Good morning. The days after my son was born passed in a blur. I remember little of them, except a cab ride to the register office to collect his birth certificate. We confirmed his name, when and where he was born. He was automatically a British citizen, his passport arriving weeks after we applied.<\/p>\n
The ease of this process is something many of us take for granted. For hundreds of thousands of children born in the UK to parents without settled status, the road to citizenship can be arduous, expensive and uncertain, stretching across years of paperwork and waiting.<\/p>\n
And that was before the changes, dubbed the largest in a generation, that Labour is proposing to the immigration system. Among home secretary Shabana Mahmood\u2019s main proposals is an intention to double, from five to 10 years, the period of lawful residence required of many people before they may permanently settle in the UK.<\/p>\n
Campaigners warn that the impact on children would be severe: many more would be born, and grow up, without British citizenship, locked out of the security others receive at birth.<\/p>\n
To understand what that is like, I spoke to Olu Sowemimo<\/strong>, a youth worker, film-maker, and trustee for the Project for the Registration of Children<\/a> as British Citizens. That\u2019s after the headlines.<\/p>\n In depth: \u2018Could today be the day I am detained and deported?\u2019Groomed by a gang in his youth Olu spent years trying to prove \u2018good character\u2019. Photograph: Jill Mead\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Olu Sowemimo was born in 1991 in St Guy\u2019s Hospital in London. He spent his childhood around Kennington living what he describes as a normal life for a kid in London. He believed he was British, nothing suggested otherwise. He went to primary school, then secondary school. But then, his troubles began.<\/p>\n Sowemimo was groomed into a county lines gang when he was just 13 years old. At 16, he was arrested while in his school uniform, and despite clearly being a vulnerable child, was imprisoned. He described this moment as the start of the journey of when the system failed him.<\/p>\n He was released when he was 20 years old, and upon re-entering society, vowed to change his life. He dreamed of making his family and friends proud. He got involved with youth work to support other children being groomed into criminal activity. He applied for his passport. That was when he came in for a horrible shock: his application for a British passport was rejected.<\/p>\n \u201cI found out that technically I wasn\u2019t British,\u201d Sowemimo tells me. \u201cThis was such a shock to me and to my mother as well. It devastated us. My mother didn\u2019t know I wasn\u2019t a citizen and felt that she had let me down. She was crying a lot. She felt so guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n Sowemimo had never stepped foot on a plane or left the UK. Yet, at 20, he was told that he wasn\u2019t a citizen of the only country he had ever known. The process to figure out why, and the journey to try to rectify it would take nearly 15 years.<\/p>\n Living in limbo<\/strong><\/p>\n Many people are surprised to learn that the UK does not have birthright citizenship. Whether a child is born a British citizen depends on their parents\u2019 status. If either parent is a British citizen or has permanent residency at the time of birth, the child automatically becomes a British citizen. For those who fall outside this definition, things are far more complicated. The charity the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC) has an excellent explainer<\/a> breaking down the complexities of British nationality law.<\/p>\n When Sowemimo was born in the UK, his mother, who had migrated from Nigeria, held a visa but had not yet secured permanent residency. She would eventually obtain it, along with citizenship for herself and Sowemimo\u2019s older brother, who was born in Nigeria and migrated with her. She assumed her youngest son would not face immigration problems, having been born in the UK and never having left the country. She, like many parents in her position, was devastated to learn that this assumption was wrong.<\/p>\n Sowemimo thought he knew who he was. But the inner rod at the core of his identity was suddenly out of shape.<\/p>\n \u201cI slowly started to see myself differently from everybody else. I started to question everything: was I allowed to work?,\u201d he explains. \u201cI started to walk around in a state of fear, worried that at any moment I could be picked up and sent to another country that I don\u2019t know or speak the language of.\u201d<\/p>\n His fear wasn\u2019t unfounded. He heard stories of people born in the UK who were held in immigration removal centres. He became terrified of making a mistake. \u201cEvery day I\u2019m coming into work, I\u2019m doing all these things in the community, and I\u2019m constantly thinking, could today be the day I am detained and deported?\u201d<\/p>\n He sought legal advice immediately, but the lawyers he spoke to seemed as confused as he was.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought I would be able to speak to solicitors that have experience dealing with clients with my circumstances, but everybody just kept on saying they would have to seek legal advice,\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n Hope, when it finally arrived, came in the form of Solange Valdez-Symonds, PRCBC\u2019s supervising solicitor and CEO.<\/p>\n The right to citizenship<\/strong><\/p>\n PRCBC has been campaigning since 2012 to raise awareness of a key provision in nationality law: children born in the UK who have lived here for 10 years and are of \u201cgood character\u201d are entitled to be registered as British citizens.<\/p>\n Many people, like Sowemimo, are unaware that they should have been registered when they turned 10 (or even earlier if their parent has become settled). The registration process costs \u00a31,214. In 2022, after a legal challenge brought by PRCBC, the government exempted children in care from the fee and introduced a waiver for children who can show they cannot afford the fee.<\/p>\n But the controversial \u201cgood character\u201d requirement presents a major obstacle. Hundreds of vulnerable British-born children, some as young as 10, have been denied citizenship<\/a>. As I reported in 2018, refusals are often based on minor offences such as petty theft, or incidents resulting only in a caution or fine. In fact, applicants do not need to have been convicted of, or even charged with, a criminal offence to be denied British citizenship.<\/p>\n