Cosmos1 wrote:Just my 2 pence worth on this topic ... I too thought it was a no-brainer and hence was sure that as a UK citizen you would not lose any rights if you move away from UK for 2 or more years... until i read this post.
http://www.immigrationboards.com/settli ... l#p1076293
There is a difference between being a resident and not being a resident, whether you are a citizen or not. In their particular case, though they and their children were British, even children on limited leave visas but who physically lived in the jurisdiction of the school and were resident in the UK would, and should, get priority for placement in the local school. As British citizens, they have a right to a free education in a British school. They do not have a right to placement into any school of their choosing (even residents have to fight battles to get their children places into schools outside of their jurisdiction). Once they reestablished their residence, things just got weird though. But this is mostly due to timing more than anything else.
Cosmos1 wrote:
You might want to read this up (and check with various other experts on this forum) before you make any major decisions to move away from UK, since it looks like not only one could lose several rights like school admission not being allowed,
No. You have come to this conclusion entirely on your own and that isn't even what the LEA or the original poster was saying. Any brief Google search on the LEA and/or British Council will clearly show the basis for that poster's confusion, as there are clear statements that any children with the right of residence in the UK (not necessarily citizenship!) are eligible for free education. Hence their post and the resulting confusion. That 'right' was never lost, and can't be. They are just struggling to prove they have it.
Cosmos1 wrote:and possibly NHS access,
Now this is just going off the deep end....
Cosmos1 wrote:etc, but also UK organizations like schools end up questioning the citizenship status itself (based on the OP's story in that post), since in that post he says the schools wanted to check with Home office if the OP can access schools admission for their children even though they were UK citizens, and also asked for their Visas in the UK (since they were away from UK for 2 years).
They weren't asked for visas because they were out of the UK for 2 years. They were asked for visas because of complete and utter confusion on the part of the LEA, including a lack of understanding of citizenship and returning residents. The entire matter is compounded by the fact that they waited until 3 weeks before school started to reestablish. To give some perspective, my own eldest child's class had all its placements full 7 months ahead of time.
Cosmos1 wrote:Also, don't throw away the BRP card etc or other immigration history records (if you were an immigrant originally),
I agree. I keep everything. The problem isn't how long you've been gone (though that can exacerbate things). It's that records can become lost, corrupted, or just simply not found even if properly properly stored and accessible. Throw in a couple of bouts of incompetence mixed with some bureaucracy, and the onus can be completely on you to prove what you might have taken for granted for years and years. There are such stories on this board. Technically however, a naturalized citizen who had a BRP card, can just throw the thing into the bin. It is no longer applicable.
Cosmos1 wrote:because reading through that post, the OP says when the school checked with Home office about them, the Home office did not even have any record of them
... so it means even the Home office could not confirm they were British Citizens, although they obviously seem to be, since the USA had issued L1 and other visas in their British passport.
Well the U.S. visas are irrelevant. It is the UK government that issued their passports. That's where the matter for demonstrating their citizenship should begin. And frankly, I'm not sure what details the school is allowed to get from the Home Office. I think there might be privacy laws in the way there.
Cosmos1 wrote:
So lesson learned from that story is, dont throw away immigration records, BRP cards etc thinking they are of no value.
In cases like the mentioned post story, you may need them to prove your British Citizenship or the route through which you acquired it at least, if the HO does not find any record of one's UK citizenship
I am not sure if their story is more than what is there in the post, but that post really made me think that things in life are not easy at all, even though one may have become a UK citizen.
Really strange story that one.
You don't know that they don't have all of their immigration details in hard copy in a file waiting to be unleashed onto the Home Office. They never said they didn't. But along this vein, and perhaps to make matters worse, I don't think that these are naturalized citizens. I think they are British born, which means they may not have any immigration history at all before that move to the U.S. In this manner, as strange as it does seem, we immigrants actually have a big advantage over British born citizens. Most of us can prove right from the first dated stamp in a passport all the way to a naturalization certificate, our claim to citizenship. But how does someone who is British born prove this? Not even a birth certificate is solid evidence. They have to go further and demonstrate that their parents were British or settled, something that likewise may not at all be obvious or demonstrable.
