Confused 'ten pound poms' and panicked expats: The dual citizens impacted by the UK's new passport rule

Analysis: The airport chaos officially begins today.

As the United Kingdom's controversial Electronic Travel Authorisation Scheme (ETA) scheme kicks in, countless dual Australian-British citizens have been left confused and upset.

The new rules are complicated and messy and I have seen first-hand the mayhem it has triggered after reporting extensively for nine.com.au on the newly-enforced visa waiver.

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Do you have a story? Contact reporter April Glover at april.glover@nine.com.au

In a nutshell, Australian travellers need to pay $32 for an ETA to visit England, northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, but British citizens are exempt.

Dual citizens have been told they cannot travel on their Australian passport and need to use a valid British passport.

The news that some airlines might actually let dual nationals on board with expired British passports has muddied the water even further.

The last-minute change means some UK-bound dual citizens could be exempt from the rule – but this is at the discretion of the airline.

Hundreds of thousands of dual nationals living in Australia are now furiously trying to make sense of the conflicting messages.

After publishing our first story alerting dual citizens of this change, the emails came flooding in.

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Dozens of people contacted me in a panic, asking if their trip in late February or March would be ruined if they did not rush-order a British passport in time.

Some said they needed to visit elderly parents, were planning a family reunion or had saved for years to bring their children a once-in-a-lifetime holiday back home.

One expat worried their plans to bring a parent's ashes home to the UK would be upended.

Others boldly declared they would renounce their British citizenship altogether to avoid the hassle.

Of course, there is also the question of British citizenship passed down from a parent.

If you or your parents were born in the UK, you might automatically be a British citizen.

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This has become a big problem for many Australians who arrived Down Under as "ten pound poms" under the £10 migration scheme between 1945 and 1972.

Many of them haven't held a British passport for decades but still remain citizens.

Or their children – who may be automatic UK citizens – have never held one.

People with missing birth certificates or changed names face jumping through multiple costly hoops to have a British passport issued.

There were over 1.1 million British expats living in Australia as of 2023 – this rule impacts so many people.

And a major problem facing most is the spiralling cost.

It costs about $189 to renew or replace each passport, plus postage fees from the UK.

A certificate of entitlement costs $1100.

And renouncing your citizenship can cost $968.

The changes are best summed up by one British expat who hasn't held a UK passport since the 1960s.

"It's all a bit unclear."

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