GoldenRose wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 8:05 am
Some colleagues managed to get this and the discussion was opened in another platform about whether the ILR stage is a must or not. Those people were on T2 skilled worker visa and their children's citizenship applications were successful. The children were born abroad.
Nationality law has very specific requirements. But the way the requirements are interpreted, or are impacted by external events,can vary over time.
For instance, there is a provision in UK nationality law that allows stateless children to register as British citizens after five years of residing in the UK, without the children or parents having ILR. Statelessness is relatively rare.
But Indian and Australian citizenship laws (among others) does not allow their citizenship to pass down automatically to children born outside those countries, unless the children were registered at their diplomatic outposts (embassies/high commissions/consulates).
Thus what many Indian parents used to do was deliberately not register their children born in the UK as Indian, making them stateless, then registering their children as British citizens directly after five years, without the parents or child having ILR. Of course what that meant was that the children could not leave the UK at all for the first five years of their lives, because being stateless, they had no passport.
That route was
effectively closed by the UK and India agreeing to treat such children as Indian (see Paragraph 4.4.1), by the Indian High Commission issuing such children with Indian passports even if not registering at the Indian High Commission, if both parents were Indian. In exchange, the UK agreed to allow a certain number of Indian professionals to migrate per year.
This "hack" worked only with those citizenships which were not automatically inherited by children born outside their countries, such as India's. So children of Pakistani or Bangladeshi parents (both of which have automatic transmission of citizenship) could not use it, for instance.
As mentioned above, that way of acquiring British citizenship did not require ILR. But that route is closed now.
So to state that "some colleagues managed to get this" is meaningless, because there may be some very specific routes that they may have used. And those routes may have closed or may no longer be relevant.
Without knowing all the details of their immigration history and (a) comparing them to yours and (b) if checking those requirements are still there and have not been overtaken by events, it would be hard to assess if that would work for you. To assume that what worked in the past will still work is a fool's errand.
To reiterate
CR001's advice above,
if either child has celebrated their 18th birthday, that child is no longer eligible to register as a British citizen, but must meet all the same requirements as an adult (ILR, absences and physical presence requirements, English language and Life in the UK tests, etc) and apply for naturalisation, not registration as a British citizen.
Naturalisation ALWAYS requires ILR. Therefore, if the application was made on or after the child's 18th birthday, (a) it will almost certainly be refused and (b) there is no alternative to ILR.
On a separate note, If you have not renewed the eldest child's current leave to remain, that will almost certainly have a negative impact on their chances of getting ILR, because now that they are over 18, they no longer qualify to make a fresh application as your dependent. If they had extended their dependent visa from before the age of 18, they could have continued on that visa till ILR. But if they do not have a dependent visa at the moment, they will have to apply for a visa in their own right (i.e. as a non-dependent adult), and there are very few routes that allow for that (student, work sponsorship, etc).
Have either child lived in the UK for ten continuous years?
CCing in
@alterhase58 as they love learning about the intricacies of British nationality law.
I am not a lawyer or immigration advisor. My statements/comments do not constitute legal advice. E&OE. Please do not PM me for advice.
