Nationality assessment services

A nationality assessment asks a focused question: does the way a person speaks, and what they know about everyday life, fit the country they say they come from? The answer can help immigration lawyers, legal practitioners, public bodies and security organisations when a person's documents are missing, disputed or inconsistent.

Our analysts look at three things together: the person's language, their knowledge of the country's institutions and daily life, and the documents in the file. Where everything points the same way, the report says so clearly; where it does not, the report explains where the differences lie. Every report is written so that it can be submitted to courts, tribunals and administrative bodies in the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions.

Trained linguists and cultural analysts listen to recordings of the person, read any written material and compare both with the national standard of the language: pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.

For example, someone who says they are Egyptian would be expected to speak Egyptian Arabic (Maṣri), the everyday standard based on Cairo speech that is heard across Egyptian media and used alongside Modern Standard Arabic. Knowing a handful of Egyptian expressions picked up on a journey is not the same thing.

We also note words and features borrowed from other languages along the way, and ask about things any long-term resident would know: the school system, everyday administrative terms and shared cultural references.

The assessment can be combined with our certified translation and document verification services, so the documents in the file are checked against the linguistic and cultural evidence.

Read more about LADO and age assessment.

Each service answers a different question. A nationality assessment looks at the country as a whole; LADO looks at the region, town or community where a person grew up.

Someone could learn enough of a national standard language to get through a basic check, yet a LADO analysis would show that their speech does not match the town they name. The reverse also happens: a person who speaks a very local border dialect may not match the national standard, while a nationality assessment shows that they know the country's institutions and daily life well.

Used together, the two analyses make deliberate imitation easier to detect and help to avoid unfair conclusions about genuine speakers of minority dialects.

• Government departments and immigration authorities: our impartial analyses can support decisions on complex asylum claims, visa applications and citizenship determinations.
• Law enforcement agencies and police forces: our assessments can help establish the identity of individuals in cross-border investigations or where there is no verifiable documentation.
• Counter-terrorism and intelligence teams: our vetted linguistic experts can assess the background of subjects of interest.
• Law firms representing clients in complex immigration and deportation appeals can instruct our experts for independent, impartial reports.
• Corporate due diligence and private intelligence firms: our assessments can support background verification of senior personnel and corporate investigations.

Our reports are impartial. They set out the evidence and the reasoning behind each conclusion, and are written so that they can be submitted in legal proceedings, including the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). Our analysts are trained to recognise the influence of other languages and deliberate imitation.

To date, none of our LADO reports has ever been successfully challenged.

SILA Linguists® prepares nationality assessments for cases involving immigration authorities, the legal sector, police and justice agencies, public sector bodies, insurance and financial services compliance teams and private intelligence firms. The same cases often need language analysis for the determination of origin, interpreting for interviews and hearings, certified translation of passports, identity cards and civil records, and transcription of recorded interviews.

Because one SILA Linguists® team coordinates all of this, names, dates and places stay consistent across every report, translation and transcript. We work in more than 350 languages and dialects for clients in the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and beyond, under confidentiality agreements and UK GDPR.