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ILR in Jersey

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:55 pm
by elpidiovaldez5
I am British, living in Jersey with my unmarried partner. We have 2 children and both have British Citizenship. My partner has a Spouse visa, and we are coming up to 5 years living in the island. Jersey is a Crown Dependency, but not part of the UK.

One worry that has troubled me for a long time is whether when she gets ILR in Jersey, it will give her ILR in the UK. I can't find anything clear about this on Jersey or UK websites. Also one year after getting ILR in Jersey, she is entitled to apply for citizenship. Will this be British Citizenship, or some restricted form ?

Re: ILR in Jersey

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:44 pm
by CULLINAN
elpidiovaldez5 wrote:
Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:55 pm
I am British, living in Jersey with my unmarried partner. We have 2 children and both have British Citizenship. My partner has a Spouse visa, and we are coming up to 5 years living in the island. Jersey is a Crown Dependency, but not part of the UK.

One worry that has troubled me for a long time is whether when she gets ILR in Jersey, it will give her ILR in the UK. I can't find anything clear about this on Jersey or UK websites. Also one year after getting ILR in Jersey, she is entitled to apply for citizenship. Will this be British Citizenship, or some restricted form ?
https://www.freemovement.org.uk/uk-immi ... endencies/

Re: ILR in Jersey

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:48 pm
by zimba
elpidiovaldez5 wrote:
Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:55 pm
I am British, living in Jersey with my unmarried partner. We have 2 children and both have British Citizenship. My partner has a Spouse visa, and we are coming up to 5 years living in the island. Jersey is a Crown Dependency, but not part of the UK.

One worry that has troubled me for a long time is whether when she gets ILR in Jersey, it will give her ILR in the UK. I can't find anything clear about this on Jersey or UK websites. Also one year after getting ILR in Jersey, she is entitled to apply for citizenship. Will this be British Citizenship, or some restricted form ?
The immigration rules are kept uniform across the UK and the crown dependencies. ILR granted in Jersey (or the UK) allows you to stay in the United Kingdom and Islands permanently without any restrictions from immigration on your stay and employment.
As only British nationality exists, the British nationality law applies. she can apply for naturalisation after one year of holding ILR

https://www.gov.je/LifeEvents/Citizensh ... ersey.aspx

Re: ILR in Jersey

Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2020 8:06 pm
by secret.simon
I am inclined to take a slightly different view from @Zimba.

Firstly, as @CULLINAN's link above states, while the rules for ILR are aligned across the UK and the Crown Dependencies, the ILR granted in a Crown Dependency is not identical to one issued in the UK.
Schedule 4 of the Immigration Act 1971 explicitly integrates UK immigration law with that of each Crown Dependency. It says that applying for a visa for one of the Crown Dependencies is as if you are applying for a UK visa. But this does not mean that you are being granted a visa for entry or residence in the UK, only that it is being granted by the United Kingdom through the UK’s administrative and legislative processes.
...
if you have a visa from one of the Crown Dependencies – you are permitted to subsequently visit the United Kingdom. If you wish to live and work in the UK, however, you would need to apply for a separate UK visa.
Indeed, keep in mind that the same also applies to each Crown Dependency. An ILR issued by Jersey may not confer the right to reside in Guernsey or Alderney or Sark, let alone the Isle of Man.

Secondly, as Zimba said above, there is only one British citizenship. However, a naturalisation certificate issued in Jersey would likely be treated differently for some purposes to one issued in the UK.

For a start, the British passport issued to somebody whose only claim to British citizenship is via a Crown dependency is visibly different. And till recently, such a person would have been an EU citizen, but without freedom of movement rights in the rest of the EU. So there are material differences between a naturalisation certificate issued by Jersey and one issued by the Home Office in London, even though they confer the same British citizenship.

At another level, where you naturalise could have consequences if the UK were to break up at some time in the future. Before 1983, the Citizenship of the UK and Colonies was the same across the British Empire. But, as countries became independent, the people who naturalised in the then-colony acquired the citizenship of that (now-independent) country, not that of the UK.

Where one naturalises can have implications years and generations into the future. I remember advising on these forums on a a case where the person's grandfather had naturalised in the 1920s and the nature of that naturalisation had implications on whether the grandson could acquire British citizenship now.

I hope that this gives you a fuller and broader picture of the situation, from which you can make your own conclusions.

Re: ILR in Jersey

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 8:40 am
by vinny
SCHEDULE 4
1(1)Where under the immigration laws of any of the Islands a person is or has been given leave to enter or remain in the island, or is or has been refused leave, this Act shall have effect in relation to him, if he is not [F1a British citizen], as if the leave were leave (of like duration) given under this Act to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, or, as the case may be, as if he had under this Act been refused leave to enter the United Kingdom.
If ILR was granted in Jersey, then it’s treated as if ILR was granted in the UK?

Re: ILR in Jersey

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 2:05 pm
by elpidiovaldez5
Thanks to everybody who has spared their time to help with this.

@secret.simon seems to have done a correct and very detailed analysis of the problem. The issues he discusses are those that have been bothering me for some time. However the conclusion appears to be that the differences in rights conferred by Jersey ILR and UK ILR are fairly minor, or hypothetical. Given that we have no plan to live in other Crown Dependencies, and the break up of the UK does not seem too likely (although the world does get crazier every day !¬), we do not have any real worries, as @zimba had concluded.

I was aware over the issue of rights in the EU when we began the immigration procedure. At the time it was troubling, but now nobody is going to have rights in the EU, so I guess nothing was lost !