W M Lee sq
Home Office
Lunar House
(
Nationality and Treaty Department, Clive House, Petty France, Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1
10 Wellesley Road
CROYDON CR9 2BY
Telephone 01-213-3794
Your reference
Our reference CNN 3/0,19
Date
2 March 1979
NATIONALITY LAW REVIEW: BRITISH OVERSEAS CITIZENSHIP
1.
I
Thank you for your letter NTY/77 360, 1318 of 12 February enclosing a draft paper on British Overseas Citizenship. should like to comment upon a sentence in paragraph 14 (a) "there are some who acquire, or are descended from those who acquired, a connection because the United Kingdom used to exercise extra territorial jurisdiction in some foreign countries, e.. Egypt and Turkey". In fact, nobody acquired British nationality by reason only of birth in a country where the Crow exercised jurisdiction although, if the child's father were British, the child acquired the same status through birth within the jurisdiction, to an indefinite number of re:erations. It is, of course, true that some people born in the former Ottoman Empire and recognised as British by descent are Lowadays unable to prove which British territory their latest British-born ancestor came from.
2. I suggest that you re-draft paragraphs 13 and 14 on these lines:
The first group will consist of those people who derive their citizenship from their own or their father's birth or other close connection with an existing dependent territory.
The second group will consist of people who derive their citizenship from their own or their father's close connection with a former British possession (this could, for example, include someone born in a foreign country before 1949 of a father born in Australia).
A third group consists of persons who derive their nationality from a remote ancestor born in the United Kingdom or a British possession (existing or former) who have acquired their father's nationality either through consular registration, birth in a place where there was extra-territorial jurisdiction (this could also include someone born in a protected State, etc) or because he was in the service of the Crown.
CONFIDENTIAL
/3.