Is she English or Portuguese? Please help me settle a debate

[Takeawaypizzatonightcbacooking]

I live in Portugal, I’m English, as is Dh, but Dd was born here.
My dad says Dd is Portuguese as she was born here, I say English because we’re both English…who is right? How does it work if you’re born in a different country to your parents etc?

Shes both. I don’t think it’s confusing. I have three passports as I have three citizenships. My DC have five passports/five citizenships. You can be more than one nationality.

my kids are half Dutch, my dh is Dutch.
They are entitled to both Uk and Dutch passports.
They live in Uk and visit Holland every year. They don't speak great Dutch.

They consider themselves to be English with Dutch heritage.
But they are entitlled to both citizenships and both passports.

There is the legal side and there is the way they feel culturally.

She may well grow up feeling both. She would be considered to be a TCK. It stands for Third Culture Kid, and is for anyone who has lived in a culture not their parent's culture while growing up. Have a look at what it means. There is a whole community of TCKs out there!

I would say she is British (I also live in Portugal and have many friends with children who are born here with British parents) and if she speaks English as her first language and you are both British, then she is British.

my DCs were born in Germany to English parents (25 years ago so not sure if the rules changed)
They are British, (I don't say English because you can't get an English passport and they weren't born in England) and have British citizenship. We registered their births locally as per the law and at the British consulate. (may be different now)

Due to Brexit we're all now German dual citizens too - but Germany is one of the countries where you don't automatically get citizenship by being born there. Other countries are different.

You should get it checked urgently, OP, she should be British due to having British parents, but you have to register her. Not sure about Portugal's rules around citizenship. Brexit may have changed that too. Some countries have convoluted rules about dual citizenship too. Especially where things like national service are involved, and taxes (yes, US, I'm looking at you)

Portugal citizenship follows the jus sanguinis, but there are exceptions. If you and/or your DH have been legal residents for more than a year, she would be eligible for Portuguese citizenship as well as British.

Ethnically she would be British (?), but culturally she may consider herself Portuguese.

We are British, in Germany, with DCs born here. They went to school here, had German friends, are bilingual and are as likely to speak German to each other as English. They have dual nationalities, and both work in German companies.

If you didn't know their background you'd say "german". We operated MLaH but watched films/TV in German and English, and read books in German and English, to make sure we had both cultures at home. Outside it was German all the way.

So it came as a surprise to me to hear one of them say, in answer to the "do you feel more British or German?" "oh British"

Probing revealed that consumption of media plays a huge role, and while they listen to a lot of German music, read German books etc - the internet and their love of memes means their consumption of media is about 90% (if not more) in some version of English. This is true, too, of their 100% German friends, to be honest.

You don't have to register British children born abroad with the British authorities in order to establish citizenship. You can do a consular birth reg if you want, but it doesn't confer nationality. (At least there is no requirement of this from the British Nationality department) My own child was born in the EU and is British by descent. No registration necessary. At least not in the country we were living in. It may be that the German authorities insisted on a British consular birth registration but it's not a British requirement. Never has been.
Before I moved abroad I worked in the Home Office Nationality dept.
Consular birth registration was often misunderstood even by consular employees. The confusion arises due to the word "registration" as there are registration clauses in the BNA under which children not automatically British at birth may acquire British citizenship. Consular birth registration is something different and unnecessary.
The British Nationality Act hasn't substantially changed since 1981. Not wrt descent/otherwise than by descent. The only thing that's changed in that regard has been the right of unmarried British fathers to pass on their citizenship.
On the basis of what the OP has said, the child is British by descent. The British authorities won't comment on whether she might also hold Portuguese nationality.

Legally it's not.

On the info the OP has given, the child is already British and doesn't need to apply for anything other than a passport.

You didn't need to register them. They were already British. The registration only gives an English language copy of the birth certificate that presumably you already had.
At the Home Office it used to do our heads in that the consulates abroad were charging people for a completely unnecessary service making them think it was necessary

Yep. That is what it is for those who're born here and have parents from another country.

Assuming she's entitled to citizenship by being born/raised there.

It means she's a dual national/citizen of both countries then. She's both Portugese and English.

British Portuguese.

Can’t she be both? I feel this is the obvious answer

I thought where you were born is where you are from. I thought where you are born is your nationality. Then you can also get citizenship from your parents.

I was born in England to Irish parents. Moved to Ireland at age 5. I have a UK birth certificate. I have always felt British as I was born there. Where you are born is a very strong part of your identity.

I'm British first of all. I also have Irish citizenship.

I think that your child is Portuguese by birth. She also has UK citizenship

Are you asking the child’s nationality or heritage ? Nationality is which passports she holds. A person can have many.
heritage, where her blood is from, where her parents are from and where their parents are from. There is a misconception that English is anyone born in England. If you’re English/white and your partner too then you kid is English too even if she’s born in china. If she is chinese from chineses parents being born in uk with both parents hiding British passport will give her British nationality. She isn’t English.

I hope this helped.

But generally people say "where you are born is where you are from".

So the child is Portuguese.

I quite agree. I was going to ask which street in Africa or say of course you're not 'African' as you can't be from all the African countries, just one. <cheeky smile>

But I know some people do this so as not to be specific because it's easy to be known as the poster from x African country than the poster from Africa or the UK just like most posters here. Easier to fit in and remain anonymous.

I also know many people do it even when they're not trying to be anonymous. So you can't tell.

@Mooshamoo that’s a misconception altogether. Ones nationality, immigration status and heritage needs to be taken into account.

a person can have multiple nationalities achieved by a number of factors, heritage isn’t achieved, therefore you are who you came from opposed to where you have managed to being born into.

imagine babies in planes being a citizen of no where ?! And brexit not being a thing ? Exactly! There’s more to it than just “generally what people say”

That is interesting. DD was born in Portugal and has a Portuguese birth certificate. Both her Dad and I had residence at the time and were British citizens by birth. We left when she was 7 and now live in the UK.

We registered her birth with the British consulate and she has a British passport.

I'm presuming this 2020 law is not retrospective and as we are no longer resident in Portugal she would be unable to claim Portuguese citizenship.

No, it's not retrospective. I think if you lived here for 2 years before she was born she'd have qualified as that was the rule prior to 2020, but you needed to officially register her birth with the Portuguese authorities at the time (involves more than just getting the birth certificate). So it's probably too late now - but worth trying anyway!

I meant there! I don't live in Portugal, lol, or I'd know the rules more specifically. I only know that before 2020 it was residence for 2 years in order to qualify, but not how long that rule had been in place, nor exactly what you had to do to invoke it.

Yes, this was our DS. But he’s only ever held an Irish passport.

What about when one parent is from one country and one parent is from the other country?

So for example, the child is born in England to an English father, and an Irish mother.

The family then move to Ireland when the child is five.

In that scenario what nationality is the child?