Hi All

I recently had a conversation with a friend about registering the birth of children born in Switzerland with the British Consul. She believes that if for example my children, born in Switzerland, married a non British citizen, continued living abroad then their children would not be British Citizens if my children had not been registered??

very confusing but basically what are the advantages of registering the birth with the consul - they have British passports - by virtue of the fact that both parents are British but i don't want to close any doors for them considering Switzerland is non EU.

hope someone can help - Bern just sent me a letter saying the advantage was that you can have a British birth certificate then.

caz in horgen with two kidlies

Your child won't be able to register his/her children as British even if he has a British passport. My son now has dual nationality (British and Swiss). If he stays in Switzerland (or at least out of the UK) and marries a non-British wife, his kids won't have the right to British citizenship. British citizenship doesn't extend further than one generation.

My husband is second generation British and the only reason we could get British citizenship for our son is because I am a first generation Brit.

You will see from the kind of questions they ask on the child's passport form that it can't go any further than first generation.

Hope that helps.

British citizen "A" has child "B", born in Switzerland to Swiss mother. "B" never lives in England but is a British Citizen (by descent) by virtue of parent "A". "B" has child "C". "C" can still inherit British Citizenship, *if* prior to C's 18th birthday, "B" resides in the UK for 3 years. At that point "B" is no longer a citizen "By Descent" and therefore "C" can inherit the citizenship. Even if "C" does not reside in the UK, s/he is at that point a "British Citizen (by descent)." If "C" resided in the UK for the three years as well, with "B", then s/he is then just plain British, and his/her kids would be as well (albeit, "by descent" if they were born/raised outside of the UK).

So Sandgrounder, there were two ways your son could have ended up British.

Caz - I would ask the consulate or embassy if the births need to be registered. Since the kids already have passports, there may be no need. I know when we had questions the British embassy in the US was very helpful in clarifying things (hence my understanding of "A", "B" and "C" above ). And Caz, your grandkids (childrens' children) *can* be British, if at any time before their kids are 18, your kids are resident in the UK for 3 years (as the law currently stands).

Thankyou. That sounds fairer. I will ring them again and try and clarify the position. They are only babies but I don't think they will thank me if I don't check it out for them.

Your scenario with A,B and C could well be my son's if we stay here forever so it would seem his grandchildren would be British Citizens too.

Thanks again to both of you for replying to my post

cazx

Even though I have never lived in Austria, my mother registered me when I was 12 or so, meaning I could get a passport. It was seriously the coolest thing she could have done as it gives me so much freedom. You should really look into it

Hi Caz - glad to be of some help. We didn't last three years in the UK, so "B" never converted his status, so our little "C" will have to be content with US and Swiss citizenships. I agree with Natasha - the more you can do now to give them options when they are older, the better.

My neighbour in the US never registered her kids' births because she had naturalised as a US citizen, even let her own British passport expire. Anyway, her girls started talking about wanting to go to England after high school graduation and the friend was panicked that they wouldn't be British because she didn't register them when they were born. The Embassy just told her to do the passport application with all the appropriate documents and they were fine - they were still British even though she hadn't done all the registering and paperwork when they were little.

I was born in Kenya, British parents and grew up in Australia. My parents registered my with the Consul (or British High Commission) as it was then. When I applied for my British passport, I was never asked about this registration. But rules do change, and for the sake of a bit of extra paperwork I can't see it doing any harm. My Dual Australian/British citizenship combined with the formation of the EU is one of the luckiest set of circumstances in my life.

I am about to try and register my daughtter because...
Her mother was born in Hong Kong to British Partents (other ex-pats) The birth was not registered with the consul. Now we are here and the Swiss require a birth certificate from teh parents less than 6 months old. Because her birth was not registered with the British consulate we had to go through Hong Kong to get this doc. My certificate was ordered on line and arrived a week later. Hers arrived after 3 months and arranging for somebody in Hong kong to go down to the office with cash - you could order on line but had to turn up in person to collect - you have to pay in Hong Kong dollars and so on.

If they had registered her birth we could have ordered both certificates on line from the UK