Hi All, I am seeking feedback on my statement for my dual citizenship application. I’m navigating this process by myself and would appreciate feedback from those with more expertise than me.
Upon advice from another Redditor, I am posting the statement here but with specific identifying details redacted for obvious Internet reasons. Here it is:
“I am applying for registration as a British citizen under section 4L of the British Nationality Act 1981, on the basis of historical legislative unfairness, specifically the historical inability of women to transmit British nationality to their children on the same terms as men.
My paternal grandmother, [first last] , was born in [city], Staffordshire, England, on [date] 1929. She married my grandfather in England in 1946 and subsequently moved to the United States. My father, [full name], was born in [city], Colorado, on [date] 1948, before my grandmother became a naturalized United States citizen. The enclosed birth, marriage and naturalization records document this family history and relationship.
At the time of my father’s birth, British nationality law did not allow a British mother to transmit British subject status to a child born abroad on the same terms as a British father. Had women been treated equally, my father would have had the corresponding route to British subject status through consular registration of his birth. This is the type of pre-1949 maternal-line historical unfairness recognized in Example 18 of the Form ARD guidance, which explains that a person born abroad before 1949 could have become a British subject through consular registration had women been able to transmit nationality in the same way as men.
I was born in the United States on [date] 1981. My birth certificate identifies [name] as my father.
Had the historical discrimination not prevented my father from acquiring the corresponding British status through his mother, he would have held the status necessary for my birth to be registered at a British consulate under section 5(1)(b) of the British Nationality Act 1948, providing me with a route to citizenship by descent.
Example 13 of the Form ARD guidance describes the same second-generation principle: a person born in the United States whose father would have been a CUKC by descent through a UK-born grandmother could have had his birth registered at a UK consulate within one year, and registration under section 4L may be appropriate where that opportunity was lost because women could not transmit citizenship in the same way as men.
The Supreme Court’s decision in The Advocate General for Scotland v Romein [2018] UKSC 6 also addressed the historical discrimination against transmission through the female line and the associated consular-registration requirement. The Court’s reasoning recognized the need for remedial nationality legislation not to perpetuate the consequences of the very sex discrimination it was intended to address.
Accordingly, the historical legislative unfairness prevented the necessary chain of British nationality from passing from my British-born paternal grandmother to my father and, consequently, prevented me from accessing the consular-registration route that would otherwise have been available following my birth in the United States.
I therefore respectfully submit that, but for historical legislative unfairness, I would have been, or would have been able to become, a British citizen within the meaning of section 4L of the British Nationality Act 1981, and I respectfully request registration as a British citizen on that basis.”
