+
cease on 1 July 1997; all BDTCs with passports before that date will be able to register and become British Nationals (Overseas). The Order also contains 'provisions for reducing statelessness': they consist of the offer of British Overseas citizenship to Hong Kong BDTCs and their children and grandchildren who would otherwise be stateless. British Overseas citizenship and British National (Overseas) status are merely different names for the same thing: they both describe a British nationality which carries no right of abode anywhere, cannot be passed on to children, and is little more than a travel document facility.
These proposals take no account of the widespread criticism of the nationality proposals reported by the Assessment team; they provide none of the 'further assurances' the assessors hoped for to deal with an insecurity which is the product of the combination of Britain's unique citizenship laws and Hong Kong's unique colonial status.
ONE COUNTRY, SIX CITIZENSHIPS
Citizenship of a country implies many interrelated rights and obligations, but it is usually assumed that the most basic of those rights is the right of abode in the country of one's citizenship. However, this is not true for all those who hold forms of British citizenship: Britain is the only country in the world which does not allow right of entry to its own nationals. With the creation of British National (Overseas) status for people in Hong Kong, there will now be six forms of British nationality of which only one, British citizenship, allows its holders entry to Britain.
This process of division began in 1962, when British immigration law began to exclude some British nationals and Commonwealth citizens from free entry to Britain; it was formalised in 1981 when the new British Nationality Act gave British nationals without the right of entry to Britain new names (British Overseas citizens, British Dependent Territories citizens) which made it clear that they should not expect to be able to enter the country of their citizenship. (The Act also retained the old statuses of British Protected Person and British subject for other groups of British nationals without right of entry.)
During the debates on the Nationality Act, much of the pressure from British people in Hong Kong was not for the right of abode in the UK which they had lost in 1962, but for a separate citizenship which
5