I'm a UK citizen through my father but I was born abroad. Per my understanding, I should be able to register my children (also born abroad) as UK citizens by virtue of the fact that I lived in the UK for 4 years as a child (from 1986 to 1990). The difficulty I have is finding good enough evidence to establish that I did in fact live there.
What I have so far is the following:
- A report card from 1989 showing that I was in school at that point.
- A letter from the NHS providing my NHS number and the address they had me registered under in 1988, and indicating that I was registered in 1987 as well (though they don't have the exact address for 1987, it just says KC (Kent) 02/02/1987.
- An official letter from the Home Office to my mother, dated February 1986, granting her indefinite leave to remain in the UK (she's a US citizen and was living in France at the time, where I was born).
Is that good enough evidence?
Other avenues I've been exploring or that I could try using:
- I have my brother's old passport -- though unfortunately not my own -- that is stamped with the dates we entered the UK from France in 1986 and then entered Canada in 1990. I also have several of his school report cards. Not sure how much value that has, since it's not mine, but I can easily prove that we're brothers and I imagine it provides at least circumstantial evidence that I lived in the UK if I can prove that he did.
- My dad owned a business, but unfortunately, I can't find any trace of it in the archives, so I might be misremembering the name. And of course, it's all in his name, not mine, but again, I imagine it might be indirect evidence of my living there at the time.
- We have friends who knew us well at the time that I'm still in touch with who could be happy to vouch for me, though of course, that's not unbiased evidence so I don't know whether that has any value.
- Is there any value to stuff like photos? Obviously, there's no way to prove much of anything definitive with family photos, but I suppose it adds a little weight...
Is there any other type of evidence I can use? The difficulty is that I lived there from the ages of 2 to 6, so obviously, not much was in my name. School records would be the best, but I only went to school for 2 of the 4 years, one of the 2 schools I went to has since closed down, and the other one told me they don't keep records for that long...