Clearing customs at Heathrow is about to get a lot more demanding for people like me. Hundreds of thousands of dual British citizens living in New Zealand – and millions of others like us spread out around the world – are about to lose the long-standing option of travelling to Britain on a foreign passport. Keir Starmer’s government says that from February 25 all dual nationals will be required to have a valid British (or Irish) passport to enter the UK, or else fork out quite a bit for what’s known as a ‘certificate of entitlement’.
The new policy is meant to align with the government’s much-ballyhooed seamless digital border system. In New Zealand, where I live, the announcement has also aligned with sleepless nights for at least some of the 200,000 people here who fall into this category.
For decades, we have not required a visa, much less a British passport, to enter the UK
Travel agents report ‘sheer panic’ among Antipodean-Brits over recent weeks to get a document that some have never possessed or felt they might ever need.
Your writer, born in New Zealand to a British father before living for a number of years as a child in Kent, happens to be one. I visit Britain every year or so, always making do with the same New Zealand passport that has reliably carried me around the world during my working life.
For decades, we have not required a visa, much less a British passport, to enter the UK. The pre-departure electronic travel authorisation system introduced early last year did not alter this arrangement. But the Home Office says that’s no longer a possibility.
In the short-term, those with a valid non-British passport who have been caught short by the change can apply for an emergency document, but these, too, will be phased out over time.
British-born Mark Stocker, a long-term resident of New Zealand who is now 70, says ‘many’ friends and contemporaries might otherwise have been visiting the old country in the coming months. His British-based family members, he says, are ‘ashamed of their government’ for the emotional havoc he believes the new policy is causing.
Stocker mentions the tear-stained communication of one friend who was born in New Zealand in the 1950s to naturalised British parents but who has only ever used a New Zealand passport, and who ‘flew into an absolute blind panic’ upon hearing about the change.
As he points out, this is the sort of individual the policy is likely to have its greatest impact on: those who emigrated from the UK as children, whose original passports have long since expired, and hardly know where to begin in sourcing the now-requisite documents for a new application.
More problematic still, however, are those born in a place such as New Zealand to a British parent, some of whom may not have even been aware that they hold dual citizenship.
In the end, Stocker’s chum decided to comply with the new arrangement. Stocker doesn’t think he will follow suit. Born in Watford, he moved to New Zealand for a teaching position, and after two decades decided that having British documentation no longer mattered and allowed his passport to lapse. He has no intention of applying for another. He doubts he will ever again set foot in Hertfordshire.
Although the Home Office has been clear about the technical requirements of the policy, its wider implications remain less certain. Britain’s high commissioner in New Zealand, Iona Thomas, argues that the move is essential to ensure ‘our border is more secure… that we have greater information about travellers and about those people who are entering the UK, so we can make sure that anyone who poses a threat or a risk, we have more information about that.’
The courses of action for intending dual national visitors are therefore few. Renouncing your British citizenship, which is expensive and possibly dispiriting, remains one. Affected people may apply for a certificate of entitlement of the right of abode, which is also pricey. Or they can simply bite the bullet, dig out the necessary papers and pay the £108 for a brand-new British passport and hope for the best.
Other questions linger, yet unresolved. Where does this leave, for example, dual national New Zealanders currently resident in the UK, either as visitors or on short-term working visas, who currently only have a Kiwi passport? What are their prospects for re-entry if they need to pop over to Paris for a long weekend? And are they now free to avail themselves of the British welfare system, including the NHS?
Stocker believes the long-term implications are less of immediate concern to the government than the perceived benefits for the Exchequer – ‘a revenue-raising measure from Rachel in Accounts’, as he puts it.
Still, he argues, the policy seems just as likely to keep people away, including high-spending tourists who simply can’t be fagged with sourcing the original records and then waiting for months on a new passport.
In an online chat group, somebody half-jokingly suggests that a dual national intent on visiting the old-fashioned way could theoretically travel to the Irish republic and on to Northern Ireland before trying their luck with a domestic flight to the mainland. A fat lot of good that would do, as Ireland from this month will also be insisting on Irish passports for its own dual nationals.
Is there perhaps a nice man somewhere in France with a spare dinghy to sell instead?
Comments