Two people born in Bermuda were born too late to qualify for status, the Immigration Department revealed yesterday.

Had they been born before July 1, 1956 ,they probably would have had rights and privileges of domicile on the Island but as they were both born in the 1970s, that is not the case .

Twenty-five year old Lisa Asphall must return to Jamaica following her graduation from Bermuda College. She was born in Bermuda to Jamaican parents but left the Island as a small child.

She unsuccessfully tried to claim Bermuda status but does hold Jamaican citizenship.

Meanwhile 27-year-old Robert George Medeiros has no citizenship anywhere in the world and has been banned from entering the Island altogether after Immigration said he had lived and worked illegally in Bermuda for most of the past four years.

He will only be allowed back into Bermuda if he acquires citizenship in another country, Immigration has said.

Mr. Medeiros was born in Bermuda in 1973 and lived here with his Portuguese parents until he was eight years old. When his parents returned to Portugal in 1981, they failed to apply for Portuguese citizenship for him.

The only passport he has ever held is a British Dependent Territories (Bermuda) passport which he had easily renewed in 1992.

Mr. Medeiros says he never realised he did not have Bermuda status - now he finds himself effectively "stateless".

He expressed frustration yesterday after seeing a copy of a Letter to the Editor from a former expatriate worker which disclosed that the man's 50-year-old daughter just found out she has the right to Bermuda status.

The woman was born in Bermuda to two Canadians and left Bermuda at age two. Returning to Bermuda on vacation this year, "we had time to go to the Immigration office and found out my daughter was a Bermudian with all the rights and privileges", her father wrote.

But Mr. Medeiros questioned how this was possible. "Isn't this a contradiction?" he asked.

"Why does she have rights and privileges that I - and so many other people - don't?"

Chief Immigration Officer Martin Brewer told The Royal Gazette yesterday the reason came down to the woman's age.

People born prior to June 30, 1956, fall under the 1937 Immigration Act, Mr. Brewer explained. When that Act was repealed and replaced by the Bermuda Immigration Protection Act 1956, people born in Bermuda before the date the new Act became effective - provided their parents weren't exempted - gained the right to Bermuda status.

Mr. Brewer said many classes of expat workers were exempted and their children would not have had the same rights. But as this woman's father was a chef - an area of employment not exempted - she was "deemed to be domiciled on the Island".

Unfortunately, this example will be of little help to Ms Asphall or Mr. Medeiros in their quests to live in the Island they were born on. As they were born after 1956 and neither young person has a Bermudian parent, they do not qualify for Bermuda status, Immigration said.