Stateless child but British Parents

Hi everyone,

Apologies if this is not in the right place, or if this has come up before, I have a feeling though it may not have.

My wife and I are both British by descent, both born in South Africa but have of course taken on British Citizenship from our long line of born and bred British ancestors. We are the very first generation in our family to be born outside of the UK.

We both have been living in France for quite a few years now and were delighted at the arrival of our darling daughter who was born in France 7 months ago.

Since then we have been making plans to move to the UK, settle and bring up our child there. I have lived and worked in the UK before, but only for 26 months which was broken with an absence of 16 months. My wife has not worked in the UK.

As part of our planning, we of course applied for a British passport for our daughter which was refused as she had no claim to British Nationality. The passing on of Nationality can only be done by one generation born outside of the UK, much to our shock.

We then proceeded to try apply for French Nationality as our daughter was born in France. This ended badly to, as for her to have French nationality, requires a parent to already have French nationality, neither of us do as we both have British Nationality.

As such, our daughter through no fault of her own is stateless. The UK have refused her as well as the French, and as such, we are unable to obtain a passport for her and therefore we cannot return to the UK nor move anywhere outside of France to be honest.

I am posting to find out from the collective knowledge here what our options are?

I feel that in some way, our daughters fundamental human rights have been violated. She may be stateless at this moment, but she was still born in the European Union, is she not a European Citizen by default and should have the basic free right to Nationality? We have been besides ourselves for the last few weeks as we really have seem to fallen into a administrative crack.

As of today, we are only aware of the following options:

1. File a case to the French Ministry of Justice requesting a higher decision on whether our child could be a French Citizen - This process however could take considerable amount time which I was advised and is of course no guarantee.

2. File for British Registration using the form MNI, explaining our circumstance. - Again, this is no guarantee, it could be a quicker process, but at the cost of a non refundable 540£ charge.

This is all we have, is there some other route you could recommend? In both options above we feel betrayed at what seems to be a flaw in the system, even worse so, despite our British heritage of centuries gone by of British family ancestors, option 2 feels as though we now have to buy our daughters nationality. 540£ is a lot of money to play chance with, especially considering we have just lost 120 euros on a passport refusal.

Timing is also an issue, as I have unfortunately been made redundant in my current employment, which is what played in our decision to move to the UK.

We would greatly appreciate any advice any of you may have.

Kind Regards to all

barfam wrote:Hi everyone,

Apologies if this is not in the right place, or if this has come up before, I have a feeling though it may not have.

My wife and I are both British by descent, both born in South Africa but have of course taken on British Citizenship from our long line of born and bred British ancestors. We are the very first generation in our family to be born outside of the UK.

We both have been living in France for quite a few years now and were delighted at the arrival of our darling daughter who was born in France 7 months ago.

Since then we have been making plans to move to the UK, settle and bring up our child there. I have lived and worked in the UK before, but only for 26 months which was broken with an absence of 16 months. My wife has not worked in the UK.

As part of our planning, we of course applied for a British passport for our daughter which was refused as she had no claim to British Nationality. The passing on of Nationality can only be done by one generation born outside of the UK, much to our shock.

We then proceeded to try apply for French Nationality as our daughter was born in France. This ended badly to, as for her to have French nationality, requires a parent to already have French nationality, neither of us do as we both have British Nationality.

As such, our daughter through no fault of her own is stateless. The UK have refused her as well as the French, and as such, we are unable to obtain a passport for her and therefore we cannot return to the UK nor move anywhere outside of France to be honest.

I am posting to find out from the collective knowledge here what our options are?

I feel that in some way, our daughters fundamental human rights have been violated. She may be stateless at this moment, but she was still born in the European Union, is she not a European Citizen by default and should have the basic free right to Nationality? We have been besides ourselves for the last few weeks as we really have seem to fallen into a administrative crack.

As of today, we are only aware of the following options:

1. File a case to the French Ministry of Justice requesting a higher decision on whether our child could be a French Citizen - This process however could take considerable amount time which I was advised and is of course no guarantee.

2. File for British Registration using the form MNI, explaining our circumstance. - Again, this is no guarantee, it could be a quicker process, but at the cost of a non refundable 540£ charge.

This is all we have, is there some other route you could recommend? In both options above we feel betrayed at what seems to be a flaw in the system, even worse so, despite our British heritage of centuries gone by of British family ancestors, option 2 feels as though we now have to buy our daughters nationality. 540£ is a lot of money to play chance with, especially considering we have just lost 120 euros on a passport refusal.

Timing is also an issue, as I have unfortunately been made redundant in my current employment, which is what played in our decision to move to the UK.

We would greatly appreciate any advice any of you may have.

Kind Regards to all

i know a couple who were in a similar situation to yours. they were born in Zimbabwe but got their British nationality like you did. the wife went for a holiday in Zimbabwe while she was pregnant and gave birth there. the British embassy in Zim refused to issue passport for their lil gal and so did the Zim government. they were stuck there for more than a year and at last they were given a travel document by the British embassy. they came back to UK and sorted it out through solicitors. if you still have South African nationality you might get here a South African passport and then come to the UK and sort it out, i am not sure about that but it is worth trying.

Unclear why you should be "shocked" that British citizenship doesn't pass on indefinitely down the generations.

Anyway, you should look at the requirements for section 3(2) registration:
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/briti ... ornabroad/

There is a 3 year residence requirement for the parents, but this is waived if the child is stateless at birth. You'll have to show the child was neither French nor South African at birth.

I believe that South African citizenship by descent requires a registration application so it may be quite feasible to show she was stateless at birth.

Alternatively, get the child a South African passport and a settlement visa to the UK. The child could be registered as British by descent almost immediately on arrival in the UK with a settlement visa. Alternatively, after 3 years, the child can be registered as British under section 3(5) of the Act. Which is British citizenship otherwise than by descent.
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/briti ... ngintheuk/

To get a settlement visa: http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk

Thanks for the reply JAJ.

Perhaps "shocked" was the wrong word to use. Perhaps dismayed fits better. We both simply assumed our Nationality would be passed on to our children, as there are quite a few countries whom do this, however the UK has its own laws on nationality and it was only recently we found out about the one generation rule. It is a bit saddening, as one, or maybe just us, would assume ones nationality stems from ones ancestors rather than tied to the land you are born in. It is these mirrored differences between France and the UK that has created this situation I believe. From what I understand, French nationality is mostly derived from decent and passed onto generations regardless of where they were born and the previous number of foreign born nationals, but, nationality is not attained by been born in the country.

Never the less, we are in this funny place and must push through to get out of it and on this I appreciate you pointing out the 3 yr residence that may be waived. I can honestly say I have read that exact page, but for the life of me I missed it.

Our South African citizenship has unfortunately been lost so it seems. We came across some information on the SA High Commission site which states that in (Section 6 (2) of South Africa Citizenship Act, 1995) regarding the retention of South African citizenship, if we do not apply to retain SA citizenship before we apply for foreign citizenship, we shall automatically lose our SA citizenship, which unfortunately we did not do. I guess this helps the proving of the stateless case.

I got some feed back today from the EU advice commission regarding our issue and would appreciate advice on it. They mentioned:

"We understand that it is possible for a stateless person born outside the UK whose parent is British to apply for British citizenship. Although this requires the applicant to have been present in the UK for at least 3 years before applying, The Home Secretary may also be prepared to exercise discretion to register a minor if special circumstances exist, which we consider is the case of your daughter’s particular circumstances"

The application needs to be made on Form S-2 as explained further here:

http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/briti ... sidetheuk/

Do you know any difference between the this and the the link you supplied? It does not seem immediately clear the type of citizenship she may receive.

Again, many thanks for your time in helping out... I can only imagine the amount of time and effort you put into this forum.

Kind Regards

From what I understand, French nationality is mostly derived from decent and passed onto generations regardless of where they were born and the previous number of foreign born nationals, but, nationality is not attained by been born in the country.

Historically, French citizenship was based on principle of soil and not only blood. However, this was changed in the 1990's following political debate on immigration.
I believe that if a child is born stateless in France, he could apply for French citizenship even if his parents are not French. Worth exploring this further.
BTW - Have you lived in France for more than 5 years before he was born? This might affect your legal status in France according to EU laws.


EDIT: spotted this on the French consulate in Cape-Town website (small world...). See here.

The mere birth in France does only account for the attribution of the French nationality if the child is born of unknown or stateless parents, or of foreign parents who do not pass on their nationality.

So it seems your child could be French from birth.

Question for Bafarm - I beleive you and your wife acquired your British citizenship (by decent) at birth - no? If so, why do you believe that you have lost your SA citizenship? I though that SA citizenship is lost only if you take (without prior permission) another citizenship later on in life.

Thanks Jambo for the info and the excellent piece of info. I think the problem over here in France, is that the advisor's don't always seem to know all the facts of their own processes. I recall the first visit to them, they were 100% sure there was absolutely no option for French Nationality and we would have to wait until our child was 18. Only after I presented some documents from the online government info services about a stateless child been able to be granted nationality did they come around to our thinking. Yet, a dossier will have to be opened for juridical review.

I have indeed been in France and working more than 5 years before her birth. This is perhaps another option to look in, many thanks

@Becker, no unfortunately we only acquired our British nationality much later and not at birth

I must say that one has to be really clued up on immigration and nationalization laws to keep on top of things, something we were definitely not which is no fault but our own, but can be sure our daughter shall be well educated in the future in these areas.

Thanks again to all

barfam wrote:@Becker, no unfortunately we only acquired our British nationality much later and not at birth

If they were acquired automatically, i.e. there were no applications, then they were acquired at birth.

vinny wrote:

barfam wrote:@Becker, no unfortunately we only acquired our British nationality much later and not at birth

If they were acquired automatically, i.e. there were no applications, then they were acquired at birth.

This is a good point vinny raised.
It doesn't matter when you applied for a passport. This is not when you acquire nationality. If you parents were British and born in the UK, you were likely British from birth. Did you (or your parents) apply for citizenship?

Actually Jambo, I raised this point (Vinny) confirmed it.
However, when I read the thread again I noticed that JAJ wrote that SA citizenship for thr child who was born outside SA would need registration.
If so, the child would be stateless at birth.

barfam wrote: @Becker, no unfortunately we only acquired our British nationality much later and not at birth

Did you then register or naturalise as British? If you did, are you sure that you are British by descent and not otherwise by descent? If you merely applied for a British passport in (say) adulthood, that does not mean that this is when you became a British citizen.