At the tender age of two months, Carol Lee Soares was among the hundreds of Jamaicans who left Jamaica during the early 1960s for the seemingly greener pastures of Great Britain.

In June 1962, she and her mother became legal residents of the United Kingdom, hoping to grab hold of opportunities they thought would otherwise be out of reach in Jamaica.

Today, Soares has a 16-year-old son named Stefan Omar Nicholas Lee, and like her mother, Soares has every hope of seeing him grow up, go to school, and enjoy all the successes that developed countries promise.

But Soares and her son have a big problem. According to her, British authorities have told her that Stefan, although born and raised in England and holding a British birth certificate, is not really British.

Soares says that she was advised that under the British Nationality Law, passed in 1983, children born in the UK to non-British citizens cannot acquire British citizenship unless they can satisfy the requirements of a bureaucratic principle termed ‘patriality’.

Under patriality, a passport holder has to be born and naturalised in the UK, or have a parent or grandparent who was born, adopted, or naturalised in the UK.

The principle of patriality was stipulated under the 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act which distinguished those UK passport holders who had a right of entry and abode in Britain and those who did not.

The Nationality Act declared all who qualified for right of abode, according to the 1968 Immigration Act, to be British citizens. Soares, however, did not qualify for citizenship under the Act, and so remained a citizen of Jamaica. Her son, who she was told failed to satisfy the patriality requirement, adopted her citizenship.

But Soares, who became a British citizen on July 27 last year, says she learned about all these legal measures earlier this year after planning a return trip to Jamaica, with the aim of introducing her son to the country. As she sought to get a British passport for him, she learned that he was still a Jamaican citizen and could not be granted the passport.

“When I went to get a [British] passport for him, they told me he was Jamaican and so he couldn’t get one,” she tells the Sunday Observer in a thick British accent. “When I asked if he could still travel to Jamaica, they said ‘yes’. They said all I needed was his birth certificate and a couple of pictures.”

Soares says that after obtaining the pictures, she and her son travelled to Jamaica on March 20 without incident. Their problems began, however, on April 27 when they tried to return to Britain.

“When we went to the airport [in Jamaica] they told us that he couldn’t go back to Britain on those documents. They said he couldn’t travel on them because they didn’t have a visa stamp on it,” she says.

On May 5, after securing accommodation here for her son, Soares returned to Britain, hoping to fix the problem. However, she says she only encountered more administrative difficulties.

“I went to the Passports Office and the Home Office in Britain, and all they could tell me is that I had to write a letter and send certain documents to them,” says Soares. “But when they got the documents they kept sending them back, saying there was nothing they could do. I needed to have the passport that me and my mum came into the country with years ago.”

Soares maintains, however, that after her passport expired, it was sent to the Jamaican High Commission, along with other documents, as she and her mother sought to attain British citizenship.

“The Jamaican High Commission told me that the passport was here [in Jamaica] and couldn’t be found,” she says.

In desperation, Soares took unpaid leave from her job and returned to Jamaica on August 31 in an effort to solve the problem.

She went to the British High Commission, she says, but was again told that she needed her mother’s passport.

In the meantime, she has become increasingly worried about her son. She says that what family she does have in Jamaica are little more than strangers, because they are really her father’s relatives.

“I’m supposed to have five sisters and one brother here, but I don’t know them.,” she says.

“I can’t just walk up to them and ask them to take him in. Right now, the people that he’s staying with, they’re basically strangers to him. I’m having to send money out here every week for upkeep, whereas if he was in Britain I wouldn’t have to be spending that. He has asthma, and I have to be sending money out to get him medication, while if he was in Britain I would get it free.”

Soares also fears that the situation could damage her son psychologically.

“He’s been living there [Britain] all his life, and now that this has happened it’s like they suddenly don’t want him. I don’t know what kind of effect that could have on him,” she says.

“I need somebody to just answer some questions for me, ’cause it just seems that they’re all going around in circles. And I thought the press would have a better chance at getting the kind of push to get those questions answered.”

When the Sunday Observer contacted the British High Commission, we were told that it was against their policy to comment on individual matters before them. However, Mark Waller, the High Commission’s press and political affairs officer, urged Soares to come to their offices in order to properly address the situation.

Soares, in the meantime, says she intends to lobby hard to get her son home as soon as possible.

“How many mothers are able to stand having their child far away from them for so long? she asked. “I’m willing to fight for my son.”

davisv@jamaicaobserver.com