PROGRESS IN IMPLEMENTING THE SINO-BRITISH JOINT DECLARATION OF 1984 ON HONG KONG (FCO/FAC/3/89)
SUBMITTED BY THE HONG KONG GOVERNMENT
NATIONALITY
Background
1. Until the enactment of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1962, Commonwealth citizens, including those from Hong Kong, had an
unrestricted right to enter the UK to live or work there. That Act
effectively withdrew this right. The Immigration Act 1971 distinguished between two classes of citizens of the United Kingdom
and Colonies (CUKC), one with the right of abode in the UK and the other without such a right. With the exception of those who had
settled in the UK, Hong Kong CUKCs had no right of abode in the UK.
This situation was reflected in the British Nationality Act 1981
(BNA 1981), which replaced the unitary CUKC status by three main
categories of citizenship British Citizenship, British Dependent Territories Citizenship (BDTC) and British Overseas Citizenship (BOC). Of these, only British citizenship carried the right of
abode in the UK.
2.
Although the BNA 1981 did not change the rights of Hong Kong British nationals, it was seen in Hong Kong, particularly in
retrospect, as an attempt by HMG to distance themselves from the territory and to limit their potential obligation to Hong Kong British nationals as 1997 approached. This feeling was exacerbated
when, during the passage of the Act, the people of Gibraltar were
granted entitlement to register as British citizens and later, after the 1982 war with Argentina, when British citizenship was extended
to those Falkland Islanders who did not already have it. More
recently, press reports that Portugal had begun to issue EC common
format passports to all its citizens living in Macao have rekindled
much of this public controversy.
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