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CONFIDENTIAL
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MR JONES' SUBMISSION OF 29 OCTOBER: NEW NATIONALITY LEGISLATION: TRANSMISSION OF CITIZENSHIP TO CHILDREN BORN OVERSEAS
1.
RECEIVED PASTY NO. 51
& NOY-979
ins willany on J1.11
M. Quantau of
05711
This submission arises Trou, the comments that Mr Blaker made during his visit to South East As a month ago, recorded in Manila telegram No 395. It is a satisfactory progress report. In spite of the Home Secretary's pretty uncompromising stance on second generation citizenship in the Home Affairs Committee and
in the memorandum he circulated afterwards, the Home Office are
clearly still open to reasonable proposals particularly for UK expatriate businessmen; and we have alerted the DOT.
2. I do not think we will get a better explanation of Home Office
fears, that potential immigrants will exploit nationality loopholes, than is contained in paragraph 3 of this submission.
The fears pre-suppose a large-scale desire on the part of present immigrants to return to their original countries, or a trend for immigrants' daughters holding UK nationality to marry men outside the UK, eg in the Sub-Continent, West Indies, etc. To my mind this is a chimera and I doubt if the Home Office could produce any convincing argument. I agree with the Department that, technically, the possibility cannot be ruled out. But if the Home Office
advance the argument again in the Home Affairs Committee I think that whichever FCO Minister attends could reasonably ask the Home Office to justify its fears.
3. Hong Kong Chinese may well go back and forth more than other ethnic groups, and I suppose it is possible that there could in
future be a number of
'reverse immigrant' Hong Kong
families which could claim UK citizenship. But until the Department reports further, I am not prepared to regard this as a serious problem.
4. On the last paragraph of the submission, I conveyed Hong Kong EXCO's views to the Home Office in a letter which also
put on record that Mr Blaker had discussed the whole problem of three-category citizenship with the Governor of Hong Kong and
Sir, Y K Kan.
31 October 1979
DF Murray
cc Mr Stratton, Mr Evans, Mr Fretwell, Mr Fergusson, Mr Moberly,
Mr Harding, Mr Aspin, Mr Day, Mr Cortazzi, Lord N Gordon Lennox, PS/Mr Luce, HKØD, NTD
CONFIDENTIA..
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