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Comment by Lio | Hacker News Reader

Without considering the result of the referendum, do you know of any other country that would allow visiting citizens from another country to vote on something so serious?

Just for point of discussion since since you only mention living in the UK for over 5 years but if someone had resident for 6 years or over then they could apply to become a UK citizen. For most nationalities (but not US I seem to remember) you could become a joint citizen so wouldn't really have to give anything up in the process.

If becoming a UK citizen is not something someone aspires to then surely a point could be made that that person is not invested in the future of the UK.

If you've only been here for 5 years and want(ed) to become a citizen in the future then you have my sympathies.

For disclosure, I'm British, pro-immigration and voted to remain in the EU; I feel sad today.

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> Without considering the result of the referendum, do you know of any other country that would allow visiting citizens from another country to vote on something so serious?

Yes, UK European Union Referendum, 2016. Resident Irish and Commonwealth citizens were allowed to vote.

Scotland Independence Referendum 2014. Resident EU citizens also were allowed to vote.

I applied for citizenship already once but since I couldn’t prove I was in the country the entire time during my first year since my employment was a bit random at the time I got rejected.

My only option is to wait another year so in can prove it even though if they really wanted they could probably check their own records to see my immigration activity.

It's quite difficult to get citizenship I know someone who got a 10 page letter citing a lot of random legal clauses for why she got rejected.

Hell it looked almost like they were trying too hard and felt borderline racist to me but I could be imagining things.

That's interesting. I am in a similar situation as you. But I have been living in the UK a lot longer (since 2005, so 11 years). I'm 20 years old, so I have now been living in the UK for a much longer proportion of my life than in any other country. It's annoying that I don't get to vote in something as important as this.

I'm sure there are plenty of British citizens who are expats living all over Europe, and despite the possibility that they have been living outside the UK for a large proportion of their life they are still eligible to vote. Perhaps I am wrong and there is some rule against this, so please do correct me if that is the case. But if it's not, then how is this fair? Why do they get a say in the decisions a country is making without being a resident of that country?

I will most certainly be attempting to apply for citizenship. Unfortunately the prospect of being rejected, for something which will quite likely be very random and illogical (likely designed to catch as many people out as possible), makes me worried. From the (admittedly quick) research that I have performed to date, it seems that just the act of applying requires a significant sum of money (around a £1000?). If my application gets rejected, then will that money essentially be gone?

On top of all that, I am still a student, it's not easy to part with £1000 under these circumstances.

For what it's worth in the case of these 2 British expats living outside the UK for long periods they lost a legal challenge against their ineligibility.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/british-expa...

Good luck with your citizenship application and don't be put off, if you've been here since 2005 I'm sure it will be OK.

But why on earth would you have bothered applying for citizenship since being an EU citizen already gives you the same rights. I think if people had actually thought ahead of time that brexit would win you would have seen a huge uptake in citizenship applications.

I would guess that would come down to how you view the EU.

If you view it as a single nation state or as group of cooperating partner nations.

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