This is something of a cautionary tale (and not a little messy). Bear with me for a trip around some of the maze that is ‘nationality’…
My stepson is British. His late father was British; his mother is British, born in Woking, Surrey to a British father and a Danish mother (a naturalised Briton by marriage). But my stepson was born in Sydney, Australia in 1972. So, by accident of birth, he became an Australian citizen – which he still is, technically.
Coming ‘home’ to the UK, his mother arranged for him to become a UK citizen in the late 1980s, which took some bureaucratic hurdling, but at that time, his putative nationality was based on the assurance to the Passport Office of his mother’s nationality. Job done; British citizenship and a nice, shiny new blue passport granted eventually. So, legally, a dual national of the UK and Australia.
Over the passing years, he has continually renewed his British passport without difficulty, in the certainty that he is (and always was) British by virtue of British parenthood.
Moving on, he and his French partner, with whom he has a formal civil partnership, were blessed with a beautiful (and now fully bilingual) daughter some 14 years ago (pre-Brexit, of course). She was born in France and naturally automatically became a French citizen and an EU citizen, being half-French. So am I, although I also have dual nationality with French and British citizenship, having been born to a British father born in the UK and a naturalised British mother who was born in France.
Messy definitions
Where is this story going? I guess it is just an illustration of how nationality can be defined and enforced in such a jumbled and messy way with mixed backgrounds and provenances.
Notwithstanding our ‘pot pourri’ of nationalities, the collective family wish was that our granddaughter (OK, my ‘step’-granddaughter) should also acquire dual nationality, given her father and grandparents are British.
So, I made an application to the Passport Agency, which was actually a surprisingly straightforward online process. The necessary supporting documentation included her British father’s UK passport, her birth certificate, her digital photograph, her father and mother’s civil partnership contract and a signed letter of consent from her mother approving the passport application. A confirmation of her photographic identity by a non-related person who had known her for some years was also needed.
All seemed to be going well …
Job done – and here, I must confess, as a ‘bureaucracy’ phobic, I had grave doubts that this would be dealt with efficiently or quickly, but the Passport Agency were very impressive and incredibly rapid in responding to the application, sending me emails and SMS messages to keep me up to date with progress, even down to formally acknowledging, on the day of receipt, documents sent by registered post. A remarkable service from the sort of government service that people love to hate and insult ….
All going well, then.
Not truly British?
Until an email I dreaded opening. “As the father was born in Australia … to a British citizen, he is British by DESCENT (my caps).” It continued, “As a result, he is unable to pass this citizenship on to a child that was also born outside of the United Kingdom.” No mention of the fact that she was born within the EU, of which, at the time, the UK was a member (lest we forget).
Game over, then.
So, my British stepson is not truly British but only, it seems, ‘British-ish’, despite, by an accident of circumstance, being born in a Commonwealth nation whose head of state is the British monarch.
‘British-ishness’ and Boris
Reflecting on this rather odd outcome, something tickled my funny bone about an issue not so long ago surrounding the election of a certain Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, born in 1964 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York (Donald Trump’s home ground, as it happens) to a British/French father (Stanley).
Therefore, like my stepson, Boris is British by descent only. He relinquished his American citizenship, not apparently in preparation for his eventual bid to become Prime Minister: “His decision does not appear to be an attempt to distance himself from the politics of Donald Trump, but may instead be a move to ensure he is out of reach of America’s Internal Revenue Service” (source The Guardian, February 9, 2017). Is that ‘cricket’?
His ‘British-ishness’ probably wouldn’t have impeded his path to glory(?). Indeed, if he’d failed to lead his adopted country, he could have reclaimed American citizenship and, after living there continuously for 14 years, put himself up as a presidential candidate. Incidentally, if he were to return there now, he could stand in the 2040 US elections and still be only 76, so a relative spring chicken compared with Biden and Trump in this year’s ‘turkey shoot’ ….
A cautionary tale
Anyway, the point of this cautionary tale is that all is not necessarily what it might seem to be when it comes to nationality, with strange logic and process and provenance being very important to understand unless, and until, the UK’s nationality and immigration laws are amended: anyone working or living outside the UK who is planning on having children overseas should be aware of possible nationality consequences for their children.
But actually, who wants to be British? Not Voltaire, it seems: “They [the British] are like their own beer; froth on top, dregs at bottom, the middle excellent.” Ben dis donc!
Postscript
Two days after the Agency’s email revealing the news that his daughter’s passport application had been rejected, my stepson received by DHL courier the documents submitted by us, addressed to me at his address in Lille! A bizarre way to spend Agency money when a simple stamp would have done!
When my stepson read my article, he thought he was reading a synopsis for an episode of Yes Minister!
