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Two more British teenagers have found themselves unable to return to the UK because of new Home Office border rules on British dual nationals.
Their cases emerged just hours after reports a 16-year-old British schoolgirl was blocked from boarding a flight in Denmark home to the UK because she was a dual national and did not have a British passport. She has missed two weeks of school so far.
A 19-year-old student, Anna*, from Oxfordshire is stuck in Madrid after a university-organised trip to the Spanish capital.
She is part French and had not yet obtained a British passport to comply with the new rules, which require British dual nationals to present a passport, new or expired, or certificate of entitlement to airlines before boarding flights to the UK.
Her grandmother said neither Anna’s British university nor the travel agency that organised the trip had notified them of the new rule.
“It’s like they have brought in a new law and not considered the time people needed to get passports and to change their status ahead of upcoming changes in the rules,” said Rosemary*. “It’s just not right. It’s crazy that a little bit of leeway is not allowed.
“She has her British birth certificate with her and photos of both her parents’ British passports and proof of residence in the UK. We are extremely concerned, as you can imagine.”
Another young woman, an 18-year-old British-Danish national, was left 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 her because she did not have her British passport with her, separating her from her friends who returned home. “She couldn’t leave the airport as she had no visa to find accommodation. She was very, very scared,” said her mother, Kristen*.
She had travelled out of the country before the rule change on 25 February and was not aware of the need to bring her British passport. Her parents sent her a photo scan of the British passport and also tried, without success, to get assistance from the British embassy in Mumbai.
To make matters worse one of the ground staff in Mumbai advised her to get an emergency visa, which “turned out to be a scam”. Kristen said that after help from ground staff, “after sleeping in the airport my daughter got on another Air India flight”.
Another woman, in Yorkshire, has been left heartbroken after her son, who has been living in New Zealand since 2018, cancelled a flight due to arrive in the UK on Friday because he did not have British passports for his two children.
“We were all so excited to think they were coming to visit us,” said Susan*. “I should have been putting my arms around my two grandchildren, aged seven months and three years, and we had made so many little plans to make the visit so special. My calendar is full of silly exclamation marks and hearts around today’s date. I can hardly bear to look at it.”
Susan said her family was in “dual passport hell” and there was a “total lack of communication about this new rule” which had led the long-planned trip to be cancelled. “Devastation doesn’t begin to describe it,” she said.
Multiple British citizens in Canada and Australia have written to the Guardian overnight to express their anger that they would not be able to return home with new babies who cannot travel because they do not have British passports, which could take months to acquire.
One man who has a nine-week-old baby is travelling back on 4 May for his brother’s wedding, and had started the application for his newborn’s Canadian passport.
“I’m reading this news about dual nationals and realise we don’t have time to apply for a British passport,” he said. The UK Visas and Immigration office was closed at 5pm UK time every day, which is “not much use” for those on the other side of the world. The Passport Office in Liverpool told him it was “too tight” a timescale to get a passport, he said.
The Home Office was approached for comment. It has consistently declined to comment on individual cases. It has said on multiple occasions that it notified the public of the new rules with postings on its gov.uk website page in October 2024.
Last week, in a U-turn, it said EU citizens with settled status in the UK could travel on their second passport. This does not apply to their children, however.
The Home Office has also refused all calls to introduce a grace period to allow those who did not read gov.uk, and who have now learned of the rules in the media, to get passports.
*All names have been changed.
