Jour: 4 juillet 2024

Reflections on becoming French on the anniversary of being granted French Nationality. In 2005 I decided to obtain French nationality. ‘Why?’ friends asked, bemused. After all this before Brexit was even heard of and I had a perfectly good British European passport which allowed me to live and work anywhere in Europe. Why bother with a tedious bureaucratic process? Well, one reason lay in the great American tradition of no taxation without representation. I wanted to be able to vote. I live here, pay taxes here, my daughters are French (even though one was born in Hong Kong), but politically I didn’t exist. Unlike the U.S., Britain, does not grant citizens life-long voting rights (though this is in the process of changing as I write), so I could no longer vote in the UK. And I believe that the right to vote is an inalienable democratic one. Given that the UK recognizes dual nationality, it was win- win for me. I must confess there were moments when I considered giving…