Caroline Sawyer, Helena Wray are ten years old, children born in the UK before July 2006 whose mother is foreign and whose unmarried father is British (after that date citizenship is automatic),33 and children born stateless in the UK. Registration may also be a route to citizenship for a child born outside the UK to a British citizen by descent, who normally cannot pass citizenship outside the UK for a further generation. While these rights appear quite extensive on paper, they can be difficult to exercise. The cost of an application for registration (currently £669) can be difficult or impossible to raise and those caring for non-British children may not realise the importance of ensuring registration occurs while the child is still a minor. This includes social services who may have parental responsibility for the child. The good character requirement has been used to refuse registration to those with very minor criminal records such as a caution; it should be remembered that the individuals concerned are amongst the most vulnerable in our society yet even peripheral involvement in crime as a young person can have devastating consequences for their future. The subsequent exclusion from opportunities for higher study, work and a settled life causes huge emotional distress to the youngsters involved (Ealing Law Centre 2014). A child can also become British by adoption if at least one adoptive parent is a British citizen at the date of adoption, and the adoption order is made by a relevant court,34 or after May 2003 if the order is made under the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption and the adopters are habitually resident in the UK at the date of adoption. If the adoption is not within these categories (for example, where the parents are resident overseas), an application for registration can still be made before the child is 18, and, if the child would have been British if it were the adopters’ biological child, that is likely to succeed. An adopted person does not cease to be British for reason of the annulment of an adoption order, and nor does a British person adopted abroad cease to be British for that reason, even if it leads to their gaining another nationality. For many years there was a route to settlement (and in due course naturalisation) after ten years residence for regular migrants and fourteen years for irregular migrants, subject to conditions. The period before settlement has now been extended to thirty years for irregular migrants.35 Unlawful residence includes any time before removal directions are made, so this is a possible route for someone who disappeared into the social fabric when the approach to physical immigration was laissez-faire, but who is now discovered to be present without formal status and therefore in difficulties as to paperwork although the extended qualification period means that fewer people will now qualify. By definition it is not known how many such people live in the UK,36 but many are long-established residents with houses, jobs and families. 33 SI 1498/2006, bringing into force sect. 9 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. 34 One in the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man or Falkland Islands after 1982, or after 21st May 2002 in another British Overseas Territory. 35 Paras 276 ADE-DE HC395. 36 In May 2006 Dave Roberts, the Home Office Director in the Enforcement and Removals Directorate within the then Immigration and Nationality Department of the Home Office, was widely reported as telling the House of Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs that he had ‘not the faintest idea’ how many people were in the UK ‘illegally’ (a term deprecated by lawyers and others in the context of immigration) (Response to Q 815, Minutes of Evidence, Tuesday 16 May 2006; Fifth Report printed 13 July 2006). The figure was however generally estimated, including by Mr. Roberts, at about 400500,000, or up to 1% of the population, with adjustments for those from the new accession states. This approximate figure seems to have been confirmed by independent researchers (Gordon et al 2009). 14 RSCAS/EUDO-CIT-CR 2014/1 - © 2014 Authors