CONFIDENTIAL
The Requirement to Intend, if Naturalised, to Live in
the United Kingdom:
67. An applicant for naturalisation or registration at discretion has
to satisfy the Secretary of State that he intends, if granted citizenship,
to live in the United Kingdom or continue in Crown Service, or enter
Crown Service. This intention is among matters checked in the course of
enquiries and it sometimes transpires that the applicant clearly intends
to go and live abroad; and sometimes it comes to notice after citizenship
has been granted that he has in fact gone abroad, though of course it may
have been that the intention was genuinely formed only after the grant of
citizenship.
68. As a general proposition it does not seem right that someone who has
lived in this country for a relatively short time should be given citizen-
ship as a matter of convenience, in order to facilitate his entry to another
country. At one time, while the British Nationality and Status of Aliens
Act 1914 was in force, a naturalised person who went to live abroad for
7 years could, if he had not registered with a British Consul be deprived
of his (then) British subject status. But to introduce deprivation on
similar grounds now would often result in statelessness, since many people
on acquiring our citizenship would automatically lose the one they possessed
earlier.
69. The Government do not, however, think that people who move on after
acquiring our citizenship should be enabled to pass on citizenship further.
To do so is against their general intention that the number of British
Citizens living abroad with no continuing close connection with the
United Kingdom should be limited as far as possible; and they will propose
in the Bill that a citizen by grant shall be put on the same footing as a
citizen by descent so far as the tranmission of citizenship to a child born
abroad is concerned. (If the child is born during the parents' temporary
absence abroad, its status could be ensured by means of the provisions referred to in paragraph 81 for the registration of minor children.)
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