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British Citizenship

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2021 12:47 pm
by zeebaltistani
i am on ILR at the moment and currently out of UK due to COVID since march 2020. I want to apply for British citizenship, but there is a requirement of 90 days out of uk, can't apply. Is there a way i can apply now for citizenship due to unavoidable circumstances of covid 19?

Re: British Citizenship

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2021 12:59 pm
by skasyap
zeebaltistani wrote:
Thu Mar 04, 2021 12:47 pm
i am on ILR at the moment and currently out of UK due to COVID since march 2020. I want to apply for British citizenship, but there is a requirement of 90 days out of uk, can't apply. Is there a way i can apply now for citizenship due to unavoidable circumstances of covid 19?
Answer to your question is “No”, don’t apply. It’s almost a year now so it highly unlikely your application will be approved, until and unless you can convince and provide proof to citizenship team that you have made all attempts to comeback to UK but failed to do so.There is a travel ban during the COVID and flights were still operating so not sure how you can justify that.

Re: British Citizenship

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2021 12:59 pm
by secret.simon
Generally, no.

For a start, you generally can't apply for naturalisation from outside the UK.

Secondly, naturalisation is not an immigration application, but under different rules and laws and no exemption for absences have been announced with regards to them.

And finally, if you are on ILR, you already have most of the rights of a British citizen within the UK. You would have to make a case as to why you should be exempted from the requirement of exceeding absences from the UK and not waiting until you do meet the absence requirements (which you likely would 9 months after returning from abroad).