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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Born and raised in England, but not British</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline>Carol Soares, forced to leave her son in Jamaica, is desperate to take him back home</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>BY VAUGHN DAVIS Sunday Observer staff reporter
Sunday, September 10, 2006
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<P class=StoryText align=justify>At the tender age of two months, Carol Lee Soares was among the hundreds of Jamaicans who left Jamaica during the early 1960s for the seemingly greener pastures of Great Britain.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In June 1962, she and her mother became legal residents of the United Kingdom, hoping to grab hold of opportunities they thought would otherwise be out of reach in Jamaica.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=140 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>SOARES. I need somebody to just answer some questions for me </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Today, Soares has a 16-year-old son named Stefan Omar Nicholas Lee, and like her mother, Soares has every hope of seeing him grow up, go to school, and enjoy all the successes that developed countries promise.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But Soares and her son have a big problem. According to her, British authorities have told her that Stefan, although born and raised in England and holding a British birth certificate, is not really British.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Soares says that she was advised that under the British Nationality Law, passed in 1983, children born in the UK to non-British citizens cannot acquire British citizenship unless they can satisfy the requirements of a bureaucratic principle termed 'patriality'.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Under patriality, a passport holder has to be born and naturalised in the UK, or have a parent or grandparent who was born, adopted, or naturalised in the UK.
The principle of patriality was stipulated under the 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act which distinguished those UK passport holders who had a right of entry and abode in Britain and those who did not.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The Nationality Act declared all who qualified for right of abode, according to the 1968 Immigration Act, to be British citizens. Soares, however, did not qualify for citizenship under the Act, and so remained a citizen of Jamaica. Her son, who she was told failed to satisfy the patriality requirement, adopted her citizenship.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But Soares, who became a British citizen on July 27 last year, says she learned about all these legal measures earlier this year after planning a return trip to Jamaica, with the aim of introducing her son to the country. As she sought to get a British passport for him, she learned that he was still a Jamaican citizen and could not be granted the passport.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"When I went to get a [British] passport for him, they told me he was Jamaican and so he couldn't get one," she tells the Sunday Observer in a thick British accent. "When I asked if he could still travel to Jamaica, they said 'yes'. They said all I needed was his birth certificate and a couple of pictures."<P class=StoryText align=justify>Soares says that after obtaining the pictures, she and her son travelled to Jamaica on March 20 without incident. Their problems began, however, on April 27 when they tried to return to Britain.
"When we went to the airport [in Jamaica] they told us that he couldn't go back to Britain on those documents. They said he couldn't travel on them because they didn't have a visa stamp on it," she says.<P class=StoryText align=justify>On May 5, after securing accommodation here for her son, Soares returned to Britain, hoping to fix the prob
<SPAN class=Subheadline>Carol Soares, forced to leave her son in Jamaica, is desperate to take him back home</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>BY VAUGHN DAVIS Sunday Observer staff reporter
Sunday, September 10, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P class=StoryText align=justify>At the tender age of two months, Carol Lee Soares was among the hundreds of Jamaicans who left Jamaica during the early 1960s for the seemingly greener pastures of Great Britain.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In June 1962, she and her mother became legal residents of the United Kingdom, hoping to grab hold of opportunities they thought would otherwise be out of reach in Jamaica.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=140 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>SOARES. I need somebody to just answer some questions for me </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Today, Soares has a 16-year-old son named Stefan Omar Nicholas Lee, and like her mother, Soares has every hope of seeing him grow up, go to school, and enjoy all the successes that developed countries promise.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But Soares and her son have a big problem. According to her, British authorities have told her that Stefan, although born and raised in England and holding a British birth certificate, is not really British.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Soares says that she was advised that under the British Nationality Law, passed in 1983, children born in the UK to non-British citizens cannot acquire British citizenship unless they can satisfy the requirements of a bureaucratic principle termed 'patriality'.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Under patriality, a passport holder has to be born and naturalised in the UK, or have a parent or grandparent who was born, adopted, or naturalised in the UK. The principle of patriality was stipulated under the 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act which distinguished those UK passport holders who had a right of entry and abode in Britain and those who did not.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The Nationality Act declared all who qualified for right of abode, according to the 1968 Immigration Act, to be British citizens. Soares, however, did not qualify for citizenship under the Act, and so remained a citizen of Jamaica. Her son, who she was told failed to satisfy the patriality requirement, adopted her citizenship.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But Soares, who became a British citizen on July 27 last year, says she learned about all these legal measures earlier this year after planning a return trip to Jamaica, with the aim of introducing her son to the country. As she sought to get a British passport for him, she learned that he was still a Jamaican citizen and could not be granted the passport.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"When I went to get a [British] passport for him, they told me he was Jamaican and so he couldn't get one," she tells the Sunday Observer in a thick British accent. "When I asked if he could still travel to Jamaica, they said 'yes'. They said all I needed was his birth certificate and a couple of pictures."<P class=StoryText align=justify>Soares says that after obtaining the pictures, she and her son travelled to Jamaica on March 20 without incident. Their problems began, however, on April 27 when they tried to return to Britain.
"When we went to the airport [in Jamaica] they told us that he couldn't go back to Britain on those documents. They said he couldn't travel on them because they didn't have a visa stamp on it," she says.<P class=StoryText align=justify>On May 5, after securing accommodation here for her son, Soares returned to Britain, hoping to fix the prob
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