The EU drive to standardise bananas is starting to make sense to me. My head is spinning with legal matters and I am now rarely sure what version of English I am supposed to be speaking. There is no area more country specific and more jargon specific than the law and talking to two legal systems is very confusing. The American terms seem to be lawyer and attorney but I am not sure what the hierarchy is. In the UK we have solicitors and barristers and the latter we refer to as silks (if you are in Scotland a barrister is called an advocate).
I have now finally spoken to the immigration lawyer/solicitor/god knows what and he has given us some interesting news. It's not so much a law we are fighting against but a 'regulation'. Apparently there is a new regulation that was introduced in 2006 that means that if a British citizen is named on the Birth Certificate of a child born abroad that child will inherit British citizenship. The caveat, as I mentioned before, is that this applies only if the mother is unmarried.
Our surrogate is going through a divorce at the moment and if that is complete our immigration problems are over because Harriet will be a British citizen. In theory all we do is register her birth at the British consulate in Los Angeles and they will issue us with a British birth certificate. Then she should get her passport although currently the lawyer is fighting with the Home Office to get the consulates to understand that there is no requirement for 'Registration' (whatever that is) and indeed in his view this thing Registration would be illegal anway. This sort of confusion is typical.
If she is still married then we are going to need the Home Office to give guidance on what they would do. The lawyer will write to the senior civil servant to alert him that this case may happen and that they should be prepared to give a view. We have also been in contact with our local MP, who sent as an encouraging letter this week offering to help us.
So it's all going on. That's even before I have mentioned that our surrogate has started Braxton Hicks, which we know from the books is a possibility at seven months, but certainly focuses the mind on how close we are getting. Work is also very active and I had the misfortune this week to learn that one of my colleagues whom I liked has lost his job. He was one of the most able people I know and it brought into sharp focus how savage the market is at the moment. I am expecting further news in the next week. It will not be a happy Christmas for so many people but whatever happens at work and in the courts at least we still have the most important reason in the world to be happy.
