) could enter and remain in the UK as freely as British subjects who had been born in the UK. But very few Indians exercised this right.
In the late 1940s, British Subject status was “subdivided”, with the various dominions each passing their own citizenship laws. So you could be a citizen of Canada, say, and a British subject, or a citizen of Australia or India, and a British Subject. One of the citizenship categories introduced was “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies” (CUKC), which embraced people born in the UK or in any directly-ruled colonial possession. At the time, that was a lot of places, but of course over the years the number of colonies diminished. So when, say, Nigeria became independent and the concept of Nigerian citizenship was created, CUKCs whose claim to CUKC status was by reason of birth or naturalisation in Nigeria became Nigerian citizens, and ceased to be CUKCs. But they continued to be British Subjects.
And, as British Subjects, they continued to have free entry into the UK until 1962 when, for the first time, immigration of British Subjects who were not CUKCs was restricted. And of course over time the restrictions were toughened. At first, non-CUKC British subjects need to prove that they had a job to come to, or that they had special employment skills. Then, they needed to prove a “substantial connection with the UK”, meaning that they had to have been born there, or be descended from someone who was. By 1972 non-CUKCs could not enter the UK unless they held work permits, or they, their parents or their grandparents had been borne in the UK (meaning, born in the UK as it stood at the time of entry, not born in a place which was formerly in the UK). Thus a parent or grandparent born in Ireland would not generally get a non-CUKC British Subject into the UK. (But it would get them Irish citizenship, which would get them into the UK.) Also by 1972, some CUKCs were having their rights of entry restricted.
In 1981 the status of “Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies” was abolished, and replaced with three new statuses:
The status of “British subject” wasn’t abolished at the same time, but it was severely restricted. Remember that since 1948 most British subjects had acquired citizenship of a Commonwealth country, and held this along with British subject status. In 1981 they changed the definition of “British subject” so that, if you had or acquired the citizenship of any Commonwealth country, you ceased to be a British subject. So, from being an all-embracing umbrella category for all Commonwealth citizens, it became a residual category for people with no Commonwealth citizenship. Nearly all remaining British subjects are Irish citizens born in Ireland before 1949 (when Ireland left the Commonwealth). Since British subject status is not inherited, when that cohort dies off, British subject status will be extinct.
You were misinformed. This has nothing to do with the EU. Each member state is free to determine its own citizenship rules. I’m not aware of any plans to change this.
Plus, it has long been the case that simple birth in France does not entitle you to French citizenship; you need to have at least one French citizen parent (unless you would otherwise be stateless, i.e. have no citizenship). Acquisition of French citizenship is primarily based on descent, not on location of birth. Internationally, that’s not unusual.
Being born in France may give you a right to become a French citizen. When your child reaches 16, and if he has lived in France for at least five years since the age of 11, he can apply for French citizenship and he will be granted it. When he is aged between 13 and 16, provided he has lived in France continually since the age of 8, you can apply on his behalf. Until the age of 13, however, he’ll just have to make do with the two citizenships (UK and Ireland) that he was born with.
I was working on old information from when I lived abroad. In 1983 they changed the rules- sorry. They then created a British Citizen by Descent who could not pass on their nationality- this was to keep nasty dark skinned people out I suspect as is the case with most of our immigration laws.
This still does not change the fact that the majority of Scots will still have full British Citizenship in 50-75 years time, and the rest will have the right to settle in the UK through he CTA or the EU. Who knows how things will change anyway. In that time period I can see there being a common European citizenship across whatever the EU is then. Basically, Independence will not mean giving up your British Passport if you do not want to, and Children born before 2016 will also pass on the right to a British Passport. It will be 2100 before more people in Scotland have no right to a British Passport than do.
Well, some would say that British Citizenship is already based on accidents of birth and residence in a totally chaotic manner!
No. Nobody is suggesting that the British Citizen status of any person alive on Scottish Independence Day will be altered in any way. Blair is a British Citizen by virtue of his birth in the UK; he will remain so. The person born in England but living in Scotland on Independence Day is a British citizens by virtue of his birth in the UK; I am confident he will remain so.
The people who might be affected are the children of British Citizens who are born (a) after Scottish Independence Day, and (b) outside the United Kingdom. Will they be entitled to British citizenship by virtue of having a British citizen parent? Even today, the answer to that question depends on the precise nature of their parent’s connection with the UK. In a post-Scottish-independence world there will need to be an answer to the question of what is the situation where the British citizen parent’s connection with the UK is that they were born in Scotland at a time when it was part of the UK. If the Irish precedent is followed, the answer will be that that is not a sufficient connection for automatic transmission of British citizenship. Even if you don’t like this, you can’t say that it’s “totally chaotic”; it’s pretty straightforward. And it has nothing to do with residence.
Where residence might be relevant is in determining who is going to be entitled to Scottish citizenship on day 1. Will it be, all British citizens who were born in Scotland? All British citizens who are ordinarily resident in Scotland on independence day? (“Ordinary residence” is a well-established and regularly applied concept, so this wouldn’t be an impossible criterion.) All British citizens who have a parent or grandparent born in Scotland? Questions like that are up to the Scots to answer. But note that they need have no implications at all for people’s continuing British citizenship, or for the transmission of British citizenship to the next generation.
I have to point out that Irish people were very widely travelled in 1922. We were famous for it. There were millions of Irish people living outside Ireland in 1922 - many in Britain. And there were large numbers of British-born people living in the Irish Free State in 1922. In fact, from day 1, the Irish Free State was the country that had the largest British-born population of any country in the world, other than the UK.
In terms of the issues raised by well-travelled people, and well-mixed populations, I don’t think Scottish Independence is going to raise any issues that Irish independence didn’t raise.
If the parent is a citizen because they were born in the UK, the child is a British citizen. But if the parent is a citizen by descent - say, a grandparent was born in the UK - then the child is not a British citizen. The path to the child becoming a British citizen may be smoothed somewhat, but the child is not automatically a British citizen.
Given the fact that Irish people have far greater rights to travel to the UK and work than people from the rest of the EU, I cannot see there being a major problem for any Scot in retaining or attaining Rump UK residence and nationality if they so wish.
My original post was to debunk the BetterTogether scare stories about people losing their right to travel to or work in rump UK after independence.
My expectation would be the the treatment of Scots citizens in the UK will be assimilated to the treatment of Irish citizens. That model has proved to be a pretty satisfactory one on both sides.
This would enable future generations of Scots to attain UK nationality if they wish it - but only by guaranteeing them the right to goand live in the UK for however long is required to qualify for citizenship by registration/naturalisation.
But if, as Scots citizens, they have the right to enter the UK, to reside there, to vote their and to stand for election there, it hardly seems necessary to go to any trouble of acquiring UK citizenship, since I can’t see that actual UK citizenship would confer any signficant further right or advantage. Consequently it is unlikely that any Scottish citizen would make career/migration choices as drastic as moving to the UK purely for the purpose of acquiring UK citizenship for themselves, or for their children.
The Better Together scare campaign is not entirely without precedent. When the English and the Scots were at odds over securing the succession to the throne in the early 1700s, and the Scots were declining to pass parallel legislation to the English Act of Settlement, one of the tactics the English resorted to was the passage of an Aliens Act. Up to that point, Scots people in England had been treated a subjects of the king, because Scotland and England shared a king. The Aliens Act provided that, unless the Scots regulated the succession to the Scottish crown to English satisfaction, and did a couple of other things the English were demanding regarding taxation, the Scots would henceforth be treated as aliens in England. The fear that this might happen was one of the considerations that led the Scots Parliament to accept the Union.
But this time the boot is on the other foot with Faslane the major factor.If we do vote for Independence it will be an interesting eighteen months.
I shall certainly opt for a second passport as many Irish do both sides of the border.
A Scottish passport will have immense symbolic value, but it practical terms it will be virtually interchangeable with the British passport. As far as third countries go, it’s very unlikely that a Scottish passport will get you in to any country that a UK passport wouldn’t get you into, or that visa requirements will be any more relaxed for those travelling on Scottish passports.
The question is, I suppose, how many people will pay for two passports when, as a travel document, the second passport adds practically no utility? Most people who need a passport will already have a UK passport, and it will presumably still be valid after independence. In practical terms, they will have no need to apply for a Scots passport. It’s only as the existing UK passports expire in the ten years or so following independence that we will see whether people tend to apply for a new UK passport, a Scots passport, or both. The answer may depend on which is more convenient to get - if you’re in Scotland, it may be easier to get a Scottish passport at the local post office than a UK passport, which presumably you will have to send off to London for - or which charges the lower fee.
People (especially journalists) carry Irish passports if eligible to avoid having a British one!