ppron747 wrote:Unwanted wrote:....Sounds like a nutty rule but hey.....
Is it that nutty? If you accept that five years is a reasonable amount of time to expect someone to live in UK before qualifying to be naturalised, and that 3 months a year is a reasonable amount of time that someone resident in the UK could be expected to spend outside the country without casting shadows over their commitment to the place, then how do you express that as an easily administerable rule, except by having a start date?
If there wasn't a start date, then what would stop people from taking all their "permitted absences" before they'd even got here, and then be in a position to qualify for naturalisation in 3.75 years instead of 5..?
I would agree it makes things unnecessarily complex.
What Australia does is ask for a total of 730 days (2 years) in Australia as a permanent resident in the 5 years preceding the application, including 365 days (1 year) in the 12 months preceding application. The 730 days will increase to 1095 days (3 years) sometime during 2006.
Canada has a similar basis of calculation - they look for 3 years (1095 days) in the 4 years preceding your application for citizenship.
Neither country has a rule about where exactly you were x number of years previously.
The problem as I can see it is that the residence requirements of the British Nationality Act are focused on time *outside* the UK, rather than expressed in terms of total number of days *inside* the UK.
450 days (outside the UK) over 5 years represents approximately 25% of the time, so the 5 year residence requirement could just as easily be re-expressed as a total 5 years (1825 days) in the 7 years preceding the application, with no rule about where exactly one was 5 years previously. No loss of integrity that I can see but an end to the complications caused by the fact someone might have been on holiday in France 5 years previously.
That would however need a change to the Act, so it's very unlikely to happen anytime soon even if the Home Office were to think it's a good idea.