Standard Passport application & Treaty rights passport application

Hello everyone and Merry Christmas!!

I have two questions to ask in regards to a First Passport application.

Firstly, the Passport office is asking me the passport which i used to first enter the UK. The problem is that 20 years have passed and that passport has long been renewed (and kept by the Italian Passport Office when my parents renewed it).

Should I just send them my current passport and the one that just expired?

Also, they are asking for my parent's Naturalisation certificate - even though I am the only one in my family who has citizenship.


Secondly, has anyone had experience with the Treaty Rights Passport application, because my brother was born in the UK, whilst my parents were exercising the EU Treaty rights and it would be more convenient that going through the standard registration process?


Again, Merry christmas to everyone and hope to hear some helpful answers!!

YOLO123 wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 25, 2021 7:55 pm

Secondly, has anyone had experience with the Treaty Rights Passport application, because my brother was born in the UK, whilst my parents were exercising the EU Treaty rights and it would be more convenient that going through the standard registration process?

Which year was your brother born in? (See Table A of the Treaty Rights passport guidance, which outlines how the documents required can differ based on when the applicant was born in the UK, and the caseworker guidance for such applications, especially from Page 31, which explain what the laws at the time of birth would have been)
And had either one of your parents completed exercising treaty rights for five continuous years before the birth of your brother in the UK?

YOLO123 wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 25, 2021 7:55 pm

Also, they are asking for my parent's Naturalisation certificate - even though I am the only one in my family who has citizenship.

The same passport application form is used by people who acquired their citizenship by descent, who acquired it by registration and who acquired it by naturalisation. So some of the questions may either be redundant or not relevant to your individual case.

Add a note in your cover letter that as you acquired British citizenship in your own right, you have attached your own naturalisation certicate.

Which year was your brother born in?

In 2003 - which would pit him under the rules that came into effect from 2 October 2000 until 29 April 2006 (Treaty Rights application guidance)

And had either one of your parents completed exercising treaty rights for five continuous years before the birth of your brother in the UK?

Yes. My day was in the UK since 1999 (a year before I arrived in the country) because he enrolled in a masters degree in Scotland. A year later, when me and my mum arrived in the UK, we moved to England, where he enrolled in a different university and got his masters a few days after my brother was born - so I guess that counts as exercising treaty rights?

the caseworker guidance for such applications, especially from Page 31, which explain what the laws at the time of birth would have been

I checked the caseworker guidance, and it skips from "on or before 1 October 2000" to "on or after 30 April 2006".

Does this mean that the 1st of October rules apply to his case?

YOLO123 wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 31, 2021 6:10 pm

Which year was your brother born in?

In 2003 - which would pit him under the rules that came into effect from 2 October 2000 until 29 April 2006 (Treaty Rights application guidance)
...
I checked the caseworker guidance, and it skips from "on or before 1 October 2000" to "on or after 30 April 2006".

Does this mean that the 1st of October rules apply to his case?

Unfortunately that means that your brother is almost certainly not a British citizen and will need to either register or naturalise as a British citizen.

Simply put, before 2nd October 2000, EEA citizens could acquire settled status (different and separate from the new EU Settled Status) by applying for ILR to be stamped into one of their passports, which at the time was free of cost.

On that date, the law changed, so that EEA citizens could no longer acquire settled status or apply for ILR at all.

That law then changed again in 2006, bringing in the concept of Permanent Residence under the EEA Regulations.

What that means in practice is that children born in the UK to EEA parents between 2nd October 2000 and 30th April 2006 would not be British citizens unless one of their parents had ILR stamped in one of their passports before October 2000.

Which is why, if you look at Table A of the Treaty Rights passport guidance, for children born in that time window, the proof that is required is

"Evidence that at the time of the applicant’s birth, parents held:
• indefinite leave to remain
• indefinite leave to enter
• no time limit"

All of those statuses would have been stamped into a passport and so the proof would be the passport of the parent with one of those stamps predating October 2000.

This scenario is dealt with, very briefly and without going into too much detail, on Page 90 of the caseworker guidance.

PS: I knew I had dealt with that question before, so I had to do some digging.

Have a look at this thread, which has a similar circumstance to your brother.

And also look at the quote below, from Page 22 of the document linked to in the second post of that thread.

Where the relevant date was between 2 October 2000 and 29 April 2006
Between 2 October 2000 (the date the Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2000 came into force) and 29 April 2006 (the day before the Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2006 came into force) those who were exercising free movement rights in the UK (for example as workers, self-employed, students and self-sufficient persons) were no longer considered resident in the UK without restriction under the immigration laws on the period for which they might remain.

The following categories of person were still considered to be free of immigration time restrictions:
• self-employed persons who had ceased activity or their family members who were residing with them before that person ceased activity
• the family members of EEA nationals who had died
• a person who has rights under Regulation 1251-70 (for example as EEA workers who had retired)
• a person who has been granted permission to remain in the UK indefinitely

So, for children born in the UK between 2000 and 2006, only children born to at least one parent in the four categories listed above would be British citizens by birth and eligible for a British passport automatically.

The rest would have to register as British citizens or naturalise to acquire British citizenship.

The good news is that as your brother was born in the UK, so long as he can prove that he resided in the UK for the first ten years of his life (by things like school records, GP records, etc), he would have a lifelong entitlement to register as a British citizen on Form T.

Of course, if he is under the age of 18, he may find registration on Form MN1 (which requires one of the parents to have EU Settled Status) easier as the amount of proof required is comparatively easier.