TNAG-2944-FCO40-4220-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-dependants-wives-and-widow-1993 — Page 104

As regards the wives and widows, there are two absolutely unavoidable naturalisation requirements which these ladies would have to meet. These are physical presence here on a date three (or, if widowed, five) years before the date of application, and freedom from immigration time restrictions on the actual date of application. A brief visit to the United

United Kingdom on the appropriate date would satisfy the first of these requirements and on the assumption that she had been granted settlement then, the second requirement would also be met.

However, Our legal advice is that a very brief period of residence (ie the first day of the three or five year qualifying period) would be insufficient to satisfy the residence requirements.

For naturalisation Schedule 1 to the 1981 Act provides that absences should not exceed 450 days in the five year period (and 270 in the three year period) and 90 days in the final 12 months. The Home Secretary has discretion to waive periods in excess of these "if in the special circumstances of any particular case [he] thinks fit", but I am advised that it would not be right to exercise this discretion to such an extent that it emptied the residence requirement of all meaning and that the discretion should be exercised in the light of the individual circumstances of each case and not for a category of applicants.

Even if it were permissible to accept token

to accept token visits here as meeting the residence requirements, I think that it would set an undesirable precedent, which other groups in Hong Kong, and perhaps elsewhere, would seek to exploit; and it would not meet the wishes of the wives and widows, which is to have British citizenship now rather than in three or five years' time.

All I can say is that within our normal procedures we would seek to exercise the discretion as generously as possible, if any of the wives and widows chose to apply for citizenship by this route. But this would mean a substantial period of residence given that the wives and widows do not, as I understand, have any other close ties here.

I am sorry that I cannot offer more than this, but I would be reluctant to change the whole basis on which we approach the residence requirements to provide a solution which is not even what the wives and widows really want.

ever

TOLR Chines

CHARLES WARDLE