More British teenagers stranded abroad as result of new rules on dual nationals | Home Office

Two more British teenagers have been unable to return to the UK due to the Home Office’s new border rules for British dual citizens.

The cases emerged just hours after reports that a 16-year-old British schoolgirl was prevented from boarding a flight from Denmark to the UK because she was a dual national and did not have a British passport. He hasn’t been able to go to school for two weeks so far.

Anna*, a 19-year-old student from Oxfordshire, is stranded in Madrid after a university trip to the Spanish capital.

He is French and has yet to obtain a British passport, partly to comply with new rules requiring dual British nationals to produce a new or expired passport or airline access certificate before boarding a flight to the UK.

Her grandmother said neither Anna’s British university nor the travel agency that organized the trip informed them of the new rule.

“It’s as if they’ve introduced a new law and haven’t taken into account the time people need to get a passport and change their status before changes to the rules,” Rosemary* said. “That’s not right. It’s crazy that we’re not allowed some leeway.”

“He has with him his British birth certificate, photographs of his parents’ British passports and proof of residence in the UK. As you can imagine, we are extremely concerned.”

Another young woman, an 18-year-old British-Danish citizen, was stranded in Mumbai, where she and a group of friends were transiting after a two-week holiday at the end of February.

Air India refused to board him because he did not have his British passport with him, separating him from his friends returning home. “He couldn’t leave the airport because he didn’t have a stay visa. He was very, very scared,” said his mother, Kristen*.

He had traveled outside the country before the rule change on 25 February and was unaware that he was required to bring his British passport. His family sent him a photo scan of his British passport and also tried to get help from the British embassy in Mumbai but to no avail.

To make matters worse, one of the ground staff in Mumbai advised him to get an emergency visa, but this turned out to be “a scam”. With the help of ground staff, “my daughter got on another Air India flight after sleeping at the airport,” Kristen said.

Another woman in Yorkshire was left heartbroken after her son, who has been living in New Zealand since 2018, canceled a flight due to arrive in England on Friday because he did not have a British passport for his two children.

“We were all so excited thinking they were coming to visit us,” said Susan*. “I got to put my arms around my two grandchildren, seven months old and three years old, and we had made so many little plans to make the visit so special. My calendar is full of silly exclamation points and hearts marking today’s date. I can’t stand looking at it.”

Susan said her family was in “double passport hell” and a “complete lack of communication about this new rule” led to the long-planned trip being cancelled. “Destruction is not enough to describe it,” he said.

Scores of British nationals in Canada and Australia expressed their anger by writing to the Guardian overnight saying they could not return home with new babies unable to travel because they did not have British passports, which could take months to obtain.

A man with a nine-week-old baby was returning May 4 for his brother’s wedding and had begun applying for a Canadian passport for his newborn.

“I read this news about dual citizens and realized we don’t have time to apply for a British passport,” he said. The UK Visa and Immigration office closes every day at 17:00 UK time, which “doesn’t work very well” for those on the other side of the world. He said the Passport Office in Liverpool told him the window to obtain a passport was “very tight”.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs was contacted for opinion. He has consistently refused to comment on individual cases. It has said many times that it made the new rules known to the public by publishing them on the gov.uk website in October 2024.

Last week it made a U-turn, saying EU citizens with settled status in the UK could travel with their second passport. But this does not apply to their children.

The Home Office has also rejected all calls to allow additional time for those who have not read gov.uk and are now learning about the rules in the media to obtain a passport.

*All names have been changed.