When I went to the Legal Affairs Bureau to start the process of naturalising, I was given a long list of documents to gather. I decided to start by gathering the UK-issued documents, as I foresaw the most problems with those.
I seem to have been correct.
One of the documents required was a certificate of citizenship, which I was told I could get from the UK Embassy. So, I emailed them to ask, and got a reply saying that the embassy didn’t handle renunciation of citizenship, and I should get in touch with the Home Office. I emailed back saying yes, I know that, but I want to know about a certificate of citizenship.
That got no reply.
Fortunately, I was contacted by someone who had done the process recently, and could tell me what the embassy had issued in their case. Armed with that information, I emailed the embassy again, and this time I got a useful reply.
The embassy used to issue official letters confirming citizenship, but no longer does so. They stopped last year, under instructions from the Foreign Office. The embassy said that such matters were now handled by the Home Office. However, the Home Office only issues certificates if you naturalised. If you were born a UK citizen, there is nothing to issue.
So, this morning I called my case worker at the Legal Affairs Bureau.
“They’ve stopped issuing them? Oh, well, in that case, don’t worry about it for now. If it doesn’t exist, you can’t get it. I’ll ask my superiors what we should do, but it will have to go to the Justice Minister, so don’t delay your application for this. Have you collected everything else?”
“Er, not quite yet…”
“Well, once you have, call again.”
It didn’t even take five minutes. I may be asked to produce something at a later stage, but it’s possible I won’t be. I do, after all, have to submit proof that I have renounced my UK citizenship before they complete the process, and that will prove that I had it earlier.
One thing that struck me was that the problem was resolved really easily because I could just pick up the phone and call the office. If I hadn’t been able to do that, this could have caused significant stress.
Of the five pieces of documentation I need from the UK, I currently have one. Three of the others should be in process. The last one is being a bit problematic, but I suspect that this is a bad time of year to try to hurry things up. Maybe I’ll wait a couple of weeks.
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