The Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the Upper Tribunal in Belfast held Monday that a Northern Ireland-born person is British until renunciation of British citizenship.

This case arose when a woman born in Northern Ireland applied for a resident card for her US-born husband. The Home Office rejected the request, finding that the woman was a British citizen.

The husband had argued that according to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, people from Northern Ireland could identify as British, Irish or both. The court rejected the argument, holding that, even assuming the legal significance of the Belfast Agreement, it is not binding under UK domestic law. The court reasoned that to make citizenship by birth in the UK dependent on consent raises difficult issues, such as an infant not being able to give consent. Nationality based on the undisclosed state of mind is unstable and uncertain.

The couple is disappointed with the ruling against the express provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, “all of us in Northern Ireland should be free to express our identity—whether that be Irish or British or both—through citizenship.”