Yet more futile red tape?
From The Daily Telegraph, 28th July 2004:
Dual citizenship: a passport to trouble
I should have been on holiday in America this week, with my husband, Johnnie, and youngest daughter, Tilly, 14. We were planning to spend two weeks in Martha's Vineyard and arrived at Heathrow on Saturday for our 3pm flight to Boston, full of the usual excitement. Several hours later, we were back home, parcelled in red tape, and I am still seething about it.
The problem began as we queued to check in. A Securicor official was asking all passengers for their passports and tickets. My husband's and mine were given a cursory look and then stickered. Our daughter's passport was whisked away and shown to another official; we were asked to leave the queue and move over to the Securicor desk.
"What's the problem?" asked Johnnie.
"Your daughter was born in America. She needs an American passport to travel."
"Don't be ridiculous, she's our daughter. We're British. She's lived here for 12 years and we've travelled to America endlessly with her. She went to New York with her mother just six months ago. She doesn't own an American passport. She's a little girl."
"Then she needs documents to prove she is no longer an American."
"But she isn't American."
"We need proof."
"Who needs proof?"
"We are employed by Virgin. It's a regulation."
"But Tilly went to New York six months ago and it was fine."
"Was she travelling Virgin?"
"Thankfully not," I replied. "British Airways."
"Different rules may apply."
Tilly has lived in Britain since she was two. She is legally entitled to dual nationality, but we have never bothered to exercise this right and, once her US passport expired, she has only ever travelled on her British one.
"If I can get someone from the embassy on the phone to explain, would that help?" I asked, sweetly. "I'm sure there's been some simple misunderstanding."
"You can do that," the first gentleman said, in a tone that implied it would make no difference to the outcome.
Eventually, with a little help from a well-connected friend, I got through to a voice of authority from the American Embassy. She explained that we had two
options open to us. Either we could go to the embassy on Monday and get Tilly an American passport, or else she could renounce her American citizenship. A new law, it seems, states that if you are entitled to an American passport or have dual nationality, you must travel on it. But not all airlines enforce it. Or, indeed, inform you when you buy your ticket that the law has changed.
"You could try British Airways," a Virgin rep suggested. "They're a much bigger airline and they seldom enforce this rule. It's just silly red tape," she confided. "If they do get fined, they don't seem to mind."
The woman from the American Embassy rang back. "I just thought you ought to be aware that if your
daughter decides to renounce her American citizenship, it will take slightly longer than just getting a passport, because she will obviously require counselling."
"Counselling? What on earth for?"
"To make absolutely certain this is not a decision she is being coerced into. I'm really sorry for all this inconvenience and I realise it's ruined your holiday plans. I don't see the point in it either, but it's just awful red tape."
The helpful Virgin rep came back. She could get us on to a British Airways flight, much later in the afternoon, but only in first class at an additional cost of £12,000. Eventually, we admitted defeat. Our holiday was over before it had even begun.
On Monday morning, Tilly and I spent six hours at the American Embassy and, fingers crossed, having paid $70, filled in copious forms, sworn under oath and produced a copy of her American birth certificate by next Tuesday, she should be the owner of two passports.
When she next travels to America, she will have to exit and re-enter Britain on dual nationality, or she will be breaking the law. The embassy informed me that "we were lucky" we weren't picked up before and that part of the problem was the fact that this change in the law - which came into effect last October - gets very little publicity.
So now we're off to France instead. The only counselling that will be required is anger management for me and my husband.
Sarah Standing