Item — HN Reader

Aside from this app issue there's another instance of bloody minded bureacracy that affects dual citizens:

As a dual citizen living outside the UK, to visit Britain I cannot apply for an ETA. Instead I must have a British passport, OR apply for a waiver document for an eye watering £500.

Obviously this makes no sense, because if the ETA is suitable for a non-British citizen it ought to be fine for a British citizen who happens to have a non-British passport, but objections have all received non-answer-answers that strongly suggest the bureaucrats didn't think of it and can't be bothered to implement support for the situation.

I hate paperwork...

3 comments

if you enter a country whose citizenship you have you must always enter with the travel document or proof of citizenship of that country. no exceptions. that is a global convention. using a foreign document is most likely a violation of the law. (there may be exceptions in some countries that don't issue passports abroad).

that waiver document is ridiculous though. what does it cost to get a new passport at a british embassy? as a german i can get a temporary passport within a day at any german embassy for about 30€ or 60€. enough to travel back home.

> if you enter a country whose citizenship you have you must always enter with the travel document or proof of citizenship of that country. no exceptions.

Completely untrue. I have done so perfectly legally.

It's not a law in either the US or UK as far as I know, but both countries always got pissed off at you if they figured it out. I know because I've been lectured by border-officers on both ends before :)

"Pissed off" here meaning that you were likely to get "randomly selected" for secondary screening.

It absolutely has been the convention that you use the local form of identity if you have one. This ETA issue is just them pushing that a bit harder.

> It's not a law in either the US or UK

This changed on Feb 25, 2026 for the UK. :)

UK citizens must now enter on their UK passport (or a citizenship certificate thing + foreign passport), and are not eligible for visa waiver programs (because they're only eligible for people using certain passports, which UK citizens obviously now can't be using).

I was announced in Nov '25, and has cause a mad scramble for lots of people as the passport office has been massively backlogged by the predictable queue of people needing passports suddenly, when they didn't need them before.

It's 100% illegal to present a non-US passport at the US border if you are US citizen.

The law is 8 U.S.C. 1185 - "it shall be unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid United States passport."

In the past, the penalty for violating this has generally just been "a stern talking to," like you said. But no guarantees on that.

Can confirm that UK immigration was annoyed by it, but it was perfectly legal nonetheless.

This changed on 25/2/26. See my comment above.

>document is most likely a violation of the law.

A violation of what law?

> no exceptions. that is a global convention

Bullshit. Each country makes their own rules on this (being a sovereign country) and there is absolutely not a “global convention”

My wife moved to Belgium for me 8 years ago and also has dual citizenship. She assumed it would be fine to travel on Belgium passport + ETA but that's not allowed.

She also had to go through a very expensive process to renew her British passport last minute.

Silly system.

My native-Swedish friends all complain about the bureaucracy here, but it is so much more efficient than the British stuff.

Some of that, though, is a side-effect of the ubiquitous "Bank ID" identity tool - which suffers from the same dependency on Apple/Google that the article complains about. Given the current political climate I think the EU is going to have to figure something out to address this sort of thing.

> Silly system.

Frankly it strikes me as being rather silly to not have a British passport as a British citizen.

It costs money and my European passport is far more useful to me.

The cost of a passport is negligible (~£10 per year on average), and it’s not reasonable to expect the UK to spend a lot of money architecting the system around a very small minority of dual citizens who don’t have passports.

Why should any special architecting be required given that I am an EU citizen with an EU passport. On the contrary, effort was expended to prevent me from obtaining an ETA to no purpose that has ever been justified.

Yes, I personally am not deeply inconvenienced by this, but that doesn't make it ok. Others are on much tighter budgets than me.

then relinquish your citizenship.

If obtaining a passport from a country where you are a citizen is such a hassle for you, you must focus on the only logical solution.

I have seen this complaint a lot but I think it is misplaced because it is frankly common sense to keep an update-to-date passport of the country you are a citizen of... People will have to apply for a passport and be done with it, nothing to see here...

Also, I suppose that the complaint comes only from people who live in countries that have visa-free travel to the UK and/or EU countries and who were just saving a little/money hassle otherwise they would already have an up-to-date British passport.

Yeah, I really don't get this complaint either.

I'm a dual US/UK citizen, and the US has always required citizens to present their US passport to enter the US. The UK is doing the same. It's not a big ask.

It's a big change and not one that's been justified.

Most years I don't visit the UK. My european passport is far more useful to me.

Note that this is an active change to the status quo. Up to and including today I had no need for my UK passport when entering the UK on my Swedish passport. From tomorrow I cannot do that and there's no reasonable explanation given for why this must change.

Edit: And while obviously this is not a big deal for me financially, there are a bunch of pensioners in the 3 million Brits living abroad and for many of them the £100 fee is a significant and unnecessary outlay.

Well exactly what I wrote, then... visa-free travel and saving a little money/hassle by not keeping an up-to-date British passport.

Nothing to complain about, really.

Yes, changes to the long standing status quo affecting 3 million people with no justification given, nothing to complain about. Sheesh.