British Citizenship fees - why in the name of sanity.....

[Lottapianos]

.... do I have to pay EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS to have a form processed?

Sorry for shouting but it drives me around the bend. I'm happy to pay a fee but Christ on a bendy bus! They say it's to cover the administration costs and the cost of the citizenship ceremony you get invited to if/when your application gets approved. I can only imagine it must be an Elton-John-style White Tie and Diamonds Ball if that's how much they are charging!

Anyone shed light on why it's so bloody expensive? Is there a good reason or are they just taking the you-know-what? Thanks!

@cookcleaners, iamme. You are aware that all these people are already taxpayers themselves? It's not the taxpayer vs the immigrants.

@iamme. I assume that you think also that the 6 million British citizens living abroad should all be sent home to Britain ?

Perhaps some of the earlier "stop them immigrants" posters would be happier hanging out here:

bnp.org.uk/

Or get a job at the Home Office Asylum & Immigration department; you'd fit right in.

@iamme so I should have to pay a massive amount to come here, a prohibitive amount, just to join My family to support My Mil? My dh was abroad, where he met me, we married, had two children, who are British citizens by having a British father. We were happy living in my home country but had to move here to support mil as fil died. I have not claimed benefits. The cb had to be paid into My dh as I had 'no recourse to public funds'. In fact, by moving here on a spouse visa, I put myself in a very vunerable position. No work, no benefits, no cb, no residency, residency dependant on My dh. In the first two years, had My dh wanted to, he would have been ablevto kick me out and I would literally get nothing. No financial help, no legal aid, nothing. In fact, I would then have been deported away from My children. Effectively I would have lost my entire life. But according to the Daily Mail I am just here to steal jobs and claim massive amounts of money.

Oh and I had a job and was paying tax before I knew they would accept My iltr.

Also, I am lucky that My dh is not a Bastards! :o

Callow- are you sure you're not already British through your mother?

Unless she was also born abroad you might be.

(I also worked in the Nationality Office back in the day)

Sorry, just re-read and seen that you obviously did have to apply for naturalisation. Not sure why though, with a British mother. British mothers have been able to pass citizenship on since 1981 btw, not only recently. It's actually British unmarried fathers who weren't able until recently to pass c/ship on.

Notmostpeople....You might also already be British.

Bucharest The change in 2010 wasn't about if you were or British or not, it was purely in relation to the fees required, I've no idea why it was different before that, but 6 years ago DW had a choice of UK or another EU country, and that country was about a third of the cost of the UK.

Since then though in 2010, the rules changed and now there is no cost to get the UK passport beyond the normal application cost.

I was referring to your post about the law changing regarding mothers/fathers? Do you mean the fees changed for spouses of Brit Cits?

No Bucharest, the fees changed for proving your british nationality as an adult - ie obtaining a passport for the first time as an adult, when you were born overseas to a British mother. It changed as part of the 2010 law, but didn't actually change anything wrt to a persons elligibility, just the fees charged.

Bucharest

My first visit to the UK was as UK citizen on my mother's passport.

When I first came to the UK in 1990 the only thing I could get was the Right of Abode in my Australian passport. It was not possible at that stage (I was born in 1964) to get any citizenship. Later the law changed.

When I applied in 2009 if you had a British mother it was only if you were born after 1983 that you could get a passport. If you were born before 1961/2 you could not get citizenship at all. The only way for me to get citizenship at that time was to apply for the UKM naturalization (£750) or full citizenship (£850 plus test). I chose the cheaper option as my children were already born in the UK so it didn't matter that they would not get citizenship by descent.

Now they have at least changed the extremely high fees and you can also get citizenship if you were born before 1962.

Ah, OK, callow. (I am used to being older than almost everyone on MN and so was thinking maybe you had been born to a BC mum after 81.

Ho-lee cow.

I just looked it up $578 for our three UK passports.
$350 for the three US ones.

That's almost 600 quid.

::falls over::

kirsty funny you mention the 6million, or whatever number, British expat overseas. Do you know there is a reciprocal agreement on state pensions between the UK and NZ? It means you can use your NI years to qualify for NZ superannuation. Who do you think is the mug here? There are so many more poms in NZ than the other way round. In fact you cant go anywhere without bumping into a pom.

And ragged most expat British in NZ never naturalise. My in laws have been there over 30 years and are still British only. Same with my phd supervisor. My DH went to NZ when he was 4 and didn't naturalise till he was at varsity. I think it's because of the cost. It's simply cheaper to renew a British passport. Especially the NZ is only 5 years.

As for why commonwealth citizens can vote. At least for kiwis, most who are here longer than the working holiday visa are either born in the UK, have British parents or British grandparents. There are a lot of kiwis who can claim a British passport via ancestry. And if that doesn't even include the ones who claim via Irish ancestry. In my varsity class, we even have one who can get a French passport and another who can get a Dutch one. The guy who has a French mum (she sounded completely kiwi btw) couldn't even fill out his passport application form when he came to do his OE . I wonder how the French feel about this.

YADNBU

We just did it for DH. Fucking bastards - we felt like they were treated us like an ATM after £500 for spouse visa and nearly £1000 for ILTR (although we found a loophole for that one which they've now closed). So £2300 in 3.5 years to become a citizen. Citizenship is something you are entitled to, not something that you buy. And the govt are quite open about the fact that they are charing way more than it costs to process because people are 'inelastic' to price increases. WTF! So they haven't put the cost of tourist visas up because then people don't come but settlements visas, indefinite leave and ctizienship, well, you can screw people over then because, hey, they pay!

Oh, and the ceremony, what a joke! Seriously, so uninspiring. Although we got tea and biscuits afterwards - glad to see that our £850 went a long way. Now all we have to is pay for passport, bargain in comparison!

In France it was free until a week before I got my arse into gear to get the paperwork recently, it's not around the ?50 mark. The British gvmt seem to be taking the piss.

Yes I would prefer nobody from any other country coming into ours without paying a huge entrance fee to prove they can look after themselves.

pb yes i believe you should have to pay the amount and if you did split up you would have to prove you have paid tax for many years in order to get any income of the state.

iamme - I would prefer that idiots didn't get to be citizens of my country. But sadly, it doesn't work like that.

My DH had to prove he had enough money in savings to support himself before he got temporary leave to remain. So why, exactly, does he also have to pay a huge fee each time he changes his immigration status? It is just money grabbing.

Naturally - as an immigrant - DH doesn't get any 'income of the state'. What exactly do you mean by that phrase, anyway?

I take it iamme means

benefits.

jericho...........what do you mean ''change his immigration status''

I dont understand that.

Just popped in to say I'm still chuffed to find out I can finally be British (born before 83 to a British mother) I've had such a great day knowing this. Thanks again Fred Fred.

By the way iamme43 I was a higher rate tax payer all my adult life (before being a SAHM), have never claimed benefits I've lived here since I was 2 months old and don't know how to speak any other language. Why should I have to pay a huge amount?

cat, I take it that's what she meant too. It's just annoying to me because the vast majority of immigrants don't have any recourse to public funds. Those who do, tend to be asylum seekers, people who fled at risk of their lives and didn't choose to come here.

Changing immigration status is what you do when you apply to, well, change your status under UK law. It's pretty simple despite the jargon. Basically, you might start out (like my DH) as an overseas student, or as a short-term migrant (ie., someone with temporary leave to work here). To get both of those visa statuses, you have to demonstrate you fit the criteria for them - you won't be allowed to access public funds, naturally, and you will have to prove you can support yourself and you are good enough at what you do to be a benefit to UK economy, not a detriment.

After that, you might apply to change your immigrant status - eg., my DH was on a student visa then applied for temporary leave to remain under a work visa, when he got a job. He had to prove (again) that he had enough money to support himself.

Recently he had to apply a second time for another stint of temporary leave to remain, after we got married. Of course, the fact we were married was irrelevant - if he hadn't been able to support himself, and with a good job, he would have been deported.

He will eventually be able to apply for permanent leave to remain, assuming he stays able to support himself and in a sufficently high-earning job. He'll have to go through yet another process to prove this. Each time, of course, they are mostly confirming the same old news they knew before.

One day, we hope, he might get citizenship.

Ah thanks for clearing that up.

Where is he from originally?

No trouble - the whole situation is full of jargon!

He is originally from Russia, but he has been at boarding school here since he was 7, so he has actually lived in the UK for much more time than he's been in Russia, and he pays taxes here. I don't think it is wrong to require economic migrants to prove they can contribute, but I do feel that, at the moment, they are asked to prove that again and again, and each time we are told the money goes to proving things that were already proven the last time they checked! It is absurd. If they want to save money, they should shut down the fake colleges pretending to be HE institutions, for a start.