Do you think giving birth in Belfast will become a thing post Brexit?

[Lalaloveyou2020]

Since 2005 a person born on the island of Ireland (including NI) to Irish or British parents has a right to apply for Irish citizenship/a passport. I read an article in the FT yesterday discussing the obstacles UK business travellers would face in a post Brexit word, which ended with this:

"There’s one group that will do well out of this: UK-based EU passport holders, who will be able to advertise themselves, both to British employers and to EU service buyers, as being able to travel unhindered around the bloc. Best-placed of all will be Irish passport holders, who can not only travel in the EU, but live and work freely in the UK too. Cecil Rhodes, the British mining magnate and colonialist, once described being English as “the greatest prize in the lottery of life”. Post-Brexit, it’s the Irish who hold the winning ticket."

If you really really wanted your child to have access to the EU in the future, would you be willing to move to Belfast for your birth so that your child could then claim an Irish Passport?

This is meant as a light-hearted discussion more than anything else, though if anyone from NI could chime in on how difficult it would actually be to do, please do so! Reason for going to Northern Ireland over the Republic is the access to the NHS and an automatic right to be both Irish and British at birth.

I think many people are realising just what the Brits have done to this country and it has become plain how willing the British government are to screw us over
I'm glad the mindset is changing it still has a long way to go especially in staunchly loyalist areas.
If it wasn't for the Taoiseacht digging heels with the peace process NI and the DUP would be in a very bad place now with Brexit.
Surprisingly or not Leo lost many voters to SF people thought he was ignoring issues in the Republic wasting time and money trying to fix NI and Brexit.
He played a blinder through Covid19 and his popularity increased.
Thank god SF weren't in power during the pandemic

*realised FFS

I really doubt it. Im sure NI has some nice areas but it's not really seem as an ideal place to move to

Let’s change NI to England for a really realistic view for 2021.

Or, we have to move on from the past.

Most of us have moved on from many elements of what the British did to this island but then we are abused and fucked over time and time again. Do you expect a civil war and hundreds of years of abuse to heal over night when one side of the war continually puts the other in danger years after we try to move on. Wise up.

😂😂😂

Or, we have to move on from the past.

How is what’s happening now in the past?

I want to add I have a lot of time for British people and have worked and trained in England for many, many years.

But MN is a place of heaving anti-Irish/ah well Irish are the bottom of the barrel, let’s use them to our own ends-sentiment and I see and hear elements of it even from the most progressive English people on a weekly basis.

@JaneJeffer the Irish are indeed very friendly (I would not say nosy, but we were a bit of a curiosity when we turned up suddenly in a small rural village in March, just as everything was shutting, apparently fleeing the plague...we had in fact planned to move at May half-term but it didn't work out that way, we got out of England pronto the day the schools shut, fearing we would get trapped in England and this would affect our property purchase). We changed our vehicle reg plates to Irish ones just as soon as we could!

I can tell that in "normal times" we would have had a lot of social contact with the people in the village, they have been very friendly and helpful. Would have loved to have the neighbours over for barbeques in the beautiful spring and summer that we had here...but it was not to be. Oh well, nearly one year down towards our Irish passports! (and one good thing about not being able travel is that we have not lost a single day so far towards the days required...)

I do think we need to move on from the past. It's hard to move on from the past when other people like to remind you of it too though.

Less than 20 years ago, I was punched in the face on a visit to England and called a dirty Irish bitch. My mum worked in England back in the 80s and was called an Irish slag by shop assistants and had male friends, also from N.I but living in England, lifted by the police to be questioned just because they were from N.I.

Some of the ignorant crap I saw on the Internet about N.I and about Ireland in general came as a shock even to me.

Then of course the fact that our government was prepared to sell us down the river for their fucking vanity project. Sacrificing our hard won peace.

You know what, I take the piss out of N.I sometimes. Sometimes I get frustrated because the churches still have us in a stranglehold, our politicians are pure wick, and the Metro says it comes every 10 minutes when it's more like 20.

But fuck it, we've not done too badly for all that. Thirty years ago you had people tarred and feathered for going out with someone from the "wrong" side, now nobody bats an eye. We've got 24 hour Tesco's, a Christmas Market. and posh people from all over the world come to look at our National Trust gardens. I'm a ceasefire baby, and the difference from I was a kid to now is astronomical, and that's largely due to the fact that even though we'd argue over the colour of grass, essentially most of us wanted peace and worked hard to achieve it.

So basically I'm sick to the absolute back teeth of my country being portrayed as the problem step child of the UK. At the end of the day, England was eager enough to hold on to the island of Ireland for quite a few centuries, so if we're now more trouble than we're worth then tough, you don't get to send your adopted child on a plane back to the orphanage. And absolutely fuck everybody who was so blinded by Brexit that they saw NI as collateral damage.

It's so shockingly tone deaf. The duel citizenship agreement is coated in blood. It was one of the many compromises made under good Friday. The suggestion of manipulating that so your kids can work summers in Malaga in 18 years shows such a deep ignorance

This. My children are entitled to Irish citizenship and we're uncomfortable claiming it for various reasons and that's despite having loads of living relatives in Ireland and NI, having spent time in both and in dh's case, worked in both. We had to elope because of those long shadows meaning we couldn't trust both sets of relations in the same room and I'm still a disappointment in certain sectors of my extended family (there is a tendency to take things to extremes on my side).

@ReallySpicyCurry

good post, @Really. Well said.

I thought you'd be more welcoming.

@changedmynamelol

I really doubt it. Im sure NI has some nice areas but it's not really seem as an ideal place to move to/ Visit.

What the fuck? 😂🙈

Awk, that was probably a bit of an unfair post to the many people in the rest of the UK who do care.

Blame it on my hurt feelings. I've close family who are English and I spent a lot of time there as a kid and teen, know some areas well, and love them dearly.

I've family and friends all over the UK for that matter, and pre covid we were always visiting back and forth.

The times I felt like people were funny about me being from NI - like the time I got walloped - I was always quick to put down to the sort of lone idiot that you get anywhere.

I suppose all this has made me realise that actually, it's not lone idiots, and that just makes me really sad.

I thought you'd be more welcoming.

Who?

@Triphazards

I thought you'd be more welcoming.

I take it this is a joke?

Well said @ReallySpicyCurry. As someone who moved to NI as an adult, I do think it should be more proud of itself.

@ReallySpicyCurry

Which is why a lot of my DFs friends growing up in the (late) 60s and 70s were Irish, Indian, West Indian, and Pakistani. All "foreigners" made to sit and have lunch and breaks together.

#chikitiki....its that attitude of yours thats backward...believe me..you wouldnt be welcome in NI so best stay among the pig ignorance you've been rared

@BlackBucketOfCheese

I want to add I have a lot of time for British people and have worked and trained in England for many, many years.

But MN is a place of heaving anti-Irish/ah well Irish are the bottom of the barrel, let’s use them to our own ends-sentiment and I see and hear elements of it even from the most progressive English people on a weekly basis.

^this - and I'm not Irish and have no Irish heritage, but some of the sneering anti-Irish stuff on this thread is embarrassing.

@changedmynamelol...im curious to know how you have come to have this opinion of NI...could you explain?

OP, if you care so passionately about having an Irish passport, and therefore having the benefits of being part of the EU - why not move to an EU country?

To complain about the restrictions enforced on you by your own government, then just pop over the water, give birth to reep a few benefits, then move back and raise your children in that same country (most likely under that same government) is ridiculous. Care so much about your children's future? Why raise them in Britain? Raise them in an EU country if you feel so passionately. By all means move to Belfast, contribute to the economy. But don't take advantage of already stretched resources then swan off back to England, delighting in the fact you've beaten the system!

To give birth in a different county to the one you live in, on purpose, for your own gain, reeks of entitlement. Which, is exactly why you've rubbed people up the wrong way here. As someone from NI, the entitlement of the English will always be a bitter pill to swallow.

@reallyspicycurry..well said👏

I really doubt it. Im sure NI has some nice areas but it's not really seem as an ideal place to move to
NI is beautiful plenty of sightseeing attractions and IME having lived in NI 'Ive friends and family there other than the obvious devision people are warm friendly.

@Emeraldshamrock noooooo, don't be saying things like that. We love our little country just as it is.
I've lived in NI forever. It's awful. The people are feckers. Hate-filled, rabid, religious nut jobs. Just look at the DUP. We're all like that. Stay away. Sure we could start blowing each other up again at any moment. The shinners haven't gone away ye know. It's not safe. Remain in GB. Don't even be coming on holidays for our gorgeous beaches, mountains, lakes or fantastic cities and towns. There's terrorists EVERYWHERE. And no one mention our top class state education system. It doesn't exist. It's a myth. Begorra etc