Country-wide policy
What Barbados Publishes, and How Old It Is
Barbados publishes its law in three places that do not agree with each other about how current it is, and none of them says so on its face. The Supreme Court's statute library carries the Chapters, printed by the Government Printer, with a Law Revision Order year in the running head of each page - 2007 on the newest pages of the Immigration Act and the Income Tax Act, 1997 on the Income Tax pages that carry the residence and domicile rules. The Attorney General's Office carries annual Acts and statutory instruments, and its series of annual Acts stops at 2020. The Government Printing Department publishes the Official Gazette, which is where an Act of 2021 or later is actually found. A reader looking for the law in force has to use all three, and an amendment made between 2021 and today is invisible in the first two.
Topics it changes
- Visiting as a tourist
- Residency on passive income
- Residency as a retiree
- Residency through work
- Residency through investment
- Residency as a student
- Residency through ancestry
- Residency through marriage
- Residency under a regional treaty
- Becoming a citizen
- When you become a tax resident
- Opening a bank account
- Access to healthcare
- Driving and licence exchange
- Bringing your belongings
What it requires
- Read the Chapter for the structure, then the amending Acts for what the Chapter does not show
- For anything after 2020, go to the Official Gazette rather than to either law library
At a glance
- Latest Law Revision Order year printed in the Immigration Act
- L.R.O. 2007
The Act's own list of amending Acts runs to 2008-6, which is later than any page it prints.
- Law Revision Order year on the Income Tax pages carrying residence and domicile
- L.R.O. 1997
- Last year in the Attorney General's annual Acts series
- 2020
- Barbados Citizenship Act, Chapter 186
- Published as a scanned image with no text layer. Not readable, and not quoted anywhere on this site
- Constitution as published
- Still names Her Majesty and the Governor-General, and its latest marginal amendment reference is to Act 2003-10
Barbados became a republic on 30 November 2021. The edition states no date to which it is current.
- Road Traffic Act
- The Ministry of Transport and Works publishes a consolidation to Act 2022-21, which is more current than the Chapter in the statute library
The consolidation names the last Act it incorporates on its front page; it states no date to which it is current.
Why the cut-off dates on this country are per page
Barbados ran its law revision by Law Revision Order under Chapter 2: pages were reprinted and inserted into the bound volumes, and each reprinted page carries the year of the Order that authorised it. So a single Chapter can show 1997 on one page and 2007 on another, and both are true of their own pages. The Income Tax Act's residence and domicile rules sit on pages printed at L.R.O. 1997; its latest pages print 2007. We record 2007 for the document as a whole, because that is the latest date the document states about itself, and record the per-page position in the gap.
Where to look for an Act after 2020
The Attorney General's annual Acts series ends at 2020. For anything later the Government Printing Department's online Gazette is the place: it publishes Part A with the Acts, by date, as readable text rather than as a scan. That is where the Remote Employment (Amendment) Act 2021-11 is found, with its assent and commencement dates on the page. The Parliament's own site carries Bills and their stages, which is the only way to tell whether something has passed.
The Act we could not read at all
The Barbados Citizenship Act, Chapter 186, is published by the statute library as a scan with no text layer. An extraction of it returns image references and nothing else. It is the Act that prescribes the marriage period for registration as a citizen under the Constitution, and the Act whose sections 4(3) and 5(1) the Immigration Department names on its citizenship application pages. Nothing on this site is quoted from it, and nothing on this site states its contents.
What the law says
«1975-20. 1996-9.
1975-51. 1999-11.
1977-18. 2002-6.
1979-27. 2004-13.
1979-32. 2004-24.
1979-46. 2006-23.
1984-40. 2007-3.
1987-16. 2008-6.
1991-11.»Known to be out of date. Section 17(1) was substituted in 2020 by Act 2020-3 and this edition does not show it. The Immigration Bill, 2026 would repeal the Act entirely.
The last Act listed is 2008-6, while the running heads print L.R.O. 2007 and L.R.O. 2002. The edition is therefore not internally consistent about its own currency, and nothing on it explains the difference.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The statute library of the Barbadian judiciary, publishing the Chapters of the Laws of Barbados and the subsidiary legislation as PDFs printed by the Government Printer. It is the only place the consolidated Chapters are published as a browsable set, and it carries the Constitution, the Immigration Act Chapter 190, the Income Tax Act Chapter 73, the Customs Act Chapter 66, the Exchange Control Act Chapter 71 and the Caribbean Community Acts.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It consolidates and does not issue, and its editions are old and dated per page rather than per Act: the Immigration Act and the Income Tax Act print Law Revision Order years of 2007 on their newest pages and 1997 or 2002 on others, and no page says what the Act looks like today. It must not be cited for anything amended after about 2008 without checking the amending Act - section 17(1) of the Immigration Act was substituted in 2020 and this edition does not show it. Several of its files are scans with no text layer: the Barbados Citizenship Act Chapter 186 is unreadable and the Road Traffic Act Chapter 295 is largely so, and neither may be quoted from this publisher. Extraction of the Immigration Act PDF silently loses four pairs of pages, so an absence in it is not evidence of absence in the Act. It must also not be relied on for completeness, and the gap is the publisher's rather than ours: its Immigration Act lists sections 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 30 and 31 in its own arrangement of sections and prints none of them. Two independent extractions of the file agree, every page but the last carries a text layer, and the headings Charging of member of crew, Persons unlawfully entering, Applications for work permits and Deportation orders each appear exactly once, in the contents. A negative claim read off this Chapter - that the Act says nothing about something - can be neither trusted nor disproved from it.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«The following Law Revision Order or Orders authorized the insertion and
removal of pages as the case may be under the Law Revision Act Cap.2 now
repealed:»The Law Revision Act, Chapter 2, is repealed, so the mechanism that produced the dated pages in the statute library no longer exists. What replaced it is a consolidation published by a ministry, which lists the Acts it incorporates and states no cut-off date.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The ministry responsible for road traffic law, and the publisher of the only readable and current consolidation of the Road Traffic Act Chapter 295. Its edition incorporates amendments up to Act 2022-21, carries the historical note for each provision in square brackets, and is materially newer than the Chapter in the judiciary's statute library, which is largely a scan.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It consolidates and does not issue. The document lists the Acts it incorporates and the Law Revision Orders behind it but states no date to which it is current, so the last Act named is not a cut-off and must not be recorded as one. It does not publish the subsidiary legislation made under the Act, which is where any visitor driving permit would have to be found, and it does not publish fees.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
Practical notes
Extraction of the Immigration Act PDF silently lost four pairs of pages, taking sections 3 to 5, 17(4) to 19 and 20(5) to 21(6). Section 5 is the permanent resident qualification, and it is not stated anywhere on this site as a result.
The Road Traffic Act Chapter in the statute library is largely a scan and is not quoted here; the Ministry of Transport and Works consolidation is used instead and is both newer and readable.
The Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations list their own amendments to S.I. 2007/28, and the fees they prescribe are consistently lower than the fees the Immigration Department publishes. We found no instrument closing that gap.