The British Nationality Act 1981 defines six different types of British citizenship, only one of which confers the right of abode in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Due to its six citizenships, the UK is the only country in the world to have been issued multiple, concurrently valid three-letter country codes by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for use in its passports.
If you have seen a UK passport you might have wondered why it has “British Passport” printed on the top of the cover. This is because that is the only shared text element across the twelve different types of ordinary passports issued by the UK – to see them all via Edisontd.nl, select the UK, then National Passport, then Turks and Caicos Islands.
An ordinary passport is one issued normally to a citizen – meaning not a diplomatic, service, temporary, or any other type of passport or non-citizen travel document.
Those twelve passports (each listing one of the six different types of citizenship on the nationality line) are issued based on differing right of abode. Such right of abode is acquired in a similar way to citizenship (but independently of citizenship), thus in practice functioning like several more types of citizenship.
Right of abode in this context is referred to as “Belonger status” in British law. All this complexity is due to the high degree of autonomy that the UK’s various territories historically had and have to this day.
Origins and Acquisition of British National (Overseas) Citizenship
One of the more unusual of the six types is called British National (Overseas) citizenship, BNO for short. This citizenship was created by The Hong Kong (British Nationality) Order 1986, which came into force 1 July 1987, exactly a decade before the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China.
This gave Hong Kong residents with then-incumbent British Dependent Territories (BDT) citizenship the option of keeping some form of UK citizenship following the handover when BDT citizenship would cease to exist. BNO citizenship could only be acquired by active registration during the defined ten-year period.
It cannot be passed on by descent, thus a child born to parents holding exclusively BNO citizenship in a country that doesn’t offer jus soli would be stateless at birth, unless the country in question had provisions in place to grant citizenship to those who would otherwise be stateless at birth.
According to the UK Home Office, approximately 2.9 million people today are BNO citizens but only about 400,000 of them had valid passports in 2020.
BNO citizens have the right to hold a BNO passport, which is a British passport with BNO listed as nationality. They can also seek consular protection from any UK diplomatic mission.
BNO citizenship alone does not grant right of abode anywhere, making it among only a few such citizenships in the world (the only others being other types of British citizenship).
BNO Visa for the UK – Eligibility and Features
Since 2021, the UK has been issuing the BNO visa to BNO citizens, their children (including adult children if living in the same household) and spouses (including same-sex spouses).
The visa can be applied for entirely online while in the UK as a visitor. BNO citizens plus their dependents amount to about 5.4 million people, according to the UK Home Office in 2020.
The BNO visa grants the right to live, work, and access benefits in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. After five years of holding the visa, one can apply for permanent residency, what the UK calls Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR).
A year later one can apply for British Citizenship, one of the six types of UK citizenship and the only one that confers right of abode in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As the UK allows multiple citizenship, one can concurrently hold multiple types of UK citizenship, meaning a BNO who naturalizes as a British Citizen would be entitled to hold two British passports, each with a different nationality listed.
BNO Passport as a Travel Document
Despite not conferring the right of abode anywhere, the BNO passport is a very capable travel document. It offers unconditional visa-free entry to 139 countries and autonomous territories and ETA or E-Visa access to 38 additional countries.
It also offers conditional visa-free entry to Taiwan, conditional on the holder’s place of birth being Hong Kong. The unconditional visa-free entry list includes all Schengen Area member countries as well as the UK (no ETA needed), Japan, South Korea and most countries in Latin America.
The BNO passport is eligible for an ETA (electronic travel authorization) to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. This information is based on independent research conducted by my firm, primarily via direct queries to the International Air Transport Association’s Timatic system.
Who Holds BNO Citizenship Today
BNO citizenship carries no obligations. Citizens can hold a BNO passport, receive UK consular protection, and retain the option of acquiring UK residency with few conditions.
Of the approximately 2.9 million BNO citizens, available data indicates that over two million do not hold a valid passport.
Among them are many people now in their 30s and 40s, born and raised outside Hong Kong to one Hongkonger parent and one European or North American parent, who were registered as children without their knowledge.
That so many have not obtained a valid passport suggests a large share may be unaware they hold this citizenship at all.
