Home Office Unlawfully Nullifies British Citizenship In Hundreds Of Cases

New figures obtained from the Home Office show that hundreds of British citizens have unlawfully had their citizenship nullified since 2013.  A freedom of information request has revealed that there were 262 decisions to nullify British citizenship between 2007 and 2017, with 176 of these occurring in 2013 alone.

The Home Office can either nullify a person’s citizenship or deprive them of it. Nullification of citizenship has immediate and retrospective effect and can be used in more cases than deprivation. Nullification is far more difficult to challenge and has no right of appeal.

Deprivation cases generally involve national security issues or deception leading to the acquisition of citizenship.  The procedure for the deprivation of citizenship is governed by the British Nationality Act 1981 and is strictly regulated.

Nullification of citizenship is an obscure common law declaration. The Home Office can nullify citizenship if it can be proved that the applicant impersonated another person in order to obtain British citizenship. The person who loses his/her citizenship is considered never to have been British. Therefore any family members, who have obtained their British citizenship through them, will lose their citizenship as well.

In the Supreme Court case of Hysaj [2017] UKSC 82 the Home Office itself conceded that nearly all of the nullification decisions were unlawful. A team of civil servants from the Status Review Unit is now reviewing these historic decisions.

It is believe that most of the historic nullification cases are based on identity fraud, for example, providing an incorrect name, date of birth or other information at the time of the initial citizenship application. It remains unclear as to why the Home Office opted for the nullification procedure rather than the deprivation procedure in these cases.

Posted by: Gherson Immigration, https://is.gd/dS7Pph