New dual nationality rule

[Poxette]

I am British, I grew up in Britain with my British family. I have a British passport.

I now live in Norway. DH is Norwegian, our DC were born here and have Norwegian passports.

Is it really true that DC need to get British passports for us to travel to the UK?!

My Australian friend was speaking about this the other day. I was very surprised that the immigration system would actually know who had dual British/Australian (for her case) nationality - but it does! Her husband is a pilot and it’s causing problems at Border control. Her adult children are both rushing to get their British passports

It’s complicated. Britain doesn’t accept that part of Spanish law saying you can’t be dual nationals with Britain. So according to Spain we are single Spanish nationals but according to Britain we are dual nationals. It’s a ridiculous mess that we wouldn’t need to be in if it weren’t for bloody Brexit.

My DCs and I have been doing this for ages, though we are lucky enough that there are appointments at our London embassy (get up at 7 am a month before half term to get one! We have in the past used Inset days to go down). DS will get a new one in 2 years aged 16 which will last 10 years but we have badly timed DD passport as she's due for renewal aged 15 so it will only be a 5 year one.

Are they cheap comparatively? It would be £129 to apply for a UK passport from Sweden + the cost of the photo (or £95 if applying from the UK I believe). A Swedish passport is about £40.

Yes you are correct. It’s still very annoying though. During Covid being a Uk citizen abroad- even getting the same vaccination- for a period we still needed to quarantine. All the extra hoops are very frustrating. Although getting a passport renewed is usually quite quick.

You are presumably fine with an Irish one due to the CTA. At least I hope you are as I'm Irish and only have an Irish passport. However, I was born in England so am technically also a british citizen against my will. I know I could revoke it but it's ridiculously expensive to do so. My dc are also technically british by descent so it could also impact them.

I've been a dual citizen all my time in the UK, with a super strict other country. On UK soil, UK passport and show other one as necessary to prove entry rights to other country. Reverse on other side - other passport whole time, UK passport to prove I can return here. Tickets booked under UK passport number. All straightforward.

I’m dual Aus/Brit and I’ve been going in on my British and into Aus on my Aus for 13 years, ever since ive had both citizenships. Never had to do anything mad like book separate flights or had any problems with entering on one passport and leaving on another. I assume they are linked up because when you get one passport it knows that you have another.

I do agree it’s a nuisance if you don’t travel often but as someone said upthread, it’s kind of a privilege to have dual (or in my husband and kids case triple as they have Irish passports too) citizenship.

Plus 20 quid for each passport to be sent. 4 of us -one 15 Yr old DC and one 16, me and DH.All to and from the same address. All with the sa.e name. Still married.

But for data protection reasons we had to pay £60 extra.

Which is one reason we all let them lapse. German passports €60 from the town hall. We go to UK so rarely it just isn't necessary. After my mum is no longer with us I won't be renewing it again.

It's a complete mess.

My problem is that while my British passport is up-to-date and does need renewing this year (and now will get caught up in this mess when I renew), I did not realize my kids were automatically British citizens.

The rules around dual citizenship are complex in the country we live in and I was under the impression that if they did take British citizenship as children they would have to renounce one of them when they were 18 anywhere (which is also time consuming and expensive). I've since found out this is wrong and they will not have to renounce anything. They cannot pass their British citizenship onto their own children.

Even though a passport is 'only' £60 for them, the other costs mean I am going to be spending at least €400 to get their passports sorted, plus the costs for mine (it's better to send them all off at the same time).

-new birth certificates from city hall where we live with all the required information (here they do not issue a certificate when they are born, it's entered into the national database and a standard print out will not include all the info the British require so I have to make an appointment at city hall - earliest available next week - and make sure they give me the right information).
-get both of their birth certificates officially translated into English (3-5 days turn around) because since Brexit the UK passport office will not accept the multilingual certificate my council can also provide. The official translation will cost around €200.
-new long British certificate for me (my fault - it's been lost since we got married).
-I have to send their EU passports off with the application. This will leave them without ID which is essential in the country I live in, especially since they have a hospital appointment booked at the end of March for an urgent matter (heart scan). They will be turned away from the appointment if they do not have official ID. This means I need to arrange an EU ID card before I apply and send off the EU passports. I need official photos for this and have to book an appointment at city hall (earliest available is in 2 weeks, then another week before I can collect which also need the EU passports for).

This means we've cancelled our trip over in April/May.

It's not about going on holiday, it's about being able to see my parents, my siblings, the kids spending time with their cousins.

Ironically, the only one of us who is now allowed to enter the UK is my husband who is an EU only citizen.

The government has now announced that you 'may' be able to enter on an expired UK passport. Doesn't help my kids who've never been registered with the UK in any shape or form, have spent their whole lives here and never been in the UK for more than 2.5 weeks to see family. But I cannot take the chance of rocking up at Calais and being turned away - they will know the kids are dual nationals by the fact I present my British passport showing a UK birthplace before 1983.

I knew about the ETA rules and organized one for my kids and husband on their EU passports last year. I found out before Christmas I would only be able to enter the UK on my British passport (only because I follow the British Embassy in the country I live in) but it was only the guardian article last Saturday that tipped me off that my kids were affected by this. Even if I had realized...the November announcement only gave millions of dual British citizens abroad 4 months to sort this out. The communication has been appalling. I tried to call our Embassy on Monday and they just referred me to the Home Office, who also were zero help.

I'll be sending our applications off as soon as I can but it'll be at least 3 weeks before I can do that because of all the documents I have to collect.

I hope everything gets sorted before the summer (we've just paid a deposit on accommodation in the UK) but given the huge influx of applications there will be I wouldn't be surprised if the usual up to 10 weeks for an overseas passport application is doubled.

If they don't come through we will be able to holiday anywhere in the EU with the kids ID cards and my EU passport but that doesn't make up for not being able to spend time with my parents, who are not getting any younger, siblings and the rest of our family who are all in the UK.

It's a big stressful mess.

Norwegians can visit the UK, I presume? It sounds really confusing!

Yes exactly. I had no idea about it at all, just heard about it by chance. I also had no idea they were British citizens. I‘m so pleased we don’t have a UK trip planned for this year. We do however have a few overseas trips planned. We will need to send their Norwegian passports off to get the British ones, and I‘m not going to chance that when we have holidays coming up.

So I just have to hope there won’t be an emergency where we need to go to the UK before it’s sorted. Unlikely for us, but I‘m sure for other families it’s an issue.

It’s been interesting and helpful to read all the replies, thanks.

I do agree that it’s a blessing to have dual nationality. However, it isn’t a blessing to have to fork out a load of money for passports that will be used 2 or 3 times before they expire. Surely there would have been a simpler way to do this?

@PatienceOfEngels or you could have got the EU Id card sorted now.
Not said a thing about your dcs British citizenship and travel altogether. You on your British passport, your dh and dcs on their EU passports. As your dcs never have had a British passport, no one would know.
then on your return from your trip in the U.K., get the British passports sorted.

fwiw I feel that by not applying for your dcs British citizenship ‘because it would be costly then to renounce one if their citizenships when they turn 18yo’ crap tbh. This was not up to you to decide but up to them when they turn 18yo.

You shouldn't need to send the original passport. Ds recently got a UK passport and only had to send a photocopy of his Irish passport. He did have it certified as a true copy by a solicitor though. You may need it notarised though.

Apologies if this is a stupid suggestion but… could your husband and kids travel to the UK “separately” (ie on same flight but separate bookings), go through customs on their EU passport, and then you come in with your British passport?

how will UK customs know that your children’s other parent is British and therefore so are they?

this is assuming you’ve not made an application for a British passport yet.

yeah good luck with that in Germany. We were trying to do that for DD because while i could copy mine at home and it was accepted, DHs copy - same machine at the same time - was rejected.

So i took her to a copy shop and they said "no, that's illegal in Germany" can be b/w only. Which afaik is not what the passport office want.

Luckily Schengen countries (we live on a border and often go "abroad" to the supermarket) only require the national (compulsory here) ID Card.

As PP have said. This has not been an issue before, and wouldn't be an issue now if this mysteriously invisible advertising about it had really been all over the place since October 2024 instead of on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.

That's a bummer. I think ds scanned it in and then printed it out on a colour printer and there was no problem.

I'm thinking the advertising has predominently been in the UK, hence those of us who live elsewhere are being caught out. I do remember though reading something about it coming into effect, but it was like two years ago and I didn't pay that much attention to it as I figured I will hear more about it closer to the date.

Delete.

@glowfrog believe me we have thought about it. but this would mean taking an extra car over on the ferry/tunnel and there's a chance it would still be picked up. I don't think I could take the risk and I certainly couldn't lie if asked. As upsetting as it is to cancel a trip, I'd rather get it sorted now.

@OchonAgusOchonOh for a child's first passport you do need to send the original passport.

I am a dual national as well (only since post-Brexit as I don't want to have to get a visa to live in the same country as my children) and as an adult I can send a colour copy of every page of my EU passport instead of the original, but that's not an option for my kids.

That bit completely passed over my head. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, as much as any of this makes sense.

I am getting the ID card sorted now. But I need an appointment to do that and I'm waiting for that appointment.

My kids have ETAs on their EU passports because I genuinely didn't know they were automatically British citizens. If I allow them to continue to travel on them knowingly, I think that might well become a problem as they should not have applied for an ETA. I'm not prepared to lie to customs officials to enter the UK.

To clarify, my kids have never lived in the UK. They live here and consider themselves this nationality. Pre-Brexit when they were born there was no need for me to 'arrange' British nationality for them. If we had ever considered moving back then of course this would be essential post-Brexit. But actually this would now be more difficult to do because of my husband's status as an EU national.

"This was not up to you to decide" - when you're a parent isn't this exactly the thing that you do decide? Whether to go through the expense and bureaucracy of something that is not necessary at the time? My kids are teenagers - they live here, not the UK, and a British passport has never been necessary for them. All of a sudden it is.

I have been advised by airlines to not check in online for multi stop trips as only the check in staff have the flexibility in their systems to register different passports against different legs. E.g. I leave country A on passport A, and on second leg I travel on passport B to enter country B. I make sure I arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare and explain to the staff and show all my passports and leave them to manage it.