UK citizenship application – uncertain about possible Polish citizenship from birth

[sys64738]

Hello,

I am preparing a UK citizenship (naturalisation) application and realised there may be uncertainty about whether I briefly held Polish citizenship at birth. I would like to understand whether this could create any issue for my UK application.

I am currently a German citizen and hold EU settled status in the UK. When I applied for EU pre-settled/settled status, I declared that I had no previous citizenships because I genuinely believed that to be correct at the time. I never answered differently all my life.

However, while preparing my British citizenship application I realised that things might not be that simple.

I was born, Poland in 1978. At that time both of my parents were Polish citizens. My family emigrated to West Germany as late repatriates (Spätaussiedler) when I was only a few months old.

My understanding is that I may have automatically acquired Polish citizenship at birth. In most cases families in that situation got to renounce Polish citizenship, because Germany did not allow dual citizenship at the time. However, I have no documents confirming I gained polish citizenship or whether this renunciation ever happened, and both of my parents have passed away.

I also do not have any German naturalisation document from that time. As far as I understand, such documents were often not issued for late repatriates in that period. In fact, I have almost no documents from that time at all, except for my Polish birth certificate.

I therefore cannot currently say with certainty whether:
• I lost Polish citizenship decades ago, or
• I might technically still have it.

I have contacted authorities in Poland and they advised that I must apply for a formal confirmation of possession or loss of Polish citizenship, which I plan to do as soon as I receive the necessary civil registry documents. However, I understand that this procedure can easily take a year or more.

A few questions:

a) If it turned out that I also held Polish citizenship alongside my German citizenship, would that normally be an issue when applying for UK citizenship?

b) For the UK citizenship application itself, it feels uncomfortable to answer questions about previous citizenships with “I don’t know”. Would it be acceptable to explain the situation and include in a cover letter that I have applied for official confirmation of my Polish citizenship status but that the decision is still pending? I feel very nervous about the current political development and would like to apply rather sooner than later.

To be clear, I am not trying to hide anything. I simply discovered this possibility only recently and currently have no documents confirming either possession or loss of Polish citizenship.

Any thoughts or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.

⸻

[alterhase58]

Hello,

I am preparing a UK citizenship (naturalisation) application and realised there may be uncertainty about whether I briefly held Polish citizenship at birth. I would like to understand whether this could create any issue for my UK application.

I am currently a German citizen and hold EU settled status in the UK. When I applied for EU pre-settled/settled status, I declared that I had no previous citizenships because I genuinely believed that to be correct at the time. I never answered differently all my life.

However, while preparing my British citizenship application I realised that things might not be that simple.

I was born, Poland in 1978. At that time both of my parents were Polish citizens. My family emigrated to West Germany as late repatriates (Spätaussiedler) when I was only a few months old.

My understanding is that I may have automatically acquired Polish citizenship at birth. In most cases families in that situation got to renounce Polish citizenship, because Germany did not allow dual citizenship at the time. However, I have no documents confirming I gained polish citizenship or whether this renunciation ever happened, and both of my parents have passed away.

I also do not have any German naturalisation document from that time. As far as I understand, such documents were often not issued for late repatriates in that period. In fact, I have almost no documents from that time at all, except for my Polish birth certificate.

I therefore cannot currently say with certainty whether:
• I lost Polish citizenship decades ago, or
• I might technically still have it.

I have contacted authorities in Poland and they advised that I must apply for a formal confirmation of possession or loss of Polish citizenship, which I plan to do as soon as I receive the necessary civil registry documents. However, I understand that this procedure can easily take a year or more.

A few questions:

a) If it turned out that I also held Polish citizenship alongside my German citizenship, would that normally be an issue when applying for UK citizenship?
No - the UK doesn't care about other nationalities you may hold.
b) For the UK citizenship application itself, it feels uncomfortable to answer questions about previous citizenships with “I don’t know”. Would it be acceptable to explain the situation and include in a cover letter that I have applied for official confirmation of my Polish citizenship status but that the decision is still pending? I feel very nervous about the current political development and would like to apply rather sooner than later.
I'm vaguely familiar with the term "Spätaussiedler" - I understand Spätaussiedler included ethnic Germans, their children and their children, etc, that's why they were allowed to emigrate to Germany and were treated as German nationals by the German authorities.
To be clear, I am not trying to hide anything. I simply discovered this possibility only recently and currently have no documents confirming either possession or loss of Polish citizenship.
I think you are overthinking this. As far as you are concerned you are a German citizen, and the Polish communist government would have scrubbed you and your parents of their citizen registers. Trying to find out what actually happened is interesting but I wouldn't spend time on it. Either way it wouldn't impact your application, and you are not trying to obtain citizenship by lying/false pretenses. But you are free to add any additional information you wish but again, it wouldn't impact your application.

FWIW, my mother was born in what is now Poland, they fled to Germany before the end of the war, but I mistakenly showed her nationality as Polish, just got confused because her place of birth is now in Poland ... no issue, no queries, ....

Any thoughts or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.

⸻

[sys64738]

I think you are overthinking this. As far as you are concerned you are a German citizen, and the Polish communist government would have scrubbed you and your parents of their citizen registers. Trying to find out what actually happened is interesting but I wouldn't spend time on it. Either way it wouldn't impact your application, and you are not trying to obtain citizenship by lying/false pretenses. But you are free to add any additional information you wish but again, it wouldn't impact your application.

FWIW, my mother was born in what is now Poland, they fled to Germany before the end of the war, but I mistakenly showed her nationality as Polish, just got confused because her place of birth is now in Poland ... no issue, no queries, ....

Thanks for your helpful reply.

Yes, I probably am overthinking it — I would likely have submitted my application already if the non-refundable fee were not so high.

As far as I understand, the Polish government at the time would not automatically have removed me from their citizenship registers. My parents would have had to apply for renunciation explicitly. But as you said, it probably doesn’t matter for the UK citizenship application anyway.

So my plan at the moment is:
• I will wait until I have started the application to confirm my Polish citizenship status.
• I will complete the UK citizenship form the same way I did my pre-settled status application, declaring no previous nationalities.
• I will include a short explanation in the cover letter stating that I cannot confirm whether I ever held Polish citizenship, briefly summarising the situation described in my original post, the steps I have taken to clarify it, and that the official confirmation from Poland may take quite some time.

Thanks
⸻

[alterhase58]

That's a good plan - just be aware that UKVI fees normally go up in April each year though haven't seen any details so far. Also note that the success rate for naturalisation is around 95%, and refusals are generally aound not satisfying the statutory requirements.