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Opinion
Renouncing your citizenship is a bold move. Some might even say dramatic. You lose the passport of your home country, your right to vote in that country, plus your nationality. To some, it even means shedding some of the identity you derive from that nationality.
Yet that’s exactly what some Brits in Australia are currently opting to do. And, as one of the 1.1 million UK-born people living in Australia, I can actually understand why.
The primary reason is because a change is coming.
From February 25, all dual Australia and UK or Ireland passport holders must use their British/Irish passports when entering the UK, including Australians who are British/Irish citizens by birth through a UK/Irish-born parent. The change is part of a post-Brexit tightening of UK immigration controls.
If your British/Irish passport isn’t up to date, you must either renew it or surrender it. It’s a change that’ll impact at least 2 million Australians, once all dual nationals and parentage citizenships from both the UK and Ireland are counted.
It’s telling that, before the changes have even come in, some Brits are already choosing to pay the $1000 to renounce their citizenship rather than renew their British passport, costing approximately $190.
That they’d rather pay five times more to renounce their British citizenship than claim what was once considered the golden privilege of owning two passports goes beyond this bureaucratic change.
One told the ABC that British citizenship is “not a lifestyle I’d want to adopt”. Another said he’ll suck up the “prohibitively expensive” cost because it’s “an emotional thing … I feel betrayed by this [thing] I never signed up for”.
While I’ll be retaining my dual citizenship, I get it. The betrayal of the thing I – and just under half the UK – never signed up for is Brexit. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum; a decade of decline, during which the country wilted, costs skyrocketed, Brits became angrier, border control became more chaotic and the divisive far right is on the march to power.
The Brits living here I know are equally angered and embarrassed by it. Brexit stripped our passports of their power. No wonder people are metaphorically burning them. It has been disastrous for us, for national unity, and for the wallets of our struggling families.
Brits living in Australia are, largely, those who prefer to travel to escape the familiar and learn something new; not jet off to the Costa Del Sol expecting everyone to speak English and demanding fish and chips over paella.
I recently returned from South America, where I learnt Spanish; now Brexit means I must leave Spain after just 90 days. In a Remain-voting Britain, I’d have been a digital nomad in Spain for a longer period with free movement (and few of the tax and bureaucratic hassles of the digital nomad visa) and been closer to my mum before returning to the other side of the planet. I’ll never forgive those charlatans who lied to persuade my whole family to vote for it.
I initially thought my dual citizenship would be a boon – I’d do a visa run after 90 days living in Spain on my British passport and reset a new 90 days by coming back in on my Australian one. Not possible. Electronic systems monitor the person, not the passport. It makes my blood boil.
Besides, who can call themselves a proud citizen of Britain in the last 10 years? It became a laughing stock: a country of misery, increasing racism, unaffordable prices and grim weather.
Far-right party Reform UK runs the council in the county where I grew up – Kent – and have made a pig’s ear of it with their amateurish lack of political experience or etiquette. They have a feasible chance of winning the next general election in a country still recovering from the economic disaster of Liz Truss, the humiliatingly shortest-serving PM in its history. Who still insists she was right all along.
When I was in the UK in recent years, protesters tried to set fire to hotels hosting asylum seekers.
Not one person had a single optimistic thing to say, just endless, justified whining.
My Australian citizenship ceremony in 2016 remains the happiest day of my adult life. I often feel more Australian than British these days – the values of mateship, egalitarianism and the good spirits encouraged by a delightful climate have changed me.
We’re not perfect here in Australia, especially considering recent woes, but if you make me pick between the two passports, it’ll be the easiest decision ever.
Land of the fair go wins every time.
Gary Nunn is a regular contributor. Instagram: @garynunn11
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