Dual Irish and UK Citizenship

I'm English, born and bred, and always assumed my grandfather was
English, my great-grandfather Irish. Doing a bit of family tree fun and
I've discovred it was actually my grandfather who was Irish, long dead
before I was born, so obviously I don't remember him (doh!)

I think that entitles me to Irish Citizenship but is there any real
benefit for me as a fully-fledged UK/EU person? My girlfriend is
Russian, here as a student, so I'm, wondering if Irish citizenship
would be of any benefit here, cos we are reluctant to marry for visa. I
doubt it but I thought I'd ask as well as Google...

Steve

Steve wrote:



No real benefit other than an additional passport. You need to be aware
the Irish have tightened up their nationality laws a lot in the last few
years and it may well be that the rule allowing grandchildren of Irish born
people to register as citizens will be next in line. So you ought to make
up your mind whether you want to pursue the option while it's still open.

It also means that you'd have the right to live there if immigration control
was ever introduced.

Under current law if you do register as a citizen you will be able to
register any of your own future children as citizens too.


My girlfriend is
Russian, here as a student, so I'm, wondering if Irish citizenship
would be of any benefit here, cos we are reluctant to marry for visa. I
doubt it but I thought I'd ask as well as Google...

Steve[/quote]

You should check what the rules are for unmarried partners at
http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk

Dual British and other EEA nationals can sometimes apply for their spouses
to get into the UK under EEA provisions rather than standard UK law.
Although superficially attractive (somewhat simpler and easier initially)
the route to permanent resident status and British citizenship for the
non-EEA partner is more difficult if entering or remaining in the UK under
EEA rules.

There is something important missing from the answer below. The UK --
whether or not it is obliged under EU law to do so -- treats dual
nationals (Irish-UK, EU/EEA/Swiss-UK) as European Union nationals
instead of UK nationals at the option of the applicant where that gives
is to the applicant's advantage. (There are numerous anomalies with
respect to Irish and UK-Irish nationals, mostly stemming from the
political situation in Ireland or from tax conflicts relating to
cross-border workers/investors.)

Thus, you will have a lot less trouble getting a spousal visa if you
have Irish nationality in addition to UK nationality.

Something like 99% of persons born in Northern Ireland are dual
UK-Irish nationals. Which nationality they present themselves as
depends (generally) on whether they are Catholic or Protestant (or if
neither, which community they identify with politically, if either).
This will not change under the new Irish nationailty law as I read it
(although I admit I read it hastily).

There is an advantage to being Irish-British that follows from what was
said below: Unlike UK natioinals born abroad, Irish ones can transmit
their nationality to succeeding generations without limit, so long as
each child is registered with an Irish consular officer in due course.


JAJ wrote:

This is interesting - I was unaware of this "perk". Can you say where you
got it from?

Tks

Paul

tamsuraiya@yahoo.ca wrote:



But is it to the applicant's advantage? A lot of people on forums like
these advocate the EEA route instead of the standard UK route for spouses
of dual British/other EEA citizens.

However an EEA permit leaves the spouse in a more vulnerable position in the
UK should the relationship end, and even if that doesn't happen, the road
to settled status and British citizenship by naturalisation is more
difficult.

And an Irish citizen who elects to be treated as an EEA national for the
purpose of a quicker/easier sponsorship route for a spouse may find this
comes back to haunt him or her if it means that naturalisation is more
difficult to obtain (requirement to obtain ILR first) or if children born
in the UK are refused British citizenship.

P Pron said:



I'm sorry that I can't cite a particular source. I almost never post
something that I cannot prove, but this is so ingrained in my
experience (I am a retired diplomat) that I don't see the need to do a
LEXIS search for a case, if any. (If I do find something, I will post
it.) It's a matter of policy, perhaps linked to the situation in
Northern Ireland. I think if you do a Google search for commentary on
the Chez/Zhu case you may find something, although the Chen case itself
followed from Surinder Singh. (You may know that mainland British birth
certificates bear the (declared) nationality of parents. N.I. ones do
not, because then the document would reveal the religion of the baby,
or at least the religion of the parents. (Well, that's no secret in
N.I. at least for kids who don't go away to British boarding schools,
because the schools are divided by religion.)) The Chen principle will
be moot under the new Irish nationality law; more's the pity: it
affected an infinitesimal number of babies and parents. But cynical
Irish politics won out over facts, as the Irish Times reporting shows.

JAJ said:

But is it to the applicant's advantage? A lot of people on forums like
these advocate the EEA route instead of the standard UK route for spouses
of dual British/other EEA citizens.[/quote]

Under circumstances where time is of the essence or money is short, I
would advise going the route that is a matter of right (in the sense
that the bureaucrat has little room for discretion) and that is cheap.
One can presumably convert status later.

However an EEA permit leaves the spouse in a more vulnerable position in the
UK should the relationship end, and even if that doesn't happen, the road
to settled status and British citizenship by naturalisation is more
difficult.[/quote]

That's really a reason for the foreign (non-EEA) spouse to have counsel
of her own. Normally the "client" (here, the OP) isn't interested in
that point.

And an Irish citizen who elects to be treated as an EEA national for the
purpose of a quicker/easier sponsorship route for a spouse may find this
comes back to haunt him or her if it means that naturalisation is more
difficult to obtain (requirement to obtain ILR first) or if children born
in the UK are refused British citizenship.[/quote]

VERY few Irish citizens in the UK will be denied British nationality
for their UK-born offspring. They would have to be demonstrably
tourists who came, had a baby, and left. As you know, Irish nationals
come under special rules not available to other EU citizens. But
there's a more direct reason why this is a non-issue: just because a
dual national has claimed the benefit of his Irish (or EU/EEA/Swiss)
status for one purpose does not deny him/her the benefit for another.

I might point out what you already know: one can't be "refused" British
citizenship if one already has it, and one will have it if s/he meets
the terms of the statute. A parent can't cease to be British for any
purpose just because s/he claimed a non-statutory administrative
benefit by reason of also having a foreign nationality. Being British,
his/her British-born offspring is also British.

Governments act in certain ways for reasons that may be obscure to the
outside observer but which (usually) have practical reasons behind
them. Avoiding a legal conflict which could lead to creation of a new,
generalised right might be one of them. Especially when granting the
concession (treating dual nationals as if they were non-UK EU citizens)
affects rather few individuals and doesn't conflict with any strong
public policy. Had the French done that, the Rush Portuguesa principle
would have helped one single employer on one single contract, and
nobody would have known or taken advantage of the right (of a
third-country-national worker legally in one EU state to be sent by his
employer for temporary work in another). (Of course the conflict might
have arisen later, but that's another story.)

Obviously going on the presumption that in Northern Ireland,
Protestants usually claim British nationality, while Catholics claim
Irish nationality.

I couldn't believe how much of an issue that still was, to some people,
until I was attending college in the 1980s. I went to Iona College in
New Rochelle, NY. Iona is run by the Christian Brothers. While it's
not officially a Catholic college, and you don't have to be Catholic to
attend there, the school's Catholic roots are evident."

A few of the students that I was living with were from Ireland, and
throughout the year, I remember being told that they couldn't
understand why I was going to Iona. But when I asked them, they
wouldn't say what they meant, and one actually kept saying "You know
what I mean", and I would respond "No, I don't."

By the end of the year, I finally confronted him on it, reminding him
that, if anything, I should be asking that question to him, since I was
American and he was a guest in my country. His reply was "Yes, but I'm
Catholic.", to which I said "So, am I. Why would you think I'm not?"
He said that because my mother and all my grandparents were from
Scotland and England, he automatically thought I was Protestant.

To some, throughout the world, a difference in religion is all the
difference in the world.

In Belfast, Ulster University is the Protestant one; Queens Univ. of
Belfast the Catholic one. (Not so obvious by name as in Belgium, where
the catholic universities have "Catholic" in their name).

A Jewish friend of mine read law at Queens. Never mind the joke along
those lines, she really was asked "but are you a Catholic Jew or a
Protestant one (i.e., which do you sympathize with). There were/are in
fact some few Protestants who cooperate(d) with/belong(ed) to the IRA.
Just as, I suppose, Meyer Lansky worked with the Mafia. The IRA and the
UDA are, after all, nothing more than the Mob.

kuacou241@yahoo.com wrote:



Neither the University of Ulster nor Queens University are controlled by any
religious denomination, to my knowledge.

JAJ wrote:


The child born in the UK to a dual British-Irish citizen would be
British.

s_pickle2001@yahoo.com wrote:





I was talking about the child born in the UK to an Irish citizen who is not
a British citizen.

Ordinarily the child would be British as Irish citizens are generally deemed
to be 'settled' in the UK. However if the Irish parents starts claiming
treatment as an EEA national for the purpose of sponsoring a spouse, this
may return to haunt his child in nationality terms.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case, but the Home Office do say
somewhere that Irish citizens cannot 'pick and choose' between EEA
treatment and domestic UK law treatment.

Ultimately the definitive view on the right to British citizenshio of a
child born in the UK to an Irish citizen who has specifically claimed EEA
rights and has not been given ILR (as opposed to an Irish citizen living
under domestic UK law) can only be given by the courts.

All UK universities (except of course, private ones like Buckinham and
Schiller, and all the American ones with branches here) are controlled
by the government.

The point is that Protestants had been said to predominate at Ulster
and Catholics are said to predominate as Queens (which happens to be
the better of the two). Googling now, I don't see any reliable data
that would support the assertion however and so I have only the
word/opinion/observations of my informant, who went to university in
Belfast. See:
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/csc/reports/mm1f8.htm
"There is little published information on the religious composition of
university students in Northern Ireland: the last official
denominational statistics were published in 1908-9"

That article concludes: "The universities in Northern Ireland provide a
rare example of educational institutions taking both Protestants and
Catholics. Despite this, there has been no significant investigation of
the extent to which these institutions operate as integrated
institutions."

I do know that the British Government has provided lots of money to the
universities so that they can maintain extra-curricular activities that
will keep the students busy and out of trouble.