How the government opened an Irish backdoor to British citizenship

CHARLES COLE

Despite record levels of immigration over the last few years, particularly since the Boriswave, where in the year ending June 2023, net-migration hit 906,000, despite the Prime Minister vowing to end the ‘open-borders experiment’ and despite the immigration white paper promising to increase the time it takes to settle in the UK from the current five years to ten years, the Home Office has just made it easier and cheaper for certain people to acquire British citizenship.

On 4 July 2025, the Home Office posted on X (Twitter) about a new British citizenship pathway for Irish citizens living in the UK, proudly noting that applicants won’t be required to demonstrate ‘knowledge of English language’ or sit the life in the UK test, both of which remain a requirement for all other nationalities.

The announcement on the Government website goes into further detail, under the new pathway, Irish citizens will only have to meet the following in order to acquire British citizenship.

An Irish citizen will be able to register as a British citizen where:

• they can show they have been living in the UK for the previous 5 years
• during the 5 years, they must have not been absent for a total of more than 450 days
• during the final year, they must have not been absent for more than 90 days
• during the 5 years, they must have not been in breach of the immigration laws
• they are of good character

The first question that comes to mind is why would someone born in Ireland struggle to speak English? They should pass any English proficiency tests with ease. English is one of the official languages in Ireland and according to the Oxford English Dictionary, 99% of the Irish born population speak English.

The second question is who is asking for this? Ireland and the UK already share the Common Travel Area (CTA), which allows the citizens of each country to travel, study and work in each other’s respective country, as well as access social welfare and healthcare, with minimal, if any, passport controls or checks.

We even allow Irish citizens living in the UK to vote in UK general elections, and vice versa, Ireland allows British citizens living in Ireland to vote in Dáil elections, their equivalent to our general election.

So why has the Government announced this? It’s a terrible idea, not only does it run counter of the Government’s stated aim of reducing immigration and making settlement harder, but this is quite literally a backdoor into Britain.

Ireland’s rules around settlement are quite similar to the UK, at least pending implementation of the proposals from the immigration white paper.

Ireland allows immigrants to naturalise and acquire citizenship after five years, however there is one key difference, Ireland allows refugees, including those who arrived illegally in Ireland, to obtain Irish citizenship in as little as three years, this is also backdated to the time they arrived in Ireland, not residence after the point at which they were granted refugee status.

Ireland, unlike the UK, also doesn’t charge a ceremony fee for refugees. In the UK, a refugee who wanted citizenship would have to pay the standard application fee, which is currently £1,735, then a ceremony fee of £130 — and if new guidance from the Home Office is actually enforced, those with refugee status who arrived by illegal means will ‘normally be refused’ citizenship, no such restriction currently exists in Ireland.

In Ireland, those with refugee status who want Irish citizenship only have to pay the citizenship application fee of €175, and while Ireland does charge €950 for a ceremony fee, this is waived if they have refugee status or are stateless, which many will be as they can renounce their citizenship or discard any documents upon their arrival.

Ireland saw a record number of asylum applications in 2024, with 18,651 applications for asylum, a 40% increase over the 13,264 asylum applications they had in 2023.

Ireland also issued a record 30,000 citizenship grants in 2024, up from the 20,000 citizenship grants they handed out in 2023 and double the number of grants they issued in 2022.

Under Ireland’s rules, those with refugee status will be able to acquire Irish citizenship in as little as three years, by which point they could come to the UK, be counted as Irish, even though they would have no ancestry or connection to Ireland and apply for British citizenship under this route, skipping the requirements that other nationalities would have to go through and with a 50% discount on their application fees.

Assuming the proposals in the immigration white paper are actually enacted, someone who illegally enters the UK via small boat, which are up 48% in the first half of 2025, would have to wait ten years to claim Indefinite Leave to Remain, then they would, according to Home Office guidance, be denied citizenship due to entering the country illegally.

Yet if an illegal immigrant smuggled themselves into Ireland, potentially via Northern Ireland, applied for refugee status, they could become ‘Irish’ in three years, then come back to the UK and get British citizenship in just five years; quite literally a backdoor to British citizenship.

It’s staggering the Home Office has allowed such a scheme to go ahead, given the clear backdoor route to the UK that this scheme will enable. While countries like the Netherlands are tightening the rules and are set to prevent asylum seekers from obtaining permanent residence, countries like the UK and Ireland continue to have extremely lax rules around residence and citizenship, which will be exploited and abused.

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This article (Free ride state) was created and published by The Critic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Charles Cole

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