BREXIT SCHMEXIT A passport to nowhere

Posted on 06/30/2016

Guess who received new UK passports in the mail for his three teenage sons the day before the Brexiting Brits managed to turn the world’s economy upside down?

By virtue of my being a native son of Scotland, my boys are all entitled to UK citizenship. Just why it’s the father’s rather than the mother’s citizenship that determines this entitlement has always struck me as an oddity - while there’s no disputing who bore a child, the identity of the father can occasionally be, how shall we say… less definitive.
Machismo or not, for years now I’ve been extolling the value of holding a British passport to my US-born sons. “Not only can you work in the UK – as in Scotland, England, Ireland, and Wales - but you can also seek employment in any EU’s member state: That’s everywhere from Austria to Slovenia, or you can go offshore to exotic places like Malta and Cyprus.” All very exciting stuff - or at least it was!
Not that it means a hill of beans now but I spent more time extolling than doing. Filling out their passport applications became one of several things lodged in my, “Yes, yes, I’ll get to it next week” list. It’s no excuse, but filling out the copious application forms and assembling the prerequisite (‘originals only, no copies please’) birth certificates, marriage certificates and ‘foreign’ passports along with odd-sized photographs as well as lining up “countersignatories” (more on that later), is no small undertaking. I did manage to avoid a new one on the supporting documents list, namely a “Gender recognition certificate.”
Anyway I finally got it done and mailed all three applications off to Her Majesty’s Passport people in Durham. All seemed to be fine until I got a buff envelope from Her Majesty’s men with a letter asking that I submit as second set of photographs for my middle son. No detail was given as to what the problem was with the first ones, so in order to avoid repeating the mistake I had to make a phone call to the UK. “Ah yes sir” came the chirpy response, “There’s a hint of a smile on the picture you sent of your son and I regret to advise that smiling is a no-no on UK passport pictures.” I was dying to ask if that was because passport officers seldom bring a smile to anyone’s face but thought better of it and bit my tongue.
The friend who countersigned the original was travelling in Asia, so I had to find a substitute British passport holder who was qualified to endorse the back of the new sullen-faced picture. For a fun read take a look at the listed occupations considered trustworthy enough to swear that the person in the passport application and the person in the picture are one and the same.
While for some reason a family doctor is inadmissible, a ‘Licensee of a Public House’ is. Also making the cut are, Airline pilots (highly questionable!), Travel Agents – qualified, Trade Union Officers, Journalists, Funeral Directors, Salvation Army Workers and a host of others to the point that it would be easier to say who’s not qualified. , ‘Members of a Professional Body’ also makes the list, which made me wonder if this was code for the world’s oldest profession - or am I being too literal?
So now when they receive their shiny new UK passports I will have the task of explaining to my boys why they’re no longer good for working in all those EU states. Before long they might not be good for Scotland either – unless I have to apply for a Scottish passport and go through the whole thing again: Time will tell.
As for Brexit, my 13-year-old is a soccer fanatic and while watching the Euro ’16 tournament this week he asked me an intriguing question. “Hey dad, does this Brex-whatever thing mean that England won’t be allowed to play in the next Euros?” He then added, “And what about the Champions League and other tournaments, how will that be affected?”
My answer was that I really have no idea. It did strike me however that had the ‘Remain’ group had the smarts to dangle the possibility (threat?) in front of the soccer-crazed fans of Northern England that their beloved club sides as well as the national team might now be denied access to these competitions, then ridiculous as it may seem, the outcome could well have been very different.
We certainly live in fascinating times – unfortunately.