andrej wrote:I've heard stories of naturilised citizens whose place of birth on UK passport indicates outside of UK being asked questions like: "How did you get this passport?"...
I've seen with my eyes, and heard with my ears, this one:
EU airport (not the UK!), passport check to leave the country, the couple in front of me, 40 something, in the queue just before me, hand their documents to the border guard, who stands to a side of the queue, no computer checks. The guy is white, the lady is of African ancestry. The guard asks the lady her residence card, the lady clearly point the ID card of an EU country she has already given him, adding she is obviously a citizen of that EU country. The guard calls a colleague and he explains him the case. Take in account they are to the side of the stopped queue, and there are possibly 10 people able to clearly follow their conversation, the couple and me included. The main point of their conversation is their complete agreement that the lady is not etnically a "real" European, so, ID notwithstanding, she must provide the residence card. They turn, and ask the lady just that, in those terms. My jaw is sincerely on the ground, the husband is fuming, the lady is actually laughing at the crass ignorance and the idiotic beloved of the guards, who are probably not even realising the issue they are raising using sentences like "as you are not an original one they should have issued you a residence card, not an ID card". The husband get confrontational, the guards call a third colleague, they explain him the issue, they take the couple out of the queue, I am waived through with my ID card still on my hand, they don't even bother to ask me to open that. Later on, I see the couple on the plane, they must have been able to convince in some ways the guards that the ID card was enough to let her out of the country, even if the hue of the skin was not the expected one. The husband was still fuming, the lady was less distraught, I'm afraid she may have been just more accustomed to such episodes.
I must add that this didn't really happen decades ago, unfortunately ...