Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Children and Maternal Parents Against Immigration & Government Nationality Situation

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. T. Canens (talk) 06:28, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Children and Maternal Parents Against Immigration & Government Nationality Situation[edit]

Children and Maternal Parents Against Immigration & Government Nationality Situation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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The editor who created this article, who appears to be involved in the campaign it documents, did so at campaigns. When I reverted that page back to a redirect to campaign, he re-introduced the material, promising to add references. I've had a look and can't find sources that would establish notability. Cordless Larry (talk) 07:45, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: The text is copied verbatim from [1] and I cannot find any other source that would indicate notability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sabrebd (talk • contribs) 07:55, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

thanks 'cordless larry' for moving the page to one that is suitable for wiki rules. This group is first cited by Lord Eric Avebury in the House of Lords on 8th July 2002. Quoting Lord Avebury from Handard: Perhaps I may give an example. It relates to the leader of a new NGO called CAMPAIGNS—I shall not read out what the acronym stands for, but it is an ingenious usage. He was born in the United States in 1967 to a British mother and a US father. At the time, 477 his mother made inquiries at the British Consulate in the US and was told that he could not obtain UK nationality. That was presumably because the correct information had not been fed across to our Consulate in the US. Additionally, while his mother was in Britain she approached the Home Office directly—so she told her son—in an attempt to get recognition of the right to pass on her UK nationality to her children. She was told that, because she was a woman, she could not pass on her nationality, in spite of the fact that the 1981 Act was then in force. Mr Turberville, the leader of the CAMPAIGNS organisation..." If any additional information for verifiable reference is required, please ask. Hansard is the Offical Government Recorded Records of All debates in the Houses of Parliament UK. It is definitive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mturberville (talk • contribs) 12:09, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've replied to this comment in the first place that I saw it posted, here. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:55, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, failure to show that the campaigns have received significant coverage in reliable sources. Additionally, Mturberville (talk · contribs), the chief editor of the article, has a conflict of interest as evidenced by the quotation he cites above and by edits made at British nationality law‎. —C.Fred (talk) 14:01, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep, other references
Long comment

31 oct 2002
We would be saying that if you were born abroad to a British father and a foreign mother, you always got British citizenship automatically. If it was the other way round, and your mother was British, under the 1981 Act, your parents had the right to register you when you were a minor. We now recognise that an injustice was done to people whose mothers did not realise they had this right, so we will give them a new right to apply as adults. However, if you were born earlier than February 1961, you did not have any right under the 1981 Act and you are not going to have any right now as a result of this legislation.

The arrangements have the curious result that some people now get the right to apply for British citizenship for the first time since they became adults, while their siblings with exactly the same family circumstances are left out in the cold. Mr Michael Turberville—chairman of Campaign, about which the Minister will be aware from the correspondence we sent him—tells me that about one-third of his 150 members will be excluded, including three of his own siblings. Our amendment removes this anomaly and the residual discrimination inherent in the government amendment.

07 feb 2006
Lord Avebury moved Amendment No. 67: After Clause 55, insert the following new clause— "AMENDMENT OF SECTION 4C OF BRITISH NATIONALITY ACT 1981 After section 4C(4) of the British Nationality Act 1981 (c. 61) (acquisition by registration: certain persons born between 1961 and 1983) insert— "(5) An applicant is also entitled to be registered as a British citizen if he or she is the brother or the sister of any person who satisfies the three conditions set out in subsections (2) to (4)."" The noble Lord said: My Lords, the British Nationality Act 1981 equalised the right of a child born overseas to parents, one of whom was British, whether that parent was the mother or the father. In either case, the child, born after 7 February 1961, could be registered as a British citizen by the parents up to the age of 18, but if the mother was British and the father was foreign they could not do so. That position was corrected in the 2002 Act.

We argued that there was still discrimination, in that if the child's right was derived from his father, he could be registered as a British citizen because of his ancestral connection, irrespective of whether it was done on his behalf by his parents when he was a minor, or by himself as an adult. In the 2002 Bill Committee stage the Government accepted the case in principle, tabling their own amendment on Report, which is now Section 4C of the British Nationality Act 1981.

The problem with that solution was the cut-off date, which led to a situation where children born after 7 February 1961 were entitled to British citizenship, while children born before that date had no rights. There are several cases where siblings in the same family are divided in that way into sheep and goats. For instance, Michael Turberville, who has given me permission to cite his case, and who is the chairman of CAMPAIGNS, the NGO that promotes the rights of the 1981 Act orphans—so to speak—now has British citizenship because he was born in 1967, but none of his elder brothers and sisters qualified: David, born in 1945; Freda, born in 1946; Sandra, born in 1949; Maryann, born in 1952, and Philip, born in 1957. Mr Turberville says that about 150 members of his organisation are excluded from British citizenship by the cut-off date.

One mother whose family is affected, Mrs Constance Salgado, who lives in Colombia, had children on either side of the cut-off date and is seeking to formulate a complaint against the UK under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. But the Government, knowing that they would otherwise have been in breach of an international obligation, entered a reservation to CEDAW allowing them to discriminate in nationality law.

The only reason that was given by the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, for turning down the proposal the last time that I raised it was:

"One can only go so far back in seeking to right the wrongs of history and of previous generations".—[Official Report, 31/10/02; col. 298.]

To remove discrimination in our nationality law that affects only a small number of people still alive and nobody from any previous generation is surely something that any listening Minister should accept. This Minister went a little further than the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, when she explained in a discussion that we had that—I am paraphrasing what she said—although it is agreed that very few children born abroad to British mothers and foreign fathers would benefit from the removal of the cut-off date and therefore it would have no implications for immigration policy, there could be repercussions in the drafting rules that apply to all statutes. My first reaction was that we could achieve the same end result without tampering with the time limit through the formulation in the first of the amendments. Then I realised that in many cases all the children in the family could have been born before the cut-off date, and the purpose of the second amendment is to move the date back so that all but the very old would be covered. Mr Turberville tells me that all the members of his CAMPAIGNS group would be included if the cut-off date was moved, as I suggest, back to 1931.

03 July 2007
Lord Higgins asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Why individuals born after 1961 to a British mother and a father who is not a British national are entitled to British citizenship but those born before 1961 are not.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, before 1983, women were unable to pass on their citizenship in the same way as men. On 7 February 1979, a concession was announced that the children of UK-born mothers aged under 18 could apply to be registered as British citizens. In 2003, we introduced a provision to register the adult children of UK-born mothers who were born after 7 February 1961. Those born before that date could not have benefited under the 1979 concession.

18 july 2007
During the debates on the 2002 Act, we persuaded the Government to enact what is now Section 4C of the 1981 Act, allowing those children to register of their own volition when they became adults. The effect of this change was that in families where children were born before and after the cut-off date, the younger children were entitled to British citizenship and the older ones were not. Michael Turberville, the leader of the NGO, Children and Maternal Parents Against Immigration and Government Nationality Situation—CAMPAIGNS—tells me that he has fewer than 300 pre-1961 children on his database, which conforms with the estimate that my noble friend gave of a few hundred people who might be covered by his amendment. My correspondent, Michael Turberville, thinks that there may be a few more who would like British citizenship but are not aware of his efforts over the years. We are not talking about a large number of people.

Mr Turberville points that when the concession was made for post-1961 children, not a great number of them took advantage of it. He also tells me that only one of the pre-1961 children on his database would not benefit from the amendment of my noble friend. As it happens, that person has probably acquired a right to register through length of residence in the United Kingdom. On learning of this amendment, Mr Turberville wrote to me:

“CAMPAIGNS would gladly welcome any movement on the cut-off date that would incorporate any decrease in the current disenfranchisement of British women in their ability to pass on their nationality to their children both in other countries and to non-British fathers. This is the 21st century and discrimination in nationality and identity on the basis of gender should cease. Children of British fathers have not had to endure years and decades of being denied their birthright; it is time to put equality into the national identity of what it means to be British. Equality before the law and Parliament should be paramount in all aspects

11 oct 2007
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Goodhart on finally achieving a solution to a problem that has, as he pointed out, been canvassed on numerous occasions going back to 2002, when we raised it not only in respect of the NIA Act of that year but in detailed discussions with the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, in an attempt to find a way through.

We persuaded the Government then that the child of a foreign father and British mother born overseas after 7 February 1961 should have the right to be registered as a British citizen. However, we were not able then or since—until Monday of this week—to persuade the Government that discrimination against British mothers whose children were born before the

11 Oct 2007 : Column 427

cut-off date was wrong and illogical. Their right to transmit citizenship to their children was not equal to that of fathers who married foreign women, who had always had that right. Ministers kept repeating, as if it was an argument, the view that there had to be a cut-off point, as though that justified a situation in which children in the same family born before or after the cut-off date had different citizenship rights. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said in Committee, we were all struggling to hear from the Minister about the virtue that attaches to 1961. The Minister had no answer.

5 pm My noble friend Lord Goodhart suggested that there was at least some logic to a cut-off date of 1 January 1949, because nearly every woman who married a foreign citizen before that date took the citizenship of the husband. For that reason, as well as the additional passage of time, hardly any persons would benefit from an earlier date. I consulted the chairman of the organisation CAMPAIGNS, Mr Michael Turberville, who tells me that of the 300 people on his books only one was born earlier than 1949, and he had been resident in this country for some 40 years and therefore qualified to apply for citizenship.

We are delighted that the Government have at last come around to our point of view on the matter, and we welcome the assurances they gave in the Minister's letter of 9 October that the provision would be enacted as soon as possible—not by the indirect route, which my noble friend had to choose ingeniously to get within the Long Title, but by conferring full citizenship on these individuals even though it means that they will have to wait a little longer.

please note that if a person would actually read the refence links they would find that this has been an ongoin active issue in parliamet for over a decade and dates back to 1948. But it was not till Campaigns came onto the scene that real 'affected' people had names to add to the debate, yes the numbers of members were grossly under stated in the Parliamentary debates - to prevent the scare tactic setting in. But when 1.6 million polish arrived in 2004/5, the hundreds of thousands who are members of campaigns are a drop in the bucket. Mturberville (talk) 12:00, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep,

see link for actual number of people affected before the watershed date was removed. added keep link to show who has actually been affected by the addition of section 4C that would not have come about if not for campaigns. ps. there are MANY Turberville's in the world! Mturberville (talk) 12:04, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is not how many people have been helped by the organisation. Wikipedia has guidelines for determining what topics are notable enough for inclusion. Please see Wikipedia:Notability. CAMPAIGNS would need to have "received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" to be notable, and I can't find evidence that that is the case. Your case for keeping the article would be much stronger if you could demonstrate such coverage. Cordless Larry (talk) 12:07, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. The article doesn't seem to link to any source other than those within the government (Hansard, Queen's speeches, etc.). The lack of coverage in secondary sources is the problem this article needs to overcome. —C.Fred (talk) 14:34, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've searched LexisNexis for newspaper coverage. "Children and Maternal Parents Against Immigration & Government Nationality Situation" returns no results. I tried "Michael Turberville" as well and while there were plenty of results, none related to this capaign. Cordless Larry (talk) 16:09, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As a result of a discussion on the article's talk page, I have found this source mentioning the campaign. It's only a single mention, though, and I don't think it constitutes significant coverage. Cordless Larry (talk) 13:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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