4 ms·
> Things get dicier when there’s no records of you being a citizen Perhaps because you successfully applied for British citizenship in the UK forty years ago b
by buckminster 7y ago
> Things get dicier when there’s no records of you being a citizen
Perhaps because you successfully applied for British citizenship in the UK forty years ago but the government deleted all the records! Several instances of this came to light in the Windrush scandal a couple of years ago.
The moral: if your citizenship is even slightly interesting you need to keep your passport current.
- Scoundreller 7y agoI’m worried about the opposite situation... Getting denied boarding because I am a citizen. By lineage, I’m a citizen of an EU country. And the EU is launching a “not a visa but sounds a lot like a visa” travel authorization program for visa exempt passengers. Q1 will probably be: are you a citizen of any of these EU countries? Legally, I’ll be obligated to trace all this lineage back, through countries that no longer exist and get a lot of paperwork. Presumably I can’t renounce said citizenship until I prove that I have it first...
- icebraining 7y agoAre you really automatically a citizen? In the countries I'm familiar with, lineage might grant you the right to citizenship, but you still have to request it.
- Scoundreller 7y agoBased on my interpretation, yes, automatic. The lineage is direct: both parents are citizen’s of that country’s successor. But maybe it’s more discretionary in reality. There’s always people willing to give you a hard time even if you’re in the right. At least in Canada I know how to waste a lot of their time in return.
- samat 7y agoWhat you are describing sounds like a right for citizenship but not actual citizenship.
- Scoundreller 7y agoNaw, the law says you acquire citizenship by being born to that country’s citizens. It doesn’t say “can acquire”, just “acquires”. Not unlike an American or Canadian born abroad to natural-born Americans or Canadians.