Commonwealth countries which were then independent had yet to pass their citizenship laws, and the 1948 Act therefore provided that British subjects who had ties with those countries should be regarded as potential citizens of them. These people remained British subjects but had to wait for a final determination of their status until the countries with which they were associated were deemed to have passed citizenship laws (or until they acquired citizenship of another Commonwealth country or of the Republic of Ireland in some other way, or became aliens). Only if they then failed to obtain a citizenship would they become citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. In the meantime they were to hold the temporary, non-transmissible, status of British Subject without Citizenship.
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3. The Act also provided that all those holding citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies or of a Commonwealth country should be regarded in United Kingdom law as British subjects (or Commonwealth citizens the terms
were to be synonymous), and exempted them from the disabilities of aliens.
Citizens of Eire were similarly exempted, and those who were alive when the Act came into force and had been British subjects with ties with the
United Kingdom were enabled to give notice to remain so. The Act made it easy
for a citizen of a Commonwealth country who had come to live in the United
Kingdom to acquire citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies; he had
merely to show that he had been ordinarily resident here for 12 months. Other
provisions of the Act enabled British women who married foreigners to keep their citizenship on marriage (before the Act they had automatically ceased to be British subjects), and gave women from other countries who married citizens
of the United Kingdom and Colonies the right to acquire their husband's
citizenship, on application. But British women could not in any circumstances
transmit their citizenship to their children born overseas, and the husbands of British women had no right to acquire their wives' citizenship.
The Act was followed by an Order which made new arrangements for the status
of British Protected Persons.
4.
At
It is worth emphasising that the 1948 Act dealt with nationality and
citizenship but not with the control of immigration to the United Kingdom.
that time British subjects/Commonwealth citizens were entitled to enter and
leave the United Kingdom freely; it was not until 1962 that any of them became
subject to immigration control.
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