So foreign born people are not foreign as long as both their parents were born in the UK ? So they are essentially entitled to citizenship at birth like Boris ?
Yes. Unless their parents have actually taken up citizenship elsewhere in the meantime without opting for dual nationality, in which case, regardless of where they were born, they are no longer British and neither is their child.
Foreign born people who are not automatically entitled to citizenship at birth are the foreign born people you are referring to then?
I don't know what consitutes being automatically entitled, so I can't answer that. But I would consider anyone who is born to parents who were themselves both born in the UK should have automatic right to British citizenship unless their parents had already revoked that citizenship and taken it elsewhere.
What happens if they then become citizens ? They are foreign born but no longer foreign or are they still foreign?
I don't think it should necessarily be automatic that their children get citizenship and it should be dependent on certain factors. For example take these three families I know:
-
The father came to the UK from an African country (not a commonwealth country) to work, applied for British citizenship, got it, then left a few years later, back to his African country. He married an African woman and they had children. He applied for British passports for his children and got them even he had left the UK himself and gone back to his country of origin. He then moved to the middle east for a job and placed his children into the British embassy affiliated school where priority is given to British passport holders. His wife and children have never been to the UK, he as only there a few years. The children plan to go to the UK for university because they are British.
-
Family from Pakistan, similar situation. Got British citizenship while they lived and worked there, then left and went back to Pakistan where they have a family home, but they currently work in the middle east and have done for 15 years. They keep an expensive, empty property in London as an investment. All the children have gone to university in the USA and two have settled and married there, to American citizens. None of them consider the UK home, they were not born there, they left as young children, but they all have British passports.
-
Indonesian family, father sent to work in UK on secondment from his employer at the London branch of the company.
Applied for citizenship because he wanted his daughter to go to Oxford as a home status student with student loan etc. Asked his employer to extend his work placement in the UK while this was all in process. Got the citizenship, the daughter got her home status place at Oxford, father promptly left London and went back to Indonesia for good, British passport in hand.
So no, if those children then have children themselves, they should not have automatic rights to citizenship because apart from the British passport one parent might have, there is no other real, genuine and lasting connection to the UK and neither parent was born there.
Is there a sliding scale of foreigness ? grin
Officially, no but perhaps there should be.