Although I might have used more words, I believe you to be correct crabbyob. There is also the matter of 'leave to remain' either indefinite, or limited that will allow the holder to travel and return provided it has not expired. That is what is now being given out to those of the Windrush generation who failed to apply for a British passport in the 50-odd years of grace afforded to them. Their offspring - if born in the UK - will have a British birth certificate and are automatically British citizens whether they have a passport or not.
Surely, the point is how do you discriminate between legal and illegal immigrants? Not by race I am sure. You gave the answer above - saving my illustration - because anyone who travels outside the UK needs a passport to get back in (theoretically anyway) and anyone caught demanding entry at the border without the appropriate documents should be turned away unless they claim asylum and then a whole new shoal of rules apply. I guess nobody thought that people who have been here for over half a century would not have realised this simple fact.
But considering a British couple were in the paper a few days ago because they did not realise that at the end of an interest-only mortgage one was required to pay off the capital sum loaned it is clear to me that there is a whole strata of British society "Who don't have the sense they were born with" as my dad used to say whenever someone did something stupid. And I think it is getting worse.
Although, back to the subject, I assume when the rules were drawn up, nobody even gave a thought to the fact that a whole raft of immigrants with the right to stay would not have availed themselves of the opportunity to get a passport, especially since visitors from the Commonwealth long ago lost the right to enter the UK without a visa, especially since many of those who write and implement the legislation have shown themselves not to be the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Anyhow, it seems that the Government have put sufficient actions in train to correct the slip and the only people who still harp on about the nasty Tory's are the grim Labour - Momentum party activists who are still asserting that we have deported hundreds of the Windrush generation, when we don't even truly know of one who wasn't already out of the county of their own volition.
Mike.
Minniemouse. I think she has claimed asylum
"That is what is now being given out to those of the Windrush generation who failed to apply for a British passport in the 50-odd years of grace afforded to them. Their offspring - if born in the UK - will have a British birth certificate and are automatically British citizens whether they have a passport or not."
This is the popular misconception that has caused a lot of the problem.
As per the 1981 British Nationality Act you're only an automatic British citizen if:
a: you were born in the UK.
and
b: one of your parents was born in the UK.
Therefore anyone from the Windrush generation who was born in the UK but both parents were not, does not have an automatic right to British citizenship & was required to apply for citizenship.