saeed1707 wrote:Can anyone shed any light on this one....
It has been suggested to me that...because my wife(Singapore national) was born in Malacca, Malaysia in July 1963 and her father was a resident of Malacca (and born in Malacca) whilst it was still a UK colony, that she may be eligible for a UK passport. Sound feasilble ?
To complicate matters my wife has been in UK now for almost 2 years on Spouse visa. She left Malacca when she was 4 to live in Singapore. Her Birth Cert and her fathers clearly state Malacca as birthplace.
For reasons that are now lost in the mists of time, Citizens of the U.K. & Colonies (CUKC) in Penang and Malacca
retained their status at independence in 1957.
As a result your wife, being born to a CUKC by birth father, would have been a CUKC by descent when she was born in 1963 [assuming her parents were married - were they?]. On 1 January 1983, she became a
British Overseas citizen (BOC).
However, her status as a BOC isn't worth a great deal to her as it doesn't give her any right of abode in the U.K. and she already has civil rights (like voting) based on her status as a Singapore citizen. And the Singapore passport is a much better travel document than a BOC passport.
If the Singapore authorities find out that she is a BOC, they may revoke her Singapore citizenship. So her best option is likely to do nothing about her status in the short term. Does she plan to become a naturalised British citizen in due course? That would supersede both her BOC status and her Singapore citizenship.
If she happens to have a U.K. born parent or grandparent, or if she lived in the U.K. for 5 years prior to 1983, she might already be a British citizen instead of a BOC.
