Should I renew my UK passport?

[time please]

Thank you for your reply, which I read early on Sunday morning.

I am not quite sure if people have understood my point. I left England with a UK passport 3 weeks after leaving CH fifty tears ago this year. I have been through the whole rigmarole of temporary visas, work permits etc until I got a permanent status. After some thirty years my wife and children began asking me why I do not apply to become a citizen of the country we live in, a quite reasonable question. But I was unsure, which country did I belong to. As time went by I realized that every time I went back to England I became more and more a tourist. As the country started going downhill I begun realizing that I did not want to visit. It had become overcrowded, rude, dirty etc. Note that this is the place where I was born which took the overspill from London, I am aware that this is not how the whole country is. So finally I decided that I would apply to become a citizen of my present country, which was granted.

Then came Brexit, my family ( extended ) are all Irish citizens both my parents were Irish. Suddenly there was a rush to get an Irish passport. These people have never been to Ireland will never go there and are not interested in the country. It was about the queues.
For me this is a slap in the face for any true Irish person. If you have lived abroad for a long time and you feel allegiance and respect for that place, and to put it bluntly you know that you are probably going to die there then become a citizen. Otherwise it is just about being able to skip the lines. You cannot become a citizen of another country overnight without ever being in that country regardless of your roots.

[scrub]

While I understand the sentiment regarding citizenship and (this might sound surprising to you) agree with it to an extent, this

For me this is a slap in the face for any true Irish person.

is where my deeper concerns lay.
Who gets to decide what makes a "true child of X"? What are the characteristics? What's the "correct" response from a "true child" to a specific situation?

This is before we move to the slightly easier to answer questions of what rights and responsibilities come with citizenship.
For example, in Australia, you can't take up public office if you have more than one citizenship. You also can't serve in specific sections of the armed forces. France too limits certain positions to French-only citizens. In the USA, only a US-born citizen can become president while naturalised are fine to become members of congress, senate, and all levels of the armed forces, and so forth. Holland and India simply don't allow for multiple citizenships.
In the UK, different rules again - politicians at any and all levels can have multiple citizenships and that's apparently fine (in my mind, it isn't, but so it goes).

Ask a hundred people what makes a citizen of their country and you will get many different, often opposing opinions. You'll also often find that people who espouse a certain view don't actually fulfil it themselves, but that's another issue.
Ultimately, although they are imperfect organisations, governments make these rules and even people who want to change them to fit their specific ideal of a "true citizen", and make it into a position where they have the power to do so, run into the evergreen problem of reality being messy.

If we've learnt anything from history (we haven't, we get constant refreshers - depending on how much attention we pay to other parts of the world), the desire to quantify "true" is usually subverted to mean "pure" by people who want to believe only a small portion of a country's history, or prefer to just substitute their own version completely. It never ends well.

[time please]

I feel that you making this more complicated than necessary. Regarding my family they suddenly became true green Irish...to avoid the queues.
That is what I feel is wrong.

[loringa]

I feel that you making this more complicated than necessary. Regarding my family they suddenly became true green Irish...to avoid the queues.
That is what I feel is wrong.

It probably is wrong but it is exactly what I did. Yes - it helps avoid the queues and makes me much more popular abroad but it also allows me to identify as a European which is actually really important to me. Quite apart from being tantamount to economic suicide, Brexit plays to everything that is bad about the little Englander mentality as epitomised by the Daily Mail and voting Reform UK.

I have served my country for most of my adult life, participating in Mr Blair's wars of choice and generally attempting to be a good citizen and servant of the State. My confidence in this country took a knock from which it will likely never recover through a combination of the Brexit vote and Mr Johnson's becoming Prime Minister. My wife and daughter are Australian citizens and I have an Irish passport. Maybe a better Britain is possible and there are still bits of it I like but it is becoming harder and harder to be proud of this nation. It is good to have a Plan B!

[Katharine]

I feel that you making this more complicated than necessary. Regarding my family they suddenly became true green Irish...to avoid the queues.
That is what I feel is wrong.

It probably is wrong but it is exactly what I did. Yes - it helps avoid the queues and makes me much more popular abroad but it also allows me to identify as a European which is actually really important to me. Quite apart from being tantamount to economic suicide, Brexit plays to everything that is bad about the little Englander mentality as epitomised by the Daily Mail and voting Reform UK.

I have served my country for most of my adult life, participating in Mr Blair's wars of choice and generally attempting to be a good citizen and servant of the State. My confidence in this country took a knock from which it will likely never recover through a combination of the Brexit vote and Mr Johnson's becoming Prime Minister. My wife and daughter are Australian citizens and I have an Irish passport. Maybe a better Britain is possible and there are still bits of it I like but it is becoming harder and harder to be proud of this nation. It is good to have a Plan B!

I identify with a lot of this. I am married to a retired British Council Officer and we flew the flag for Britain for many years. So I feel we served Queen and country doing that. The whole time, as I've said before, I identified as British explaining my dual heritage. Since Brexit I have wanted to stress one side of my heritage more than the other. Yes it may mean I avoid queues but that is not my main reason for using my Irish passport. It is that I feel less and less aligned with Britain since Brexit, and I am lucky in having this dual heritage.

Perhaps I should add that as my husband isn’t entitled to an Irish passport, if I’m travelling with him, it won’t do me much good to avoid the queues!

[Otter]

To me it's a no-brainer to get another citizenship (especially an EU one) if you are eligible. So much more to it than queuing.

It's not about emotion, it's about retaining the legal rights that the 52% voted to take away. In this sense, nationality is not an emotional issue, it is a practical one. Similarly, like how the Brexit vote was largely based on emotions rather than practical considerations (I still haven't heard of a single advantage it has brought). It isn't surprising that those in favour of Brexit are against getting another passport if you don't have an emotional tie to that country, while those who wanted to keep their freedom to live, work and retire in any of 30 different countries will jump at the chance to get another passport, even if it is from a country they have minimal links to or have perhaps never even been to.

If you are 100% sure you will never again visit the EU/EEA/CH for more than 90 days in any 180-day period, will never work there or want to retire or buy property there, then there is no practical need for acquiring an EU passport. But if there is any possibility that you might want to do any of those things, it is an obvious decision.

I've spoken to a number of Irish (born and raised) people about the issue of many Brits with minimal links to Ireland now becoming Irish citizens, and none of them have expressed any objection to it. They feel sorry for us, and see it as a logical thing to do to retain your rights if you are lucky enough to be eligible to do so.

[Katharine]

I have found this thread interesting, but I am not much wiser about my original question which was

My British passport expires in about 3 months and I can’t decide whether to renew it or not. What are the arguments for and against?

[time please]

Reply to Katharine:

Renew your passport!
Have both with you when traveling but kept separately in much the same way as having a credit card for emergencies. Just don't pull them out simultaneously at Border Control.

[sejintenej]

Katharine, Time Out. FWIW I was looking up the rules because my daughter wants to get an Irish passport (because of her grand parents) so she has to first get in the "Irish born abroad" register.
Reading further it appears that because my immediate parents were both born in Ireland (north and south) I am thereby entitled to an Irish passport without apparently going through the rigmarole of pre-registering. That seems to be the case at least for Time Out - I didn't re-read all of Katharine's past posts to check her position.
Of course it is up to each of you; for myself I am a bit ancient but I might get one simply to make it easier to visit my brother's war grave in Germany.

[Katharine]

That’s right sejintenej, you can get an Irish passport provided, of course, you have the documentary evidence. Your daughter can too, but for her the first step is to be registered as Foreign born Irish. As you’ll need some of the same certificates for a passport for you and registration for her, I’m not sure both applications can be sent together.

We did send the applications to be registered for both my sons and one of their cousins at the same time. I can’t tell you how long it would normally take as theirs was held up for months by Covid. The initial email had said 6 months.

[time please]

To Sej inte nej sej kanske kanske.

It is Time Please and not Time Out. Although Time Out is how I feel some ( most ) mornings.

[sejintenej]

My British passport expires in about 3 months and I can’t decide whether to renew it or not. What are the arguments for and against?

For: IMO, it's always a good idea to have as many formal documents as possible which prove citizenship. Particularly for a country which has a track record of taking itself out of international agreements that facilitate easy trade and travel, then employs people with minimal training to work at border control points.
Also, if you are overseas and get into a spot of bother that requires consular-level help, it'll make things easier if/when time is a strictly limited commodity and the UK embassy/consulate is the closest one.

Against: takes time and money, plus paperwork is always a pain.

Can't talk for today 2024 but my knowledge paints a sorry picture. A UK white citizen (not me!) arrested in Ghana when I was there, the UK consulate did nothing - not a visit, nada. Other expats were pretty vocal about their attitude.
Just a relatively few years ago I, using a UK passport, was working in Nigeria attached to a bank customer; Dr Abbott-Galvao, Brazilian ambassador, and son (now an ambassador in his own right) could not do enough to help me even knowing I was a UK citizen. Somehow he was involved when I went to the local USA embassy, was expected, and walked out minutes later with a full US visa.

[sejintenej]

To Sej inte nej sej kanske kanske.

It is Time Please and not Time Out. Although Time Out is how I feel some ( most ) mornings.

Apologies. I was already ancient when I (deliberately) mis-spelt Saj

[Otter]

Just don't pull them out simultaneously at Border Control.

Dual UK-EU citizens (with the exception of dual UK-Irish) will soon have to do this, not at border control but at check-in and possibly at the gate during the final check.

Why? With ETIAS coming to effect in the EU+Schengen, and the ETA coming into effect in the UK, dual UK-EU nationals now de facto must use their UK passports when entering the UK. It is impossible to apply for an ETA if you have a British (or Irish) passport (the system will not let you), so you must use your UK passport if you have one. So when leaving an airport in the EU, you would naturally use your EU passport due to no immigration/stamp requirements, but you would also have to show the check-in staff your UK passport to prove that you do not need an ETA for the UK.

Similarly, dual nationals of an EU/Schengen country and a non-EU/Schengen country cannot apply for an ETIAS (the system won't let them), ergo they must use their EU passport. So dual UK-EU nationals must travel with both passports when travelling between the UK and the EU/Schengen.

But this changes nothing for Irish passport holders, as they uniquely need neither an ETA nor an ETIAS, so dual British-Irish citizens can still travel solely on their Irish passport.

Another advantage of keeping your UK passport is that there is an agreement that Commonwealth countries allow all Commonwealth citizens to use their embassy in an emergency. E.g. a British person in an emergency situation in Burkina Faso, which has no UK embassy, can use the Indian, Canadian or South African embassy there.

[Katharine]

Another advantage of keeping your UK passport is that there is an agreement that Commonwealth countries allow all Commonwealth citizens to use their embassy in an emergency. E.g. a British person in an emergency situation in Burkina Faso, which has no UK embassy, can use the Indian, Canadian or South African embassy there.

Thanks, may I ask why you chose Burkina Faso as an example? I did VSO in the far north of Ghana and we sometimes went to Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, for shopping, particularly beer! The Chief Border Guard was an honorary member of the staff club, and always knew when we had stocked up!