[alethea]

When Albert Thompson went for his first radiotherapy session for prostate cancer in November he says he was surprised to be taken aside by a hospital administrator and told that unless he could produce a British passport he would be charged £54,000 for the treatment.

Thompson has lived in London for 44 years, having arrived from Jamaica as a teenager, and although he has worked as a mechanic and paid taxes for more than three decades, the Home Office is disputing his eligibility to remain.

Official suspicion about his immigration status led to him being evicted last summer, and he was homeless for three weeks. His disputed status has also led to free healthcare being denied. Because he has no savings and no way of paying £54,000, he says he is not receiving the cancer treatment he needs.
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The 63-year-old, who asked for his real name not to be printed on legal advice, is another victim of an unfolding scandal around the treatment by the Home Office of a group of people who arrived in the UK as children from Commonwealth countries. This cohort grew up believing themselves to be British, only to discover in a rapidly hardening immigration climate that they need documentary proof of their right to be here, which many do not have.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... mmonwealth

I am pretty sure I know what this is about and it is likely going to be a way where the UK either deports or puts under stress a load of older immigrants.

In the late 80's my Mother was furious. She had had an UK passport all her adult life she said and now she was being told she had to have an Irish one. She was born when Ireland was still a British Colony. What had happened is that she had not been aware that the Nationality Act of I think 1981 where previously people like her coming from the Colonies were allowed to get a UK passport simply on that, now required them to take out British Citizenship. She had not even heard of this or realised she had to do it.

I bet there are lots of people who are going to be caught by this.

Refusing people life saving medical treatment who have been living and working here for 44 years is sick but I guess it is just another Tory try get rid of the old and the non white.

[Ter]

It seems that the UK is the only country that gives out British passports but allocates different categories to the holders.
I had an Asian colleague in Africa who was born in British East Africa and married to a British woman. They had three children. The first two were born in Britain but the youngest one was born overseas. All of them had British passports but that youngest child did not have "the right of abode". This is crazy. If you give people citizenship and a passport, they should all be recognised as citizens and have the same rights.
And for the person in the OP, of course that should include medical treatment on the NHS.

[alethea]

It seems that the UK is the only country that gives out British passports but allocates different categories to the holders.
I had an Asian colleague in Africa who was born in British East Africa and married to a British woman. They had three children. The first two were born in Britain but the youngest one was born overseas. All of them had British passports but that youngest child did not have "the right of abode". This is crazy. If you give people citizenship and a passport, they should all be recognised as citizens and have the same rights.
And for the person in the OP, of course that should include medical treatment on the NHS.

Britain told all her overseas colonies that she was the Mother Country and gave them British Passports. When we first wanted cheap labour it was to these countries we went. They could come here work as long as they wanted and go home if they wanted to. However as I have said this was changed in the 81 Nationality Act and all those already here had to get British Nationality to stay. This actually caused extra problems as Pakistanis who before had tended to come on their own, work for a while and then go home felt they had to make a choice and mainly that choice was to stay. They therefore brought their women and children over when previously they had been left at home. This was one of this issues which caused problems in Luton.

The point I am making is if my Mother a white Irish woman who worked all her adult life in Britain, even though that was not the norm then, was refused a British Passport because she had not realised that she had to acquire British citizenship to do that, then she is not going to be the only person who was been asleep. I am guessing that this man who has been in the UK for 44 years also missed that. That means that we are likely to see a fair number of the old suddenly having their benefits stopped and that includes medical treatment and the people having these stopped will be people who have paid into the system for all their adult life. Presumably if she were still alive my mother would be refused medical help.

and yes, Britain was alone with this system. That was because she told them she was the Mother Country but as the first post made clear this ended in 1981.

[alethea]

It seems that the UK is the only country that gives out British passports but allocates different categories to the holders.
I had an Asian colleague in Africa who was born in British East Africa and married to a British woman. They had three children. The first two were born in Britain but the youngest one was born overseas. All of them had British passports but that youngest child did not have "the right of abode". This is crazy. If you give people citizenship and a passport, they should all be recognised as citizens and have the same rights.
And for the person in the OP, of course that should include medical treatment on the NHS.

Ah that probably is the reason why before that act Pakistani people worked here and left their women and children in Pakistan but after the new law because they claimed citizenship they brought them all over.

[Atlantis]

Britain told all her overseas colonies that she was the Mother Country and gave them British Passports. When we first wanted cheap labour it was to these countries we went. ...

I think it was primarily an attempt to consolidate the Commonwealth as a trading block in the wake of the colonial empire.

The British Nationality Act of 1948 extended British citizenship to all colonies. That was gradually restricted in the decades that followed, as the anti-immigration debate heated up with Inok Powell's Rivers of Blood speech.

It is common in most countries to have different residence statuses for immigrants, but to have different statuses of citizenship seems unique.

Perhaps they should sue the government as long as the UK is under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. I'm quite sure the ECJ won't allow a two-class regime for European citizens.

The British Nationality Act 1948 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that created the status of "Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies" (CUKC) as the national citizenship of the United Kingdom and its colonies.

The Act, which came into effect on 1 January 1949, was passed in consequence of the 1947 Commonwealth conference on nationality and citizenship, which had agreed that each of the Commonwealth member states would legislate for its own citizenship, distinct from the shared status of "Commonwealth citizen" (formerly known as "British subject"). Similar legislation was also passed in most of the other Commonwealth countries.

The Act formed the basis of the United Kingdom's nationality law until the British Nationality Act 1981 came into force in 1983. However, the concept of a common Commonwealth citizenship had already been progressively eroded from 1962 onwards by British legislation targeted against Commonwealth immigrants.[