This is more logical because it gives persons who belong to territories rights in those territories. Category (i) are to be termed Citizens of the United Kingdom. Category (ii) may comprise a number of sub-categories because each dependency may create its own citizenship. Category (iii) will not have rights in any territory but in this they are no worse off than they are at present.
4. Dr Plender's system has an important advantage over that of the Green Paper. Rights and obligations are related to the territory a person belongs to and not to his connexion (or lack of it) with the United Kingdom. The British Overseas Citizen of the Green Paper may or may not have rights of entry into a territory and as such he will always be regarded with suspicion by immigration controls throughout the world.
5.
Great care must be used not only in defining new classes of national but in naming them. It must be admitted that the term in the British Nationality Act 1948 "Citizen of the United Kingdom, and Colonies" (and its synonyms "Citizen of the United Kingdom Islands and Colonies" and "Citizen of the United Kingdom Associated States and Colonies") was neither euphonious nor felicitous. Dr Plender proposes that all "nationals of the United Kingdom" should be known as such (this would be merely statutory recognition of existing usage). would not matter if the term "Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies" were to continue in use as the umbrella term for all classes of national as the Governor of Hong Kong has suggested. I have written a separate note dated
5 July 1979 on nationality terminology.
6.
It
The Green Paper deals pusilanimously with the means of acquiring British Overseas Citizenship. Thus, in paragraph 41 it states that a mother who had become a British Citizen ought to be able to apply for her citizenship for her children. On the other hand, in paragraph 73 it states that "women from the dependencies might only be able to transmit citizenship to their children born abroad where the child was illegitimate. This is because dependencies might be reluctant to grant the right of entry to the legitimate child from abroad when the mother was a British Overseas Citizen but the father was not." There are other ways in which the proposed law for British Overseas Citizens differs from that for British Citizens for similar reasons.
7. It is true that there are difficulties in imposing a nationality law upon mature dependencies. In former times H M Government convened Imperial (or Commonwealth) conferences and after consultation enacted nationality law of general application. This course has not been followed in the present case. The present situation in some of the dependencies is unsatisfactory. For example,
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