This includes people who have one of the following: right of abode; indefinite leave to remain; permanent residence as an European Economic Area EEA national. British overseas territories citizens If you were born before 1 January you became a British overseas territories citizen on 1 January if: you were a CUKC on 31 December , and you had connections with a British overseas territory because you, your parents or your grandparents were born, registered or naturalised in that British overseas territory.
A child under 18 can be registered as a British overseas citizen in special circumstances. A child may be a British subject if they were born on or after 1 January in the UK or a British overseas territory and: one of their parents is a British subject; and neither parent is a British citizen, British overseas territories citizen or British overseas citizen; and they would be stateless without British subject status.
British protected persons You became a British protected person on 1 January if you: were a citizen or national of Brunei; were already a British protected person; or would otherwise have been born stateless in the UK or an overseas territory because, when you were born, one of your parents was a British protected person.
After this rite, you will receive your British nationality certificate and an information pack to learn more about your new rights and responsibilities as a British citizen. If you live outside the UK, you can ask the embassy or consulate in your country to have your ceremony there. Otherwise, if you plan to return to the UK within 3 months of getting your invitation, you may postpone your function. If you are married to a UK national, you can submit your application for naturalisation after three years of lawful and continuous residence in the UK as a settled person.
Before you submit your Form AN, Application for Naturalisation as a British Citizen, you must ensure you meet the following requirements:. Not every child born in this country automatically receive British Citizenship by birth. In fact, to be eligible, at least one of the parents must be a British citizen or hold settled status. Children born in the UK to non-British citizens parents will automatically be recognized as dependants, and thus subject to the same visa rules as their parents.
If this is your case, you may be able to register for British citizenship at a later time. British Citizenship by descent is acquired by those who were born outside the UK from at least one parent who was or is a British citizen. In other words, British nationality cannot be automatically passed on any child who is born abroad. If you were born after 1 st January , you may be able to register for UK nationality by descent if you have a British born grandfather who was in Crown service, or if one of your parents was born in a former British colony.
According to the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act, the path to nationality and permanent residence in the UK for refugees comprises three different stages:. On average, British nationality applications are processed within three to six months. However, this timeframe may vary depending on the complexity of your case and the volume of requests that the Home Office has to handle. Since you do not need to send your original passport along with your Naturalisation form, you can travel abroad freely while your case is processed.
You cannot track your application status online. Nevertheless, you can get in touch with the UKVI either by email or over the phone to enquire about the status of your request at any time. You can apply to give up and renounce your British citizenship or status. For instance, you might wish to do this to become a citizen of another country that does not allow dual nationality.
On the other hand, it must be noted that, if you wish to register as a national of a country that allows dual citizenship, you do not need to renounce status in the UK. This can be used to demonstrate that you are no longer British. However, this will only affect you. Any other member of your family will retain his or her status as a UK national.
To renounce your status as a British national, you must be at least 18 years old. If you have given up your status, but you changed your mind, you can apply for resumption. When applying to resume your status, you must prove that you still have strong and reasonable connections with the UK.
Although you may have been a British national in the past, the Home Office will need to review your good character before allowing you to reclaim your status. Since there is no requirement to renounce previous nationalities, dual citizenship is always allowed in the UK. Holding dual nationality means that you can be British national and also a citizen of another country of your choice. In addition, UK law also allows multiple citizenships. Therefore, you can apply for UK Naturalisation even if you already hold more than one more nationality.
You do not need to register for dual citizenship. If you are already a British national, you can apply for foreign citizenship in any country that allows dual nationality. On the other hand, each county has its own rules relating to dual nationality. When you send your request, you should take several factors to take into account. For example, as a dual national, you cannot get diplomatic help from the British government when you are in any other country where you hold your other permanent residence.
If you are a British citizen and you want to attain citizenship of a country which does not allow dual nationality, you will need to give up your status. In other circumstances, becoming a British citizen may automatically result in a loss of any previous nationality. Before you submit your request, it is advisable to also check if you need to notify your country of original citizenship of your intention to naturalise in the UK. It is possible that your application for British citizenship may be refused or rejected.
You may have the right to appeal the decision. In your refusal letter, you will be given more information about what you can do next. It is important to note that you do not have an automatic right to appeal a citizenship decision. This means that expert legal advice may be necessary to advise you on the best route based on your circumstances. You may be able to submit a Request for Reconsideration to the Home Office to ask that they review their decision in light of an error they made based on law, policy, or procedure.
There are some situations where the Home Office are more likely to consider the request, including the following circumstances:. Premium application service that ensures your visa application is submitted to meet your deadline. With our untimed Advice Session, our professional immigration lawyers will review your case and provide you with comprehensive advice, completely tailored to your needs and your situation.
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Learn more. Naturalisation is the process of becoming a citizen of another country. For people coming to the UK, naturalisation is a process that will allow them to live and work in the UK free from immigration controls. Unless you are British by descent, you will have to apply for British Naturalisation to become a British citizen. There are various requirements you must meet to be eligible to apply for Naturalisation. You must:. If you are a national of a country in the European Economic Area EEA or Switzerland, or you are the family member of such a person, and you have exercised EEA free-movement rights in the UK for a continuous five year period you will automatically have Permanent Residence status.
However, you must hold this status for 12 months before applying for Naturalisation. Read our guide on completing the application form for British Citizenship.
You can apply for British nationality if you have held settled status for three years or more. This is most commonly in the form of Indefinite Leave to Remain. However, you will still need to have held ILR for at least a year.
If you have switched visas during your stay in the UK, your application for Indefinite Leave to Remain will have different requirements. There are many requirements you will need to meet in order to apply for British Citizenship. Most importantly, you must hold settled status in the UK. Here are a few things you should consider before starting your Naturalisation application for British Citizenship:.
Immigration Time Restrictions — when applying for British Citizenship you must be free from immigration time restrictions on the day you make your request which often means having gained settled status before you apply. Good Character Requirement — any applicant aged ten or over must be of good character to qualify for British Citizenship.
Essentially this means that you must show respect for the rights and freedom of the UK, have observed its laws and fulfilled your duties and obligations as a resident. The Home Office will carry out criminal and financial checks.
If you get British citizenship, you can leave the UK for as long as you want without losing your right to return. A serious offence is one which has at least a month sentence. This could make it more difficult and expensive to bring family to the UK. Check how much it costs to get a family visa if you have British citizenship on GOV. You can still make a family reunion application if you have indefinite leave to remain instead of British citizenship.
Find out if you can make a family reunion application on GOV. Some countries don't allow their citizens to have dual citizenship. You should check if the country where you're already a citizen will let you keep your nationality and passport after you become a British citizen. You can also choose which passport to use when you travel.
If the other country makes its citizens do things like national service, you'll still have to do them if you get British citizenship. For example, it is all very well to say that unauthorised migrants should not remain in the United Kingdom but the fact is that they do.
If there is no social safety net at all for such people and they are forced to exist without the protection of the law, they will live in destitution, they will be exploited and they and their children will remain in an illegal underclass.
It might be expected that citizens would have imposed on them some sort of duty of loyalty. Arguably, a state is an extension of its citizens, its first duty is to protect its citizens and citizens who are disloyal should be punished or expelled. The degree of disloyalty needed for such action might be expected to be high given the severity of the sanction. There are laws of treason in the United Kingdom, but they are so ancient and outdated that they are widely considered to be defunct and unenforceable today.
There is an argument that treason laws should be reformed so that those British citizens who show some defined high level of disloyalty in their actions should face the particular opprobrium of a treason trial. The idea has recurred several times in recent years, with the right wing think tank Policy Exchange publishing a paper on the subject in The idea of enforcing treason laws is one that makes me uncomfortable, but I recognise that there is a rational case to be made.
I also have in mind that this might be preferable to large scale citizenship stripping, which is what we are seeing instead at the moment see below. There are also strong counter arguments. As Jonathan Hall QC has argued , the level of publicity this would attract might prove attractive and the law might be counter productive.
Charles Falconer QC has argued that the concept of treason is a rightly outdated one because total loyalty to the state is no longer required. British citizens can be and regularly are stripped of their citizenship status. That is a very low test for exiling a citizen; the wording is actually the same as for the test for deporting a foreign national. One might have thought that citizens were better protected from banishment than foreign nationals, but it is not so. The power of citizenship deprivation can be used against any British citizen, as long as he or she will not become stateless as a result.
This means that even those born as British citizens within the UK can be stripped of their status. So, there is almost nothing uniquely special about British citizenship, at least in legal terms. Even the power to have citizenship taken away is expressed in the same terms as the power for taking away the residence rights of foreign nationals. This is not to say any of this is a bad thing; there is a very strong case for extending the rights and responsibilities of citizens to permanent and perhaps other residents.
Immigration and asylum barrister, blogger, writer and consultant at Garden Court Chambers in London and founder and editor of the Free Movement immigration law website.
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