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On 21st May 2002, the British Overseas Territories Act will come intoforce. It grants the right of citizenship to all inhabitants of Britain'soverseas territories and formally abolishes the term 'colony'.
It allow those people who were British Dependent citizens to live, train andwork in Britain, or anywhere else in the European Union.
Many of the inhabitants had full British citizenship before 1981, when theConservative government took the right away from all dependent territories inorder to stop residents of Hong Kong moving to Britain prior to being handedover to China.
Those rights have now been restored. However, British citizens will not havereciprocal rights to live and work in the former colonies. This proviso has beenincluded at the request of the former colonies to safeguard the social andcultural makeup of those countries.
