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Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can shed some light on my situation.

I'm an NZ citizen with ILR in the UK and have submitted my application for naturalisation. In OCtober, I'm going on secondment to Australia for around 8-12 months before returning to the UK. From July I'm going to be going backwards and forwards to Europe for work.

I'm really hoping that my citizenship comes through in time and I have sufficient time to get my UK passport before my travel requirements start up in JUly as there won't be time between each trip to apply for the passport (ie less than 6 weeks). I will probably need to attend the ceremony before July (assuming there's time) as otherwise I may miss the 90 day deadline.

My questions to the panel are:
1. Will it be an issue for me to re-enter the UK on my ILR as I will be a UK citizen but without a UK passport?
2. Can I apply for the UK passport from Australia? I understand you can do it through the British & Foreign Consulate Office but I'm not 100 per cent sure.

Does anyone have any experience of something similar?

Many thanks

elliey wrote:1. Will it be an issue for me to re-enter the UK on my ILR as I will be a UK citizen but without a UK passport?

Strictly speaking, your ILR becomes invalid once you become a BC. In practice, you could still use it to enter the UK. Just enter as you do now (landing card, NZ citizen etc). Save your time and don't start explaining the situation to the IO.

2. Can I apply for the UK passport from Australia? I understand you can do it through the British & Foreign Consulate Office but I'm not 100 per cent sure.

Yes.

Thanks so much Jambo, that's really helpful

elliey, did you applied for your passport from Australia ?
If yes , did they ask you to attend the interview ? In Australia or in UK ?

Hi

I applied for Citizenship and it was approved and I attended my ceremony in mid June. I had to travel back to my country at the start of July so I didn't have enough time to apply for my British Passport. Therefore I travelled with my country passport with my ILR. When I returned, I filled in a landing card just as before and went through passport control. They looked on the screen and asked why I was travelling on my ILR when I was a British Citizen. I told then I was not aware that this was a problem, but they held me there for over 15 minutes going off to check my passport etc.

Just be careful with using this option to re enter the UK as it does seem to cause border control some concern.

I'm a bit confused now! Can someone explain please? So if you apply for BC, are you not allowed to travel on your previous passport/ILR in the meantime? How do you know if you have become a BC if your application is approved while you were on holidays etc? Say for example, I am applying for BC next week, but planning to visit back home in OCT. if I don't get an approval by then I will be travelling on my current passport and ILR, however, on return, if my status had changed to BC, I wouldn't know. So would that be a problem with immigration?

Getting the approval does not make you a BC. You have to attend the ceremony and get the certificate to become a BC. So, in your case, you will still be a citizen of your home country when you travel back, even if you have received the approval.

A child becomes a citizen when the letter comes through ( i.e its a registration letter, not a approval letter).

As Jambo clarified when I asked the same question, UK does not require you to enter using british passport; so even the child is OK. Notice that juliajules had actually attended the ceremony and become the BC before travelling on home-country passport

Thank you very much aprilclub