CONFIDENTIAL
b) those who have connections with former colonies.
Examples of these are the communities in the Mediterr-
anean and Near East who are descended from people in
Malta and Cyprus but did not obtain citizenship of
those countries; those connected with the former East
African colonies and with Malaysia and Singapore. Of
these the majority have no citizenship other than that
of the United Kingdom and Colonies, but most of those
living in Malaysia have citizenship of that country.
Likely Points of Controversy
15. The suggestion was put forward in the Green Paper that
British Overseas Citizens who have insufficient close
connection with a dependency should not be able to transmit
their citizenship to their children. This would be the
principal difference between the people referred to in
paragraph 13 and those referred to in paragraph 14. It has
led to the objection from a number of correspondents that we
should be making children stateless particularly those of
United Kingdom passport holders from East Africa. But this
objection is largely misconceived; it cannot be supposed
that we could allow citizenship to be transmitted indefinitely.
Indeed, this is not so under the present law: transmission
stops, where the father is a citizen by birth in a former
colony, after the first generation born in an independent
Commonwealth country; the only difference will be that the
inability to pass on will in future happen one generation
earlier, and under the Statelessness Convention the duty of
providing citizenship lies primarily on the country of birth.
It is essential that this change should be made; and it is
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