Highball has pointed it out - Hick's mother was born in Britain. Anybody with a parent born in the United Kingdom has a right to British citizenship.
Highball has pointed it out - Hick's mother was born in Britain. Anybody with a parent born in the United Kingdom has a right to British citizenship.
Not to nitpick, but I don't think that's actually true. I believe his mother is herself British, which is not the same as "born in Britain."
The United Kingdom has a much more complicated citizenship structure than we do. There are citizens by descent, naturalization, registration and more. All different categories, and that citizenship can or cannot be passed on in to one's children based on the category.
"British citizen by birth" means born in Great Britain to at least one parent who is a British citizen or a resident. They don't have anchor babies the way we do.
I think this stems from the colonial heritage, with the Commonwealth and all. It gets pretty complicated pretty quickly, but what it means in this case is that, as the son of a mother who was a certain type of British citizen, Hicks had the legal right to apply for (and was granted) British citizenship himself.