and pleased to meet you all.
I am hoping you could shed some light on my case so I get an idea what chances I’ve got of my naturalisation request being accepted.
I am a citizen of an EU country, and thus have right to live and work in the UK as I please, which I have done with pleasure for the past 4 and a half years.
Many people object to my desire to become an UK citizen stating that I already have an EU passport and UK citizenship would give me no additional rights, seeing how I can already move freely in Europe. However, there is much about my birth country that I intensely dislike, including discrimination and abuse that I received from parents and teachers. To my disgust, I occasionally have to deal with their public services for things such as passport and other document related matters, which is not only annoying and slightly emotionally upsetting as I am flooded with unpleasant flashbacks, but also fills me with rage as I witness an unacceptable level of rudeness, inefficiency and delays.
This EU country that I’m speaking of will go unnamed here, but I hope this will be enough to show that I would be very, very happy to finally become a citizen of the UK which I very much consider to be 'my country', the one where I found happiness and the one that I feel most emotionally attached and loyal to.
This said, my case is as follows:
I first entered the UK in August 2004. I have lived and worked here since then, with two major blocks of absence – one, 147 days long. The other, 325 days long. Including other small absences such as holidays and business trips, my total absences are roughly 544 days, give or take a day or two.
Both my absences where due to study reasons. I was still in the middle of undergraduate University courses in my previous country, and I did not want to give up my degree. Throughout those absences I’d always had a firm intention to return to the UK as soon as I had completed my studies.
Please note that the last 2 years of my stay have been the most continuous, with only 36 days away in two years (I believe this will be in my favour).
Now, August 2009 will be my 5th anniversary of entering the UK and I was considering applying for naturalisation. However, I’m aware that my absences are over the normal limits, and also, one of my absences has been longer than 6 months, which I read would "break my residency"
I hope the "discretion" they talk about can get me around this. I've read the guidelines and I believe I may have some hope, can anybody confirm this?
But also, I am very confused about the requirement of needing to be "free from time constraints" in the last 12 months of my stay, and have "permanent resident status". Because I am a EU citizen, I thought I have ALWAYS been free from time constraints and I never needed an indefinite leave to remain? If that is wrong, and you can only apply for IRL after 5 years, wouldn’t that mean that the residency requirement becomes 5+1 = 6 years in fact? I really need some clear advice on this as I don’t see how or why this would apply to EU citizens. I would be really gutted if I had to wait another year to finally become a citizen.
I would appreciate any advice you could give me on my complicated case.
Thanks in advance and have a nice day everybody,
Danielle
