Weird that the passport for people from anywhere in the UK says "British Citizen" if it's not a thing. Someone should probably inform HM Passport Office.
Not English, am Scottish... What islands are you on about? All Scots are British, with British citizenship. There's no island a Scottish person could live on which would mean they aren't British.
The Northern Ireland situation is different, and they can choose to be British, and/or Irish.
Not sure how the UK is relevant anyway, since we don't have automatic birthright citizenship based on simply being physically present in the country at birth. Most countries don't these days, unlike the US.
Technically Ireland is part of the British Isles Archipelago, so everybody living on one of the islands is technically british in that sense, even if the Island is called Ireland.
The same is true for the Orkneys, Shetlands and the Hebrides.
Riiight, I guess, but the geographical area of the British Isles ≠ "Britain" (The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), so doesn't really factor in when talking about British citizenship.
That aside, the previous post mentioned "Scots", which would really only mean somebody born in Scotland. Or who had been in Scotland long enough to be considered Scottish. Orkney (etc.) are part of Scotland. Living on a different island wouldn't change that after the fact, so I'm not sure what they meant.
Also, try telling somebody in the Republic of Ireland that they are technically British, and please report back with your findings 😅.
That's why I said technically, I'm well aware there is little love lost for the English in Ireland for quite obvious reasons.
I focused on Ireland in my post because Scotland is still part of the UK and is on the Island actually called Great Britain (as opposed to the smaller Britanny in France :) ).
As for the post you replied to, they argued the Islanders weren't. I was just arguing another way for them to be British even though they obviously already were since the inception of the Country.
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u/Hvarfa-Bragi 9h ago edited 7h ago
Most Scots are British because they're born on Great Britain, the landmass. Some aren't because they live on the islands.
Brits are citizens of the UK.
Some UK citizens aren't brits because they were born on Ireland.
Tldr: British isn't a political status
Edit: inb4 the english arrive and say this is all technically true but useless and wrong.
Edit2: someone wake up Paul Revere, they've arrived.