of any Commonwealth country or neither (British subject without citizenship) or both (dual citizen) and in which it is impossible to define the ten negatively, as meaning a person other than an alien, since a British protected person is neither the one nor the other and a citizen of the Republic of Ireland is treated as both.
Citizens of the U.K. and Colonies
Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies coincides with the population of the Kingdom more closely than any other national status presently created by law; but the coincidence is rough and general. It embraces three groups:
First, there are those who derive their citizenship from their association with the United Kingdom. They number about 56 willion. Generally, a person is sufficiently associated with the U.K. tɔ enjoy citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies only if he or his father was born, naturalised or registered as a citizen, or if he was adopted in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, or if he was born in a foreign country and his father was a citizen of the U.K. and Colonies by descent and his birth was registered at a British Consultate.
Second, there are those who derive their citizenship from their association with existing dependencies. These number about 3.; million, of whom about 2.6 million are assoc.ated with Hong Kong. Exceptionally, a person born in Southern Rhodesia, or otherwise associated with it, is known as a citizen of Southern Rhodesia and not as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies.
Third, there are those who derive their citizenship from their association with former colon.es.
This group includes Asians and others from East Africa who failed to become citizens of the countries in which they were living when those countries became independent, usually because the nationality laws of those countries provided that a person born there of a father born abroad should become a citizen only if he registered. The group also includes numbers (difficult to estimate) in India and Malaysia.
British Subjects
The tera "British subject" is synonymous with "Commonwealth citizen". Every citizen of every independent Commonwealth country and every citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies is a British subject. There are about 950 million British subjects in the world. Thus, British subjecthood is a "secondary status". In order to have it, a person must normally have a "primary status" in the form of a local citizenship. Exceptionally, a similar status is conferred "British subjects without citizenship" and on British subjects under section 2 of the British Nationality Act 1948 and under section 1 of the British Nationality Aut 1965, although they ay have no "primary" status.
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"British subjects without citizenship" are persons who were British subjects before the British Nationality Act 1948 came into force, because of their close connections with British India, but failed to obta.n citizenship of India or Parkistan when those countries became independent. There are only about 250,000 British subjects without citizenship, and because the status cannot be acquired by descent the numbers are diminishing.
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