Belonger Status

Belonger status is a legal classification normally associated with British overseas territories. It refers to people who have close ties to a specific territory, normally by birth and/or ancestry. The requirements for belonger status, and the rights that it confers, vary from territory to territory.

The rights associated with belonger status normally include the right to vote, to hold elected office, to own real property without the necessity for a licence, to reside in that territory without immigration restrictions, and to freely accept employment without the requirement of a work permit. In general, to be born with belonger status a person must be born in a territory to a parent who holds belonger status. There are usually also some ways to pass belonger status to a child born outside the territory, but these are purposely limited, to minimize the number of belongers who will not live in the territory. In most independent countries, these rights would be associated with citizenship or nationality. However, as the British Overseas Territories are not independent countries, they cannot confer citizenship. Instead, people with close ties to Britain's Overseas Territories, all hold the same nationality: British Overseas Territories Citizen (BOTC). The status of BOTC is defined by the British Nationality Act 1981 and subsequent amendments.

BOTC, however, does not confer any right to live in any British Overseas Territory, including the territory from which it is derived. It is the possession of belonger status that provides this right. Acquisition of belonger status in a British Overseas Territory does not automatically confer BOTC, although most people holding such status are eligible for registration or naturalisation as a BOTC upon meeting the requirements of the 1981 Act. Similarly, it is possible to lose belonger status in a territory while retaining BOTC or British citizenship.

The British Overseas Territories Act 2002 also conferred British Citizenship upon BOTCs (other than those solely connected with the Sovereign Base Areas of Cyprus) which does provide for a right of abode in the United Kingdom. This conferral is in addition to their BOTC and was not reciprocal in nature, in that British Citizens did not receive any rights to reside in the Overseas Territories without permission. The act also changed the reference of British Dependent Territories to British Overseas Territories. This act was enacted 5 years after the United Kingdom relinquished sovereignty over its most populous dependent territory, Hong Kong, to the People's Republic of China.

In Hong Kong, the belonger status was renamed to permanent resident status in 1987. Only permanent residents, regardless of citizenship or nationality, have the right to vote, to contest in elections, to hold public offices, to freely accept employment without work permit requirement, to reside without immigration restrictions, and to the right of abode within the territory. (After 1997, the right to hold principal offices is restricted to those who are concurrently permanent residents and nationals of the Special Administrative Region, who have no right of abode in other countries. And the number of members of the territory's Legislative Council who are having foreign right of abode is capped at 20%.)