# Talk:British Overseas citizen

This information came from the British Home Office website [1]
It would be great to have an expert elaborate on the topic further

Also an estimate of total numbers would be interesting Gil Gamesh (talk) 23:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

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This article probably needs to be tidied up given this recent UK court judgment:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2018/1586.html
Especially para 37 'In my judgment, a British Overseas citizen who is not a national of any other State, and who is not under article 1(2) of the 1954 UN Convention a person to whom the Convention does not apply, is a stateless person for the purpose of paragraph 403(b) of the Immigration Rules. He has nowhere else to go. The fundamental purpose of the Immigration Rules, identified in s.3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971, is to set out who can come and stay here. A BOC who has nowhere else to go is in this context a stateless person. His BOC status is a "formal link of a political and legal character". But that is not the test.'  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruritanian2018 (talk • contribs) 23:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC) 

This review is transcluded from Talk:British Overseas citizen/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Nova Crystallis (talk · contribs) 06:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

I'll take a look. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 06:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

"Nationals of this class are subject to immigration controls when entering the United Kingdom and do not have the automatic right to live or work there." That was implied in the sentence before this, right?
Merged those two sentences to be a bit more concise.
The British Nationality Act 1981 should be mentioned in the prose in the background section.
Added.
How many people still hold this nationality?
I've tried to look for this information, but it seems like the British government doesn't actually keep track of this. The closest I could get was the number of currently valid BOC passports, which is around 12,000. Not really sure how useful this number is, since there's potentially many many more BOCs who possess certificates of registration, are not aware of their BOC status, or simply just don't exercise their passport rights.
I think this is a good number to add. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 02:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
Not much to fix, actually. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 02:44, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

The first two comments were taken care of, but would appreciate your feedback again on the last point. Thanks, Horserice (talk) 07:24, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
Adding one more. "Statelessness was generally resolved for individuals who were solely BOCs in 2002 after they were allowed to register as British citizens." Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 should be mentioned before this sentence. Nova Crystallis (Talk) 02:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
@Nova Crystallis: Okay, addressed those two points. Horserice (talk) 20:06, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Here's an attempt at restating some of what's in the "Acquisition and loss" section to see if I understand it correctly.

BOC status was created in the 1981 law and became effective in 1983 (on 1 January?)
Only CUKCs could become BOCs; if you became a BOC in 1983 it's because you were a CUKC before 1983, though not all CUKCs became BOCs and there are (limited) ways to have acquired BOC status since then.
A CUKC might have had connections to more than one country/colony/territory (colony for shorthand in what follows) etc.  A connection might mean that they were born there, or had one or more parents born there, or were resident there for some period. A CUKC could therefore have connections to more than one colony.
Between 1948 and 1983 some CUKCs stopped being CUKCs.  This could happen if all four of the following conditions were true:
They had a connection to a colony that became independent
The connection was sufficient for them to become a citizen of that colony
They had no connection to any other colony sufficient for them to remain CUKCs on that basis
They took no action to remain CUKCs (as was possible for British subjects in Burma, for example).
The above conditions define why someone might not be a CUKC in 1983 and hence why you might not become a BOC.  But is this information relevant to this article?  If we have an article on CUKCs, then surely the above information belongs in a section of that article on "Loss of CUKC status"?  That section would also include the final transition to BOC status, but why does this article need to mention the possibility that someone was a CUKC in 1962 and lost that status with the independence of the country they were born in, twenty years before BOC status was created?  Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 22:09, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: Sorry this took a while. Yes, I think this information is crucial to this article since the bulk of all BOCs would have gotten that status in 1983. It's context that shows the type of people who became BOCs. If we removed this context and all that was listed in the article was the bare requirement of being a CUKC without UK right of abode in 1983, I think readers would be left asking "what kind of people were they?" Horserice (talk) 01:38, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree that some characterization of the remaining CUKCs is necessary, since by 1983 only a few of the original class of CUKCs qualified to be BOCs.  I think an English description that makes less of an attempt to be rigorous would be more appropriate, though.  The problem with the bullet list as it stands is that it's not complete enough to be able to answer every question about the transition from CUKC to another status before BOC (e.g. you'd have to know the details of each country's rule for acquiring citizenship at independence), but it does contain a lot of information that isn't of interest to someone reading about BOC status. How about something like:
Almost all British Overseas Citizens acquired the status in 1983, when CUKCs without right of abode in the United Kingdom were reclassified as BOCs.  From 1948 onwards, CUKC was the main form of citizenship for residents of the Commonwealth who did not qualify as citizens of their country of residence.  Most CUKCs living outside the UK lost that status over the next 35 years as many countries in the Commonwealth acquired independence, though those excluded by each new country's citizenship rules remained CUKCs, and there were other ways that CUKC status might have been retained [with a suitable link to explain "CUKC status might have been retained" that covers what's currently in the bullet list but with more details].
The current lead in sentence to the bullet list says "there are a variety of circumstances in which an individual could have acquired BOC status", but that's not all it lists: it partly lists ways in which a person might not have lost CUKC status, which is obviously related but not the same thing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 10:03, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@Mike Christie: The FAC didn't gain traction, it's too bad about that. In terms of this suggestion though, I gave this some thought and I'm fine with moving the list out of the article. How's this?:
Becoming a British Overseas citizen is generally not possible. The status cannot be acquired by naturalisation and can only be transferred by descent if an individual born to a BOC parent would otherwise be stateless. It is expected that BOCs will obtain citizenship in the country they reside in and that the number of active status holders will eventually dwindle until there are none. Almost all British Overseas citizens acquired the status in 1983, when CUKCs without right of abode in the United Kingdom were reclassified as BOCs. From 1949 onwards, residents of independent Commonwealth countries who did not qualify as citizens of those nations remained CUKCs. Most CUKCs living outside of the UK lost that status over the next 35 years as more British colonies gradually gained their independence, but differing citizenship laws in each new country created situations in which CUKCs resident in those places did not become citizens [link out here]. No new BOCs were created by reclassification after 1983 except in 1997; British Dependent Territories citizens who were connected with Hong Kong and would have been stateless after the transfer of sovereignty to China on 1 July 1997 acquired BOC status on that date. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Horserice (talk • contribs) 01:09, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
At a first read through this looks good.  I am fairly busy this week but will try to find time to read through again and will comment again.  Yes, sorry about the FAC, but I think it would help at the next FAC if I were ready to support before we even get there, so I'll try to keep going as if this were a FAC review.  More later, perhaps this weekend. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 02:22, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
Sounds great, that would be awesome. Appreciate you having gone through all this info up until now. Thanks, Horserice (talk) 05:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)