For several years now I’ve been looking into becoming an Australian citizen. With an Australian mother (now dead), you’d think it would be straightforward. After all I lived there once, admittedly a long time ago. An Aussie who wants to live in the UK only needs to have an English grandparent as far as I can see. How difficult can it be?
The website says anyone born to an Australian parent after 1949 is eligible to become an Australian citizen.
- But what if you were born before 1949?
- So long as your Australian parent was an Australian citizen at the time of your birth you are eligible.
- What’s the significance of 1949?
- Before that date there was no such thing as an Australian citizen. Australian citizenship only came into being in 1949.
- So how can my mother have been an Australian citizen at the time of my birth (1944) when there was no such thing as an Australian citizen?
- So long as your mother was an Australian citizen at the time of your birth you are eligible to apply to become an Australian citizen.
- Are you listening to me??
I wasn’t quite that rude, I wouldn’t dare. But that is the gist of the kind of conversations I’ve been having over the past year or so.
They were supposed to be changing the law in January but for some reason they’ve put it back. I don’t know if it’ll make any difference. I’ve been talking to migration lawyers in the UK and here and nobody seems to know even as much as I do. I guess they’re making it deliberately difficult in order to deter people like me. Well the more difficult they make it the more determined I am.
