CONFIDENTIAL
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L M Davies Esq CMG OBE Secretary (General Duties) HONG KONG
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
14 January 1985
ник 04014
IN PEGISTRY
15 JAN !935
(36)
Dear Brim,
STATELESSNESS
1
•
There have from time
по
Ther
IMM
to time been suggestions that the two groups we have identified SO far ie children born after 1 July 1997 to non-Chinese holders of the new status, and non-Chinese Hong Kong BDTCs who do not for some reason retain the new status on 1 July 1997 may not be the only ones who may be made stateless as a result of the agreement and the UK Memorandum. Michael Thomas quoted to me the example of children born in Hong Kong after 1 July 1997 to parents who were neither British nor Chinese nationals but who could not transmit their own nationality to their children. Such children if born before this date would be eligible to apply for British nationality under Section 3 of Schedule 2 to the BNA 1981.
This will no longer be possible after Hong Kong has ceased to a dependent territory.
be
2.
on our
I thought that we should clarify this and we have sought Home Office views. They have replied to the effect that they do not consider that children of non-British parents should be able to benefit from the statelessness provisions. They take the view that it would not be appropriate to grant British nationality after 30 June 1997 to the children of Hong Kong people who were not themselves British nationals. Once Hong Kong ceases to be a British Dependent Territory, British nationality cannot be acquired by a connection with Hong Kong. The proposed provisions are based obligation under the UN convention on Statelessness to facilitate the acquisition by stateless children of the nationality of their parents. Thus the provisions of Schedule 2 to the BNA 1981 which automatically confer British nationality on otherwise stateless children all require, amongst other things, that one of the parents i s a British national at the time of the birth: SO too do the provisions of paragraph 4 of Schedule 2 which give an entitlement to registration under certain circumstances to stateless children born outside the UK or a dependent territory. The Home Office do not think it would be right to depart from this general principle in the case of Hong Kong. Children born in Hong Kong after 30 June 1997 may apply for Chinese citizenship under the provisions of Chinese nationality law, and in their view this would be the appropriate step for them to take if they wished to acquire a nationality.
CONFIDENTIAL