Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

The amendments in this group were designed to highlight the fact that, as the Minister said in winding up on Second Reading, probationary citizenship is a further period of temporary leave. We hope also to get the Government to explain what is added to the process of getting a permanent migrant to the point of applying for citizenship by having two stages of temporary leave, one after the other, called by different names but in practical terms adding nothing but a layer of bureaucracy and complexity to the process. The first amendment would omit the requirement that an applicant for naturalisation have a particular kind of leave at the point when the application is made. The second amendment, which is an alternative, provides that the applicant should have, """limited leave to enter or remain"" at that point. All the other conditions, including length of stay, knowledge of English and active citizenship would remain the same under our proposals. In the Government’s response to the consultation on the Path to Citizenship Green Paper, no statistics were given, but it was pretty clear that most of the respondents had been highly critical of the probationary citizenship stage. Some felt it was unnecessary because the temporary leave stage was already probationary, while others felt that it would lead to more confusion, which I am sure it will. The new stage would discourage integration, and there is no need to lengthen the timescale. There is no argument in the document to demonstrate how changing the name of temporary leave part of the way through the period of waiting to become a citizen would contribute towards integration, to British society or to clarity, which are said to be the three main aims of the legislation. Requiring the migrant to learn English, to have some knowledge of British society and contribute a recorded amount of voluntary work are all conditions which could equally well be imposed without creating an additional stage in which they have to embedded. Equally, lengthening the time before an application for citizenship can be submitted for people who break the law or who do not satisfy the language or active citizenship tests is not dependent on the name of the status occupied by the person to whom these criteria are applied. The Government say that they are prepared to consider changing the title "probationary citizenship", which not only carries with it overtones of the criminal justice system but is also misleading since many who are given that status are citizens of other countries which forbid dual nationality and are therefore on the way to becoming permanent residents rather than citizens. No amount of tinkering with the name should be allowed to obscure the fact that we are dealing with arbitrarily different names for two stages that are the same for the migrant, adding nothing but unnecessary complexity and bureaucracy to the process of becoming either a citizen or a permanent resident. I beg to move.