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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

431 replies

Lalaloveyou2020 · 19/01/2021 12:01

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.

OP posts:
LadyfromtheBelleEpoque · 19/01/2021 17:03

@DGRossetti

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.

You know what I find upsetting? That I am meeting offspring of that generation who are looking down on the Irish descent (not sure if they are doing it to Irish working in UK). It’s as though they have moved forward and think we haven’t?🤔

DynamoKev · 19/01/2021 17:04

[grin]@BadEyeBri

ReallySpicyCurry · 19/01/2021 17:07

@BadEyeBri absolutely. I mean it's the mud roads and the fighting isn't it? I don't even know you but I guarantee you that I probably want to fight you, even if we're related. Especially if we're related. I mean if we can stop gnawing on the raw spuds and the balaclavas long enough.

MindyStClaire · 19/01/2021 17:08

Exactly BadEyeBri, terrifying place. We only stick to Our Own Kind, and if God forbid you're caught fraternising with The Other Side you're dead to your family forever. It's all fear and religion.

LadyfromtheBelleEpoque · 19/01/2021 17:09

@ReallySpicyCurry

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 did think it was lone idiots but the last twenty or so years it has magnified, I think in part to media/Globalisation/job insecurity pushing a particular narrative that has led us to the wider division/tensions we have now.

DGRossetti · 19/01/2021 17:12

[quote LadyfromtheBelleEpoque]@DGRossetti

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.

You know what I find upsetting? That I am meeting offspring of that generation who are looking down on the Irish descent (not sure if they are doing it to Irish working in UK). It’s as though they have moved forward and think we haven’t?🤔[/quote]
Not this one.

beantrader · 19/01/2021 17:16

Jaysus not another fucking thread on how to game Irish citizenship Hmm

If only all this energy had been put into the remain campaign!

BadEyeBri · 19/01/2021 17:20

Our National game is called Ussuns versus themmuns
The teams change without warning and in a random way that puts that weird Mornington Crescent thread to shame. The infighting is legendary. If you break ranks, your own team will kill you before the opposing side has a chance.
Touts will be shat. Flegs is all we know. Sunday trading hours are brutal and yer Ma's yer Da.

CantBeAssed · 19/01/2021 17:21

@badeyebri🤣🤣🤣

Buddytheelf85 · 19/01/2021 17:25

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.

To be fair, I don’t think OP has given any indication that she intends to do it, has she? Her initial post asks if people think giving birth in NI will become ‘a thing’. She quotes an FT article on the advantages of holding an EU passport post-Brexit and asks whether people would consider doing it.

LadyfromtheBelleEpoque · 19/01/2021 17:25

Sorry@DGRossetti I don’t understand your reply

DGRossetti · 19/01/2021 17:28

[quote LadyfromtheBelleEpoque]Sorry@DGRossetti I don’t understand your reply[/quote]
I haven't forgotten those people. The people that invited my DPs around and who my DPs invited around when my DF first came to this country as an "Eytie" (as a teacher at school told me). When it was "This table is for British folk, donchaknow."

BadEyeBri · 19/01/2021 17:31

@ReallySpicyCurry have you seen the price of balaclavas on thon Amazon? Jesus wept. I'd knit my own but I'd end up looking like a loyalist mural. Why can the loyalists not do eyes? Is it a Prod thing? The taigs can only do "Pantene" hair. Bobby Sands always looks like he's just stepped out of a salon. He bloody starved to death. Surely his hair couldn't have been that glossy. Maybe if the mural painters went on a cross community art course Billy could teach Paddy how to do non hair dresser hair and Paddy could teach Billy eyes. Do you think the EU would give a grant? Grin

ReallySpicyCurry · 19/01/2021 17:36

No because then we'd be the most beautiful people in the world and everyone would be jealous.

I like a balaclava myself, preferably dipped in chocolate, especially if you twist it into a funny shape, call it a pain au protesstaunt, and flog it for a fiver down at St George's. If that makes me a South Belfast fanny then so be it.

CantBeAssed · 19/01/2021 17:37

@badeyebri...way too funny..im pishing myself ere🤣

BlackLambAndGreyFalcoln · 19/01/2021 17:38

It really doesn't seem right that a British child born to British parents in (London)Derry has more rights than a British child born to British parents in London when both cities belong to the same unitary state.

ReallySpicyCurry · 19/01/2021 17:39

Do not envy the child born in Stroke City.

runs away

YouBoughtMeAWall · 19/01/2021 17:41

@ReallySpicyCurry

Do not envy the child born in Stroke City.

runs away

Grin
DGRossetti · 19/01/2021 17:41

@BlackLambAndGreyFalcoln

It really doesn't seem right that a British child born to British parents in (London)Derry has more rights than a British child born to British parents in London when both cities belong to the same unitary state.
That's what Brexiteers voted for. Will of the people and all that.
LadyfromtheBelleEpoque · 19/01/2021 17:44

@DGRossetti. I get you. Yes, Italians got an awful lot of poor treatment.

YouBoughtMeAWall · 19/01/2021 17:45

@BlackLambAndGreyFalcoln

It really doesn't seem right that a British child born to British parents in (London)Derry has more rights than a British child born to British parents in London when both cities belong to the same unitary state.
Lots of things to do with the difference between the rights of folks in the two places haven’t been right over the years. Its just this one time it’s happening to the important people that its a cause for concern. Hmm
Cattenberg · 19/01/2021 17:47

It really doesn't seem right that a British child born to British parents in (London)Derry has more rights than a British child born to British parents in London when both cities belong to the same unitary state.

It isn’t right. It also isn’t right that some Brits of Irish descent voted for Brexit, then claimed their Irish passports afterwards.

I’d have left the UK in a shot if it weren’t for my elderly parents. Alas, my DM gets tearful at the very suggestion.

YouBoughtMeAWall · 19/01/2021 17:48

I wonder how long the list would be if we compared what rights children from Derry have been denied that children in London enjoyed over the years...

ReallySpicyCurry · 19/01/2021 17:50

@LadyfromtheBelleEpoque yes I think you're right.

As a bit of a waffley aside, I think it's going to be fascinating to see how all of this is judged in retrospect. You could take it from 9/11,really, I think that will be taken as the butterfly-flapping-its-wings moment, aided and abetted by the rapid advances in technology, social media and its role in influencing opinions and decisions from grassroots upward. I know the general view is to stop moaning because we don't have it as bad as they did in 1940/1840/whatever, but in fairness we're living through a huge period of change, in so many ways, and if Brexit/covid have taught me anything, it's that we're all a bit out of our depth.

BadEyeBri · 19/01/2021 17:51

@ReallySpicyCurry I am that child. No one, but no one in Derry calls it anything but Derry. Even the elusive West Bank Derry prods.
Also did not have you down as a BT9er. Am slightly disappointed ie jealous as sin coz I only ever got as posh as Ballyhackamore townland of the large shite (Gavin Robinson I am not looking at you)