British Citizenship and international job offer

All,

I would really appreciate some advice from this audience. I am a Spanish citizen and have been in the UK since 2011. I have applied for a Permanent Residence (PR) on 14th June 2019, with the aim to apply for a British Citizenship (BC) as soon as I receive this. My questions are as follows:

1. Whilst I know that the PR application can take up to 6 months (i.e. 14th Dec 2019), realistically can it arrive much sooner if I have provided more than sufficient evidence? And would they only communicate a rejection after the 6 months or as soon as they have reviewed my app?

2. Is there any way I can expedite this process, once I have applied? I have tried ringing the UK Gov Hotline however they are adamant that I have to wait it out.

I have a potential international job offer from November 2019 that I would like to consider, however will only consider after I submit the BC application. I worry that my PR approval will not come by then and that I will not be able to show an intent to stay in the UK (as I do not own any property nor have any family here), should I apply for the BC once out of the country. I intend to stay in the UK long-term however am afraid that I will not be able to evidence this and that taking the job offer will impact my ability to return to the UK to work.

3. I also have Settled Status that only expires if I am out of the UK for 5 years in a row. Do you believe that a "No-Deal Brexit" will override this condition? And if so, should I be worried that I will lose out on both my Settled Status and ability to apply for a BC, if I take an international job offer for approx. a year?

Thank you so much in advance for your help!

Unless you are married to a British national, you won't qualify for British citizenship until 12 months following the issue date of your PR.

Also, you aren't permitted spend more than 90 days outside of the UK in the 12 months period prior to submitting your BC application.

"12 months following the issue date of your PR."

Err, PR is acquired automatically. DCPR is issued. Presumably OP has acquired PR some time in 2016. It is a matter for HO to agree on the PR acquisition and this should be the letter accompanying DCPR. If that date is at least 12 months ago, OP can apply for naturalisation immediately. This has been discussed here many times, so not really new.

To OP, you might get better response in the EU forum as your concern is the DCPR application. Maybe have a look at the timeline topics. From what I see, however, that forum is dominated by non-EEA applicants. EU citizens are generally easy (unless they aren't and then it is a really really corner case, non-EU EEA also are slightly different). I am guessing there are much fewer PR applications now, but also much fewer case workers, so only very recent experience will really count.

About the pending citizenship application: I appreciate the form asks about your future (and ultimate) plans, so I don't see any issue with moving abroad temporarily after applying. However, others here have found big trouble applying for first British passport from abroad - don't do this. You have presumably looked up the details of the other practicalities, namely, needing a UK address and attending ceremony in time.

Another option is to apply later, say December or January if you absences in 2019 would still have been <90 days by then.

Good luck!

For the sake of clarity, an EEA citizen who has lived in the UK for 6 years (5 years of exercising treaty rights + 1 year) can apply for British citizenship as long as s/he holds a card that shows they have permanent residence. The card issue date is not relevant.

If you apply for a permanent residence document the date on the card will be the
date that it is issued. But you will have become free of immigration conditions once
you have been in the UK for 5 years exercising EEA free movement rights and
acquired permanent residence. We will use the date that you acquired
permanent residence to consider your naturalisation application and not the
date on which any document was issued.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ooklet.pdf

sba2019 wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:34 pm

All,

I would really appreciate some advice from this audience. I am a Spanish citizen and have been in the UK since 2011. I have applied for a Permanent Residence (PR) on 14th June 2019, with the aim to apply for a British Citizenship (BC) as soon as I receive this. My questions are as follows:

I am an EU citizen and I arrived to the UK in 2011 and applied for my PR last August, which has been backdated to 2016 (as this is exactly 5 years since I have entered UK). I got approval for my BC in April & passport in May 2019. You do not have to wait 12 if you have a letter stating that your PR status has been backdated to 2016.

Even backdating a PR is not required as I quoted the excerpt from the official guide. The date of the card is NOT used to determine your eligibility for BC