Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Passports

I had a bit of bad news today. Not terribly bad, but a bit disappointing and unfortunate for Lena. She doesn't qualify as a British citizen. She was born in the UK, but since both G and I are here on limited rather than unlimited, resident permits, she doesn't qualify. If we get unlimited permits, then she could get UK citizenship. That however, will take 5 years for us to get. At which point, we ourselves could get British citizenship. Whether we stay here that long remains to be seen. It's just a bummer because it would have been great for her to have that easy access to the European Union for her future. She might still get it, who knows, but not right now.

So now we have to organise Canadian and Australian citizenship so that she can get a passport to travel. We would have done this anyways, but now we'll have to put it higher up the priority list than before. She'll probably get Canadian citizenship first, as she can apply for citizenship and her passport at the same time. For the Australian, first she has to have the citizenship and then she has to apply in person at the embassy. Okay, she doesn't have to apply in person, but G or I have to on her behalf. Least the Canadian one can be mailed in.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, what a pain! Sorry to hear about that...

Peter Bulkeley said...

I'm disappointed in yourself and Greg! You were considering turning poor little Lena into a pom! Unforgivable :-)

ZeeBride said...

Peter, show some mercy, I'm sure she wouldn't be playing cricket for England. ;-)

Thanks for the sympathy Kathie, it is a bit of a pain. Ah well, we'll manage.