Monday, August 30, 2010

British citizenship

The other thing on my to-do list which I have been researching is whether my grandkids would be eligible for British citizenship. And after a fair amount of research, my conclusion is that a greater morass of uncertainty and confusion has yet to be devised in the history of mankind.

Naturally, the first place I went to was the website for the British Consul in HK. I guess I should have known what I was getting myself in for when the only information they had on this was to ask you to contact the consul!

So much for the British Consul in HK. But, where else could I go? Well, it turns out that there are a raft of different options. As a quick aside, isn't it sad that the clearest indication of whether my grandkids can claim British Citizenship comes from a wiki? Anyway, I wouldn't particularly recommend that you read through all of that in detail unless you have a lot of spare time...

So, after all that laborious reading, I have finally come to the conclusion that my grandkids aren't likely to get British citizenship as Gerry and Gordon are British Citizens by descent i.e. their British Citizenship is gained through their parents (or more particularly - me!). As pointed out in the glossary of terms for By descent:

"British citizenship gained through your parents. This type of citizenship cannot normally be passed on to your own children."

It goes without saying that this only applies if Gerry and Gordon don't become eligible for British Citizenship status via some other means (such as becoming naturalised themselves). It does go without saying, right?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yup - as per my understanding, which I laid out in my comment to your earlier blog "to do list"