A Scot trapped in exile by a hideous citizenship injustice.

The following page citsee.eu/citsee-story/scottish-citizenship-now-time-start-discussing-it is a link to said professor Jo Shaw's academic questions and thoughts on citizenship, as mentioned last post. But what matters far more than that inconclusive article, is to be found in the comments posted below it.

A commenter named "WithoutHeritage" has posted -

THAT DESPITE BEING FROM GLASGOW THEY ARE EXCLUDED FROM BRITISH CITIZENSHIP AND HENCE FROM LIVING IN SCOTLAND, BY REASON OF A CHANGE TO CITIZENSHIP RULES THE YEAR BEFORE THEY WERE BORN.

"I can not explain to you how saddening this is. I have struggled with this issue all my life. I loved the land deeply and felt it is where I came to be." "I tried every legal way possible to claim citizenship. I tried using my parents old passports and entry dates( they are not citizens). "

This is an ethnic atrocity. IT IS HORRIBLE.

WHAT ARE BOTH SIDES OFFERING TO DO ABOUT IT? This person, stuck living in the US, supports independence in expectation that it's the Yes side who will take any interest in this. The question is there for both sides.

leaving the gatekeeper.

An "Edinburgh Research Council", first time I've heard of them, and a professor Jo Shaw, have produced some research on the issues around citizenship for a new Scottish state. They want to make a ripple by suggesting it would effectively be the UK instead of Scotland that got to decide who would be a Scottish citizen.

So isn't that an obvious danger from the policy of remaining in the British Isles Common Travel Area? A position the Yes side has too recklessly bound to because Alex fears the unpopularity of having a border control?

But the wider position with the rest of the world makes this counterintuitive. It's right not to want a border control, a barrier between people, a part of the nastiness of global apartheid. Certainly we should say we won't put a border control on by our choice. But how do we minimise border controls and maximise our access links with our diaspora, unless our actions are independentof being dictated by the UK? and by the chilling mounting racism of 2 of its leading parties, and real threat of it leaving the EU? In order not to have border controls dictated to us by them, and barriers put on our diaspora - and by it, exactly as the prof says, treated as not independent! - we need to be willing to pursue a separate line from the UK's even when we know it will result in them slapping a border control onto us.

If we can't get a common travel area with anyone because our own needs, with our own diaspora to retrieve from the oppression of exile, are more open door and liberal than any other country will agree to, then that is what we should do. Better to be an ingathered and enriched pro-migrant people than to be casually able to pop next door. But if we can get compatibility with this openness from the European travel area Schengen, then we will obviously be better off in Schengen than in the British Isles Common Travel Area. Even if England and Ireland slapped border controls onto us, that's 2 countries doing that, in exchange for the gain of having no barriers with 26 countries.