Will partner applying for British Passport/citizenship invalidate my settled status as a family member of an EU person?

[genevieve]

Hello,

I've been perusing the boards for the past hour and can't quite find the answer so am hoping someone else might know.

My husband's Swedish passport is soon expiring and since he can't get home to renew it we're talking about applying for his British passport. He never knew he was actually already British until I started looking into citizenship stuff for me, but we now have all the documents for him (his mother, a British citizen, was born here but she had him in Sweden) to apply for his first adult British passport.

Does anyone know - when he has his passport and has thereby proved his British citizenship, will this invalidate my settled status as a family member of an EU person?

We're hoping to apply for my British citizenship eventually but have been confused by the "goal-post moving" regarding settled status and CSI! Need to save up the money, too, as he's not working at the moment.

Thank you so much.

[CR001]

What year was your Swedish partner born?

[genevieve]

1984.

[genevieve]

Just want to update for anyone who might come across this somewhat unique situation.

I'm going to contact an immigration lawyer as I feel this might be a bit much for online forums. I'll update later when I find out what they say but I'm leaning towards we'll likely have to reapply for a new visa for me if my husband is recognised as British. We've been considering emmigrating anyway due to hubby struggling to get work and he doesn't want to feel like he's wasted his time getting a PhD.

[Zerubbabel]

My husband's Swedish passport is soon expiring and since he can't get home to renew it we're talking about applying for his British passport.

It's possible to renew the passport with the embassy in London. No need to go home.

Your husband born in 1984 in Sweden to a British mother is a British citizen and has been a British citizen from birth:

https://www.gov.uk/apply-citizenship-br ... 3-and-2006

It's not applying for a British passport that makes him a British. The passport is a travel document and many British people never applied for one as they never travelled.

So technically speaking, your husband sponsored you as an EU citizen in the UK while he is British by birth. The Home Office saw a Swedish citizen born in Sweden and didn't dig further.

[genevieve]

Hi,

Thank you for that. He's always baulked at spending 5 times how much it costs in Sweden to do it at the embassy here. But we're just going to go ahead and do that, now!

His mum had two children before him and always thought she had to register the birth before he was 18 for him to be British as his father isn't British, hence the confusion and him believing he wasn't British.

[Zerubbabel]

To respond to this question:

will this invalidate my settled status as a family member of an EU person?

For me, the answer is no. Your immigration status has nothing to do with your husband discoveries about his ancestry and family. As a settled person, you are in the UK on your own merits now. The bar to remove that status is very high. So I don't anticipate that anyone would come after you because your husband applies for a passport especially that there are many dual nationals (EU / British) or British citizens (only) sponsoring family under EU routes due to some dispensation (Lounes, Surinder Singh... etc). So nobody would find it strange that you have a Settled Status and your husband a British passport. It's very common situation and it requires to evaluate the entire immigration history in detail to understand it.

The only thing, is that if you apply for British citizenship, they will go all over your immigration history again. EU immigration routes when they were open, they were much cheaper (nearly free) and easier (much less conditions) than the equivalent British ones. It means that for a dual national, there would've been a great incentive to not to disclose British citizenship in order to access more "user friendly" immigration routes. They may see it as a deception and this can trigger citizenship refusal.

If it happens, you can fight it by showing that your husband didn't know he had British citizenship and never used it in his life.

As an example, an EU national who doesn't work, could bring his other half anyway. While a British citizen who doesn't work or earns less than £18600/year, cannot bring a person even if married to. Same for criminal records and immigration breaches. An EU citizen could marry to an illegal in the UK and that person would be regularised from within the UK without consideration for that status while it's not possible under British immigration law to do it this way and so easily.

So if anyone questions, one of the defences you can put forward is that you would have qualified as equally under British law. So there was no clear incentive for you to use EU laws (except they are cheaper and that you can't argue against unless you show that money wasn't an issue and the fees wouldn't have represented any hardship for you).

[vinny]

His mum had two children before him and always thought she had to register the birth before he was 18 for him to be British as his father isn't British, hence the confusion and him believing he wasn't British.

The law had changed from 1 Jan 1983.

[genevieve]

Thanks, vinny, we learned that.

Thank you, zerubbabel, so much for taking the time to answer so much! Seems like the best thing would just be for us to not think about citizenship now and just focus on getting on with life and emmigrating. That sounds like a horrible situation to be in for so many Brits! I can empathise as we're looking at that ourselves right now... "stuck" here and can't return to either of our home countries without being separated.