If your parent or grandparent served the British government in the Crown Service, you might now be entitled to a British passport. That is one of the routes open to South Africans or Zimbabweans to attain British nationality. Mishal Patel, Sable International’s Citizenship and Immigration director, told BizNews that this category doesn’t only include policemen and those who served in the army: it also includes teachers, nurses and postmasters. Patel said proving eligibility could however be another beast as original paperwork is needed for an application. But he said, Sable International has learnt a few tricks to make this process easier and offered a free initial online assessment to make sure that people don’t go on a wild goose chase. He warns those who might want to pursue this route, “Don’t leave it too late before things change again and it becomes more difficult as it usually does every other year.” – Linda van Tilburg
A big SA response to changes in UK nationality law
One or two in every five people that I saw had a claim to British citizenship. But yes, it was more in line with the rule change that happened on the 28th of June this year. Basically, in a nutshell, the UK Government now has a section in their British nationality law that allows us to argue that our client would be a British citizen but for any historical legislative unfairness in the British nationality laws. So, one of the most common ways that I saw that was someone born in South Africa in a certain time period in SA had left the Commonwealth and had a paternal or maternal grandmother born in the UK. Traditionally we would have said to that kind of person, oh, you can only come in and get citizenship based on an ancestry visa because your relevant parent couldn’t claim it through their own mum being the grandmother. Whereas now you can argue that had the mum been British, then that child could have been registered at the consulate, which was something that men could always do as long as he was British at the time the child was born in that foreign country. But here you have an argument that my mum or dad couldn’t be British because they couldn’t claim it from their mum. Had they been, they could have registered me. So yes, we saw quite a few of those.
Most of the British recruits to Southern Africa became policemen
I think the biggest one or most common one, that I’ve seen is British-South African police. Now that was a big one when you compare them to other functions. When people left World War Two and they were young and these lads were quite young people, they probably didn’t finish education and were drafted into the army. They came out of World War II, didn’t really get jobs in England and but they did see the posters everywhere saying, ‘Hey, join the police force in Southern Rhodesia. Great life’ and off these young people went. That also forms part of the definition under Crown Service.
It wasn’t only soldiers and policemen who were recruited: there were nurses, teachers and postmasters
I had at least about two or three families whose relevant paternal grandfather or maternal grandfather were actually teachers. They had been recruited from the UK in the 1960s and 70s and sent over, or they accepted a job to teach in Southern Rhodesia in the government schools in Harare and so on. So, when they taught in these schools, they worked under the educational department. They weren’t in private schools. These were government schools that they were teaching at. They then fell under the definition of Crown Service as civil servants or service performed in a country for which the UK was responsible. Now that’s just one of them. The rarer ones are postmasters, would you believe? So, the UK was flooding Southern Rhodesia during those times with even postmasters, people that worked for the Post and Telegraph Department and that would also work.
The other one, which I’m not sure that works, I’ve got to go and look into, is also a lot of these people would have come over as nurses. Now that was really more female-orientated and perhaps arguably still is to some degree.
The new law would allow us to argue a grandmother being in Crown Service as the relevant parent, So, it can be the mom, it can be the maternal grandfather in service at the time the mom was born. Because you see, for Crown Service to give citizenship through two generations, the generation claiming it must be born post ’83 or after the 1st of January 1983. That’s when the law allowed that applicant to claim Crown Service through the relevant grandparent and that can come down to mum and dad. That’s fine. It was always the maternal grandfather or the paternal grandfather rather than the paternal grandmother to the father’s mother or the mother’s mother, for example, which now can be argued as of the 28th of June 2022. It’s just rare that we – I mean, I still haven’t seen an example of that where grandmother has all the paperwork saying she was in the Crown Service when her children were born and now the grandchildren want to claim it.
Instability in ‘Southern Rhodesia,’ now Zimbabwe, led to the employment of many civil servants
A typical family tree from our recent road show would be the applicant who’s trying to claim citizenship being born in the period after 1982 or 1983 onwards and the relevant parent born just before so in the 1950s and 60s in say Southern Rhodesia. In this particular example, their father having been recruited in the UK for example to the British-South African police, and served in Rhodesia and he performed his service in the 50s and 60s into the 70s. Some of them served while Rhodesia was going through changes because unlike other parts of Africa under British control, Northern Rhodesia, and Malawi; Southern Rhodesia seems to be quite unique, which is why it attracted a lot of those civil servants. I say that because it seems not to have gone quite to plan with the UK government having to step in even after they granted independence to Southern Rhodesia in the 1949 period. South Africa was quite stable, but Rhodesia wasn’t stable after independence, and it was known for many regime changes as well. The UDI, for example. So, the UK stepped in one way they did to keep the country running was sending these civil servants from the UK.
Original paperwork is needed to launch a claim
Sometimes and this has happened to me while I was seeing people, we saw a few hundred people every day. But this is exactly what happened – in theory they qualify. But to prove it, it’s a whole different beast, isn’t it? The passport officials want to see original documentation, They would want to see length of service covering their relevant parents’ date of birth, which is one of the criteria. So, my granddad can’t just be in World War II and left and then my father was born, or my mother was born. That’s not good enough. The length of service must cover the relevant parents’ date of birth. They also want to see recruitment having taken place in the UK for that service. Yes, my grandad on my mum’s side or my grandad on my dad’s side was working for the British police when my dad or mother was born but I now need to also prove that he was sent out from the UK. So, you’re going to need that proof as well. It’s scary when you think of how far back you have to go, but through years of doing this we’ve learnt a few tricks. We’ve found a few places, we have a few contacts and some of this material is online, if you know where to look. It does take a while. We can then guide the client on where they can look for that information. But the simple answer is, yes, you do need the actual evidence, or at least some evidence pointing to that being the case.
Free online service to check eligibility
So, they must go to www.sableinternational.com. They will find the nationality section on the right hand side and there will be a free assessment button. It’s called a free status trace and basically what that is, the system will prompt that person to fill in as much detail as they can of their family trees. Where they were born, where the parents were born, where all four of their grandparents were born. It will then prompt them to answer questions like, do you know if there was Crown Service for your granddad? Did your parents ever live in the UK? And then what it does, is quite clever because there is a framework of probably what is over a million rules that sit behind it. As soon as you fill in all the accurate data, it works out what could potentially be your claim to citizenship. If you’ve answered yes to Crown Service, then that will show up as a potential claimant explanation. So, at the end of that, you’ll get a free status report confirming your chances of eligibility. If it’s going to be unlikely, then you’d rather just not spend your money.
Another door to British nationality has been opened, but it might close again
If you do have any indication of your relevant grandparent performing any Crown Service, if you’re unsure whether it falls under Crown Service, you’re not too certain, please just reach out. At least we can give you some indication. Don’t leave it too late before things change again and it becomes more difficult, as it usually does every other year.
Read more:
- New route to UK residency and citizenship thanks to a British granny – Sable International’s Mishal Patel
- The UK still offers a fantastic hedge for retail property investors – Sable International with new partner API Global
- More and more in SA say, ‘We don’t see a future, sadly’ – Andrew Rissik from Sable International
