Nationality query

[Deirdre784]

(Deirdre, you are totally Welsh in  Welsh peoples eyes  if you feel passion for your country, and have Welsh parents - being born in England to Welsh parents does not make you English for goodness sake !   lol - You are Welsh if that is what you feel ( you were born to Welsh parents!!), whilst you get some  people who are born in Wales with no Welsh heritage at all and have no passion for their birth place  at all -they are not considered Welsh by the real Welsh  
very kind regards  )

Thanks; beginning to wish I'd never asked the question now! Didn't realise it would cause such angst   

[1pds]

Don't regret asking the question - it's resulted in a real debate and a lot of clarification.   

[Alexander.]

I think the point Cell was trying to make is that nowhere on an "English" or "Welsh" birth certificate does it specify the country. In fact, there were lots of registration districts that covered civil parishes in both England and Wales, so certificates from both countries might be mixed together in the same books (if the subdistrict also spanned both countries).

[sallyyorks]

Part of a job i used to have was helping people fill in forms (some official govermment ones). You would be amazed how many people here would say/write "Yorkshire" for Nationality/Country  . Abaht reight   

[confused73]

I think that the Welsh would have something to say about that Sally.

[sallyyorks]

Hi Llandinam . Im not sure i understand what the Welsh might "have to say" about Yorkshire people regarding Yorkshire as a Country  ? It was just a general comment about "Nationality" .  However i do think Wales and Yorkshire have a lot in common (size , history , politics , industry , sheep !     though Yorkshire does have  a higher population) . Something i have become aware of over the years  is that we (Northerners) can be blunt spoken to others  and i think  this can often be taken the wrong way and missunderstood as rudeness or not being polite by people from other areas  . My nan was Welsh by the way and spoke Welsh so if she had had something to say about it im not sure i would have understood that either Ah well .

Edit :  mind you having said that, my nans mother was actually born in Durham ! Her Welsh parents lived there for a short time , coal mining . And her dad worked the mines and was from Lancashire ! . Im all confused now  ! Hahahaha

[RJ_Paton]

From the web site of the UK Border Agency

If you were born in the UK before 1 January 1983

If you were born in the UK before 1 January 1983, you are almost certainly a British citizen. The only exception is if you were born to certain diplomatic staff of foreign missions who had diplomatic immunity.

If you were born in the UK on or after 1 January 1983

If you were born in the UK on or after 1 January 1983, you are a British citizen if at the time of your birth one of your parents was:

    a British citizen; or
    legally settled in the UK.

If you were born in a qualifying territory on or after 21 May 2002

If you were born in a qualifying territory, you are a British citizen if either your father or mother is a British citizen.

If neither parent is a British citizen, you will still be a British citizen if either your mother or your father was legally settled in either the United Kingdom or that particular territory at the time of your birth.

As to subdivisions within the general term it is my personal belief that you are what your heart tells you whether it's Scottish, Irish, Welsh or English

[GrahamSimons]

Hi Graham, not sure if it was a typing error but Riga is not nor ever been Estonian it is the Old and present Capital of Latvia...

Thanks for the correction, my typing error here.

On a more general point, naturalisation is interesting too. If a British national is naturalised in another country, they do not lose their British nationality but become dual nationals. However other countries have laws which say that if you naturalise in a second country, you lose your citizenship.

I also have memories of working with someone with triple nationality (UK, US, Irish) and three passports. She said the difficulty lay in remembering which passport/nationality she'd used to enter a country when it came to the exit border controls, so that entry and exit records matched up.

[Murphester]

I was born in Australia but was also able to apply for a British passport because my father was born in the UK.  My mother was also born in the UK but they do not take her nationality in to account - only your paternal lines.  If my father was born in Australia, I could have still applied for a British passport because my paternal grandfather was born in the UK - still no regard given to my mother's nationality.  Bit sexist I reckon!