Expert: Bill Cissna - 8/5/2006

Question
I am a U.S. citizen. I was just wondering if it is really hard to move to England. I heard you have to marry a briton in order to become a British citizen. Is this true? I also heard it was hard to even own a car there if you are not a citizen there. Is this true as well? Plezse get back to me. Thank you!

Answer
Hi. I'm sorry to say that I'm a US citizen too, so may not be able to help you too much with this. I write about travel, so I know a fair amount of visiting parts of Britain, but not too much about their legal structure. I do know that it is a challenge to work as a US citizen in the UK, since unemployment is fairly high for British citizens -- so they don't make it too easy for outsiders to get approval to work. Moving a pet over there is challenging, too, due to lengthy quarantining.

According to an article I found online, only 30% of the people who became British citizens last year did so because they had married a Briton. The other 70% went through an application process, and not all of them were residents at the time of application. They do now, however, much as in the US, have to pass a test with a grade of 75% or better, and I suppose there are other requirements -- most recently, apparently, that one must speak an acceptable level of the English language.

I fear I cannot answer the question about whether or not you can own a car if you are not a citizen. You can certainly rent one for a period of time without being a citizen, as many a tourist does. But I don't think becoming a citizen overall is as difficult as you think it is. Try a Google search for "British citizen" and see what you might find!

Bill