There is one right. If you are British at birth they can't strip your citizenship and kick you out. Everyone else's residence is at the whim of the Home Secretary.
Not true. If you have dual nationality at birth, typically because you have one British parent and are born in the UK, then you are British at birth but the Home Secretary has the power to strip you of British citizenship anyway.
So, paradoxically, a child born in the UK to a British mother can end up with stronger UK citizenship rights if the mother doesn't reveal who the father is.
That's not as bad as if you are a naturalized British citizen. In that case, the Home Secretary has the power to strip you of British citzenship and leave you entirely stateless (you have no citizenship anywhere), which you can imagine is a very difficult status to live with.
From https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...:
"Someone who was born British and has no other nationality cannot be deprived of their citizenship in any circumstances."
"Deprivation now affects people born in the UK, not just naturalised citizens"
"Until 2003, however, deprivation was only possible for naturalised citizens."
"The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 extended citizenship deprivation to British-born dual nationals for the first time."
British born, stripped of citizenship
I’m not commenting on the rightness or not of her case, just pointing out that being born British is not necessarily the guarantee you are describing
This is quite a recent change in the law. Prior to 2014 they could only strip citizenship if you applied and received it without having a right to it (e.g. if you were born abroad to non-British parents). After 2014 naturalised citizens (like Begum) were also liable.
I do think it is a bad law and she is being treated disgracefully. There's still hope the ECHR will sort it.
She is (maybe) entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship which is why the UK government was allowed under UK law to remove her British citizenship because British courts didn't consider her to be stateless.
The only people who can't have British citizenship removed are British citizens with no other citizenship or entitlement to a citizenship. I think in theory that means the British government is legally allowed to remove citizenship from any person from Northern Ireland if they justify it (since they're allowed to claim Irish citizenship under the Good Friday agreement).
Of course, as a soverign, the UK is free to ignore the convention, but being able to use it to deal with the nationals of other countries is more valuable than the theoretical ability to eject (whence to?) undesired birthright-citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta...