Antigua and Barbuda

Six months, and it is the statute that says so rather than an officer. The Immigration and Passport Act 2014 defines a bona fide visitor as a person arriving for a period of not more than six months, and section 24 requires the visitor to hold an onward ticket, to take no gainful occupation, to behave and to be able to maintain themselves and their dependants throughout. Beyond that the Act splits travellers into classes: a citizen of any member state of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States gets six months as of right, a citizen of an OECS Protocol state enters with no limit on time at all, a national of a CARICOM member state named in Schedule 1 gets six months, and an EU service provider gets a period that depends on what kind of service provider they are. An extension is a separate application to the Chief Immigration Officer, and since 2023 a visitor who intends to stay on for work, study, marriage or retirement must formally change status instead.

There are two doors and they are priced a world apart. The ordinary one is section 38(4) of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014: an extension of time of up to 24 months, without the right to work, for a homeowner or someone who has made Antigua and Barbuda their country of retirement, with the Chief Immigration Officer entitled to weigh whether the applicant has a continuous source of annual income of at least the prescribed amount. The other is the permanent residence permit in section 42, the scheme every intermediary sells as Antigua's tax-residency programme: it requires a permanent place of abode and thirty days a year in the country, and since 2021 it requires an annual income of not less than US$500,000. Every guide we checked still says US$100,000. That figure was replaced on the face of the statute by section 8 of the Immigration and Passport (Amendment) Act 2021.

Retirement is named in the statute twice, and neither mention creates a visa. Section 38(4)(a) of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014 lets the Chief Immigration Officer, with the Minister's approval, extend a retiree's or a homeowner's stay by up to twenty-four months at a time, expressly without the right to work. Section 70A, inserted in 2023, lists a retiree as one of four reasons a bona fide visitor must apply to change status. There is no retirement category with a stated pension threshold, no reduced-rate scheme and no fast track to permanent residence; a retiree with means goes to the same section 42 permanent residence permit as everyone else, and since 2021 that asks for an annual income of not less than US$500,000.

Two statutes have to be read together and only one of them is legible. The Antigua and Barbuda Labour Code, Cap. 27, is what forbids a non-citizen to work without a work permit and lists the handful of people the prohibition does not reach; the Immigration and Passport Act 2014 is what controls whether they may be here at all, and ties the length of their permission to the life of the permit. The Act exempts two classes from needing a permit at all: the holder of a permanent residence permit under section 42, and the spouse of a citizen holding a residence permit under section 47, who may work in any occupation for as long as the marriage subsists. The Labour Code's own exemption list, as it stands in the Revised Edition, does not reach OECS or CARICOM nationals - which is a sharp divergence from Saint Kitts and Nevis, whose Immigration Act exempts them by name.

Antigua and Barbuda sells citizenship, not residence, and the distinction runs through everything. The Citizenship by Investment Act 2013 and the Regulations that sit as a Schedule to it offer four prices - US$230,000 into the National Development Fund, US$260,000 to a designated institution of higher education, US$300,000 of real estate in an approved project, or US$1.5 million in an approved business - and the successful applicant becomes a citizen rather than a resident. For an investor who wants to live here instead, the route is the permanent residence permit in section 42 of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014, whose alternative to the thirty-days-and-abode test is "a substantial economic activity in Antigua and Barbuda which is approved by the Cabinet". The Act neither defines that phrase nor puts a figure on it.

Division 3 of Part III of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014 is one of the most developed student regimes in this comparison, and the obligations run both ways. A non-immigrant student may not attend an educational institution without a valid student permit, and an institution that enrols one without the permit commits an offence punishable by a fine of up to fifty thousand dollars. The permit is valid for a school year, renews on a report from the institution covering attendance, diligence and deportment, is tied to the named institution, and forbids gainful occupation - and unpaid occupation too, except unpaid student work connected to the course. The matters the Chief Immigration Officer weighs include the applicant's ability in English and whether there is information about their departure at the end of their studies.

There is no residence permit by descent, and the citizenship that descent gives runs exactly one generation. Section 113(b) of the Constitution makes a person born outside Antigua and Barbuda a citizen at birth if, at the date of their birth, either parent is a citizen by virtue of section 112 or by virtue of being born here. A grandparent only counts once, under section 112(b), which was a commencement provision: it made a citizen on 1 November 1981 of a person born outside Antigua if any one of their grandparents was born there. That door closed on the day it opened. A person born abroad to a parent who was themselves born abroad is not a citizen, and the route left to them is ordinary registration or naturalisation on the residence periods everyone else serves.

Marriage opens two doors at different speeds. One year of marriage opens the residence permit in section 47 of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014, and that permit carries the right to remain and work in any occupation for as long as the marriage subsists - a broader work right than a permanent resident's. Three years of marriage opens registration as a citizen under section 114(1)(b) of the Constitution, and that is an entitlement rather than a discretion. Between the two sits a protective apparatus added in 2021: the applicant must swear that the marriage is not a marriage of convenience, the Chief Immigration Officer must be satisfied of the same, entering into one is a criminal offence, and so is solemnising a marriage you have reasonable grounds to suspect is one.

Three regional regimes are routinely run together and Antiguan law treats them as three. The OECS Protocol of the Eastern Caribbean Economic Union is the strong one: section 21(1)(b) of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014 entitles a citizen of a Protocol Member State to enter and remain without any restriction or limitation as to time, and Schedule 1 Part C names seven of them. Ordinary OECS membership gets six months as of right under section 21(1)(a). CARICOM gets six months under section 22, from a Schedule that omits The Bahamas and Montserrat, and the skills regime that CARICOM's treaty actually created lives in a separate statute, the Caribbean Community Skilled Nationals Act 1997. And the one thing none of them does in Antiguan law is lift the work permit: the Labour Code's exemption list, as we read it, does not reach an ordinary OECS or CARICOM national.

Four doors, and the residence they ask for ranges from seven years to five days. A Commonwealth citizen who is domiciled here and has been lawfully ordinarily resident for seven years is entitled to be registered under section 114 of the Constitution. An alien naturalises under the Citizenship Act on a twelve-month unbroken period preceded by a seven-year window in which five years in aggregate were spent here. A spouse is entitled to registration once the marriage has subsisted for upwards of three years. And an investor is registered under the Citizenship by Investment Act 2013 with no residence requirement for the grant at all - but with one attached to keeping it, because section 4(1) of that Act lets the Minister deprive a citizen by investment who does not spend at least five days here in the five calendar years after registration. That five days is statutory, it sits in the Act and not in the Regulations, and it was thirty-five days until 2016.

Antigua and Barbuda abolished personal income tax, and the sentence that did it is section 47 of the Unincorporated Business Tax Act 2016: the Personal Income Tax Act 2005 is repealed with effect from 1 July 2016. What the same Act did in the same breath is create a tax on self-employment income that a reader can easily miss - a sole trader pays nothing on the first XCD 21,000 of chargeable business income, eight per cent to XCD 93,000 and twenty-five per cent above that. So an employee resident here pays no income tax and a freelancer resident here pays up to twenty-five per cent on their profits. There is no statutory test of personal tax residence at all, because with no personal income tax there is nothing for one to attach to; the residence concepts that survive are the ordinary residence and domicile tests in the business tax Act and the permanent residence permit's own annual payment to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue.

What governs account opening here is not a banking statute but the Money Laundering (Prevention) Regulations, and they are strict in a particular way: where satisfactory evidence of identity is not obtained, the institution shall not open the account, and if business has already begun it must not proceed and an established relationship must be terminated. Satisfactory evidence is defined by result rather than by a document list - evidence reasonably capable of establishing, and in fact establishing, that the applicant is who they say they are - so there is no statutory checklist a newcomer can work through. The Regulations also require the due diligence to be completed before or in the course of establishing the relationship, and they single out the greater risk where the customer is not physically present.

Health cover here is contributory and it is tied to employment rather than to residence. The Medical Benefits Act, Cap. 271, establishes the Medical Benefits Scheme and funds it by a contribution from every insured person and a matching contribution from every employer, and it borrows its definitions of "insured person", "employer" and "wages" wholesale from the Social Security Act. What the Act sets at two and one-half per cent each, the Scheme today collects at three and one-half per cent each - a divergence between the statute and the agency that administers it, visible on the Scheme's own published rates. A self-employed person pays five per cent of earnings. The Act says nothing about a person who is resident but not employed, and nothing we read entitles a newcomer to anything before they start working.

A visitor drives on a temporary licence. Section 40 of the Vehicles and Road Traffic Act, Cap. 460, lets a temporary driver's licence be granted for up to three months to anyone shown to be a bona fide visitor, with or without a driving test, and a self-drive hire operator may be authorised to hand them over on the licensing authority's behalf - which is why the rental counter issues one. A resident's licence runs for a year and may be renewed for one year or, at the holder's request, three. In 2025 the whole administration moved: the Vehicles and Road Traffic (Amendment) Act 2025 struck out "Commissioner of Inland Revenue" wherever it appeared across twenty-two sections and put the General Manager of the Transport Board in its place, and replaced the First Schedule of fees.

The duty-free concession here is for people coming home, not for people arriving. The Customs and Excise Division's published terms give a national who has lived abroad for ten years or more duty-free treatment on all used personal effects including tools of trade, and on one imported motor vehicle owned for at least two years; a national who has been away for less may be considered at the discretion of the Minister of Finance. A returning student who has studied abroad for three years or more gets used personal and household items, used books and a computer. Nothing in those terms reaches a foreign national moving here for the first time, and the Customs (Control and Management) Act 2013 leaves baggage reliefs to be prescribed rather than stating them. Everyone, national or not, has to present their accompanying baggage to the proper officer.