Australian Citizenship By Descent
Persons born overseas to an Australian citizen parent have been able to acquire Australian citizenship in the following ways:
- British subjects born outside Australia before 26 January 1949 with an Australian father became Australian citizens automatically upon entering Australia with a permanent visa (up to 30 April 1987)
- A person born outside Australia on or after 26 January 1949 may be registered as an Australian citizen by descent provided
- they had an Australian citizen parent at the time of birth; and
- if the Australian parent is also an Australian citizen by descent, that parent had lived legally in Australia for a total of 2 years
- A person born outside Australia or New Guinea before 26 January 1949 may be registered as an Australian citizen provided:
- that person has a parent born or naturalised in Australia or New Guinea; and
- the parent became an Australian citizen on 26 January 1949.
If aged 18 or over, an applicant for Australian citizenship by descent must be of good character.
Australian citizenship by descent is never conferred at birth. While it will be granted upon application if the requirements are met, no child born outside Australia to an Australian parent acquires citizenship until this step is taken.
Registration as an Australian citizen by descent (pdf format)
Read more about this topic: Australian Nationality Law
Famous quotes containing the words australian, citizenship and/or descent:
“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
“I would wish that the women of our country could embrace ... [the responsibilities] of citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“And every stone shall cry,
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)