My child was born in the UK and never had a visa — is that a problem?
No — it is not a problem. A child born in the UK to parents on a visa is not in the UK unlawfully and does not need any permission to stay while they live here with you. GOV.UK's own guidance for Skilled Worker families is explicit: you must apply for your child's dependant visa "if you want to travel in and out of the UK with them" — travel is the only reason. And when one parent gets indefinite leave to remain (ILR), the child can be registered as a British citizen under section 1(3) of the British Nationality Act 1981. The fact that your child has never held a visa makes no difference at all to that entitlement.
- A child born in the UK needs no visa and no permission to stay while they remain in the UK — they are not here unlawfully
- GOV.UK says a dependant visa for a UK-born child is needed only "if you want to travel in and out of the UK with them"
- Once a parent becomes settled, the child is entitled to register as British under section 1(3) of the British Nationality Act 1981 — the Home Office has no discretion to refuse a qualifying child
- The child does not need to have ever held a visa to register
- The MN1 registration fee is £1,000 (reduced from £1,214 on 8 April 2026); a child's first British passport is £66.50 online
- The parent must actually hold ILR on the day the MN1 application is submitted — applying immediately after your ILR is granted is fine
Why a UK-born child does not need a visa to stay
Being born in the UK does not make a child British — citizenship depends on the parents' status at birth or afterwards. But it does mean the child never entered the UK, so they were never given (or refused) leave to enter, and the immigration system does not require them to apply for anything while they remain here. GOV.UK's family visa guidance puts it simply: a child born in the UK is treated as having the same permission to stay as their parent, and the Skilled Worker guidance only tells parents to apply for a dependant visa if they want to travel in and out of the UK with the child.
So a two-year-old who was born here and has never held a visa has done nothing wrong, and neither have the parents. Nobody is going to knock on the door, and the child's lack of immigration history will not count against them later.
The one real catch: travelling outside the UK
The gap in this arrangement only appears at the border. Because your child has no visa, they have no permission to re-enter the UK if they leave. A trip to see grandparents becomes a genuine problem: your child could leave the UK freely but would need entry clearance — a dependant visa applied for from abroad — to come back in.
Do not take a UK-born child abroad without either a dependant visa in their passport or their British citizenship and passport already sorted. Without one of these, the child has no right to re-enter the UK, and you would have to apply for entry clearance from overseas — with the cost, delay and uncertainty that brings.
This is why some families on work visas do apply for a dependant visa for a UK-born baby, and others never bother. If you will not travel before you settle, the visa buys you nothing.
Registering your child as British once you have ILR
Here is the part that matters for a parent getting ILR in September. Under section 1(3) of the British Nationality Act 1981, a child born in the UK is entitled to be registered as a British citizen if, while they are under 18, either parent becomes British or settled in the UK. The Home Office caseworker guidance frames this as an entitlement: if the conditions are met, registration must be granted. There is no good-character test for children under 10, no residence calculation, and — crucially for this scenario — no requirement that the child ever held any visa or leave.
The application is made on form MN1 and the fee is £1,000 following the 8 April 2026 fee changes. Timing matters in one direction only: you must actually hold ILR when the MN1 is submitted. Submitting the day after your ILR is approved is completely fine. We walk through the documents and steps in our guide to registering a UK-born child as British once one parent gets ILR, and you can see realistic timescales in our breakdown of how long MN1 child citizenship registration takes.
Once the registration certificate arrives, apply for the child's first British passport — £66.50 online or £80 by paper form — and the whole question of visas disappears for good.
Expecting a baby? When a dependant visa is actually worth it
For the pregnant reader asking whether to apply for a visa for her baby at all: it depends on two things — travel and how soon a parent will settle. If neither parent will reach ILR for several years and you will want to visit family abroad, a dependant visa is worth the cost, because it is the only way the baby can leave and re-enter the UK. If a parent will settle within a year or so and you can hold off on foreign travel, many families simply skip the visa, wait for ILR, register the child as British for £1,000, and go straight to a British passport — often cheaper than paying visa fees and the immigration health surcharge for status the child will never really use.