Investing Your Way into Barbados
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Dominica on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
81 exceptions recorded across 33 countries · none match Dominica to Barbados · Residency through investment
Barbados has no citizenship by investment programme, and the statute book says so by omission: the Constitution lists the ways a person becomes or may be registered as a citizen, and investment is not among them. What it has instead is two things. The Immigration Act lets the Minister grant immigrant status to a permitted entrant who has established himself successfully in Barbados in a profession, trade, business or agricultural enterprise, or is likely to and has the means to live on until he does. And section 13(7) gives the Minister an unbounded power to grant special permission to remain on such terms and conditions as he thinks fit - which is the whole legal foundation of the Special Entry and Reside Permit marketed to property owners and people of high net worth. The permit's published criteria and fees are not in any instrument we could find, and are not published by any Barbados government page we could reach.
At a glance
- Citizenship by investment
- None. No provision of the Constitution or of any instrument we read confers citizenship for an investment
- Statutory test for immigrant status through business
- Established successfully, or likely to establish successfully, in a profession, trade, business or agricultural enterprise
- Minimum investment the Act or Regulations state
- None
- Legal basis of the Special Entry and Reside Permit
- The Minister's power under the Immigration Act to grant special permission to remain on such terms and conditions as he thinks fit
- Fee for a special entry permit, as the Regulations prescribe
- $50.00 on application and $300.00 on the grant
Items 10 and 11 of Part I of the Second Schedule to the Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations, which refer to a special entry permit under section 13(3). These are not the figures quoted in commercial accounts of the modern permit, which run into thousands of United States dollars; we found no instrument carrying those.
Requirements
- For immigrant status through business: being a permitted entrant, and either having established yourself successfully in Barbados in a profession, trade, business or agricultural enterprise, or being likely to and having sufficient means to maintain yourself until you have
- The Department also asks for a detailed cover letter on the nature of the business, its location, the certificate of registration or articles of incorporation, proof of finances, and proof of funds brought to Barbados
- For a special entry permit: an application to the Minister, who may attach whatever terms and conditions he thinks fit
In detail
There is no citizenship by investment, and that is a finding
Chapter II of the Constitution sets out who became a citizen in 1966, who is entitled to be registered, who becomes a citizen by birth in Barbados, and who becomes one by descent. Section 9 lets Parliament provide for the acquisition of citizenship by people who do not become citizens under the Chapter, and the Barbados Citizenship Act is the Act that does so - but nothing we read in the Constitution, the Immigration Act, the Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations or the Immigration Department's citizenship page offers citizenship for money. The Department's citizenship pages list routes by birth, descent, marriage and ordinary residence, and charge $300 on application and $1,500 on the grant for all of them. That is a fee, not a price.
What the Special Entry and Reside Permit rests on
Everything published about this permit - the categories, the asset thresholds, the property value, the age bands, the renewal periods, the United States dollar fees - comes from law firms, property agencies and citizenship advisers. None of it comes from an instrument. The Immigration Act gives the Minister a bare discretion in section 13(7) to grant special permission to remain on such terms and conditions as he thinks fit, and the Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations price a special entry permit at $50 on application and $300 on the grant. We could not reach any page on a Barbados government domain stating the permit's criteria. An administrative scheme honestly described as one is worth more than a statute invented for it, and this is an administrative scheme.
Country-level policy
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.
The Exchange Control Act, Chapter 71, is in force, and it works the way exchange control always has: a general prohibition, with permission from the Authority as the exception. Only an authorised dealer may buy, borrow, sell or lend foreign currency. Payments to or for the credit of a person resident outside Barbados need permission. Securities denominated in Barbados dollars cannot be transferred between a resident and a non-resident without the Central Bank's permission. The Authority is the Minister of Finance, who has delegated most of the work to the Central Bank, which in turn delegates to authorised dealers and depositaries. For a person moving to Barbados the practical consequence is that "resident" means something different here than it does for tax: three years of continuous residence, and never if you are on a work permit.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Dominica
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«is likely to establish himself successfully in Barbados in a profession, trade, business or agricultural enterprise and has sufficient means to support and maintain himself and his dependants in Barbados until he has so established himself;»Sub-paragraph (ii) covers the person who has already established himself. Both sit under the opening words of paragraph (a), which require the qualification to arise by reason of education, occupational qualifications, personal history, employment record, training, skills or other special qualifications.
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
«Without limiting or affecting the operation of this section, the Minister may grant to a person special permission to remain in Barbados on such terms and conditions as he thinks fit.»Twenty-eight words, and the entire statutory basis of the Special Entry and Reside Permit. There is no schedule of categories, no asset test and no duration in the Act.
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
«10. On application for a special entry permit under $ 50.00
section 13(3)
11. On the granting of a special entry permit under $300.00
section 13(3)»Quoted as printed, with the money column interleaved into the text by the publisher's two-column layout. These items cite section 13(3), while items 7, 8, 13 and 14 of the same Schedule cite section 13(7); the Regulations use both.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The figures that circulate for the Special Entry and Reside Permit - an investment of US$2,000,000, net worth above US$5,000,000, property worth at least US$300,000, fees of US$5,000 and US$3,500 - are not reproduced as facts here because no instrument and no Barbadian government page we could read carries them.
The Immigration Bill, 2026 would put property values into a schedule and award points for age, Barbadian descent, education, skill, experience and financial resources, with ten points needed for permanent residence. It had not passed when this was written.
This record rests on sections 6 and 13(7) of the Immigration Act Chapter 190, Part I of the Second Schedule to the Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations, 1979, Chapter II of the Constitution of Barbados and the Immigration Department's immigrant status and citizenship pages. The negative claim about citizenship by investment is bounded by those pages.
- consolidatesImmigration Act, Chapter 190 of the Laws of Barbados
Supreme Court of Barbados - Laws of Barbados · consolidated to 2007
About 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
- administersImmigrant Status
Barbados Immigration Department
About this source
The department that applies the Immigration Act: it controls entry and departure at the ports and processes applications for citizenship, permanent residence, immigrant status, work permits and entry visas. Its pages set out the documents it actually asks for under each statutory head, name the section each application is made under, and state the fees it charges. It also hosts the prescribed forms.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It states practice, not law, and its fees are not the fees the Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations prescribe - it publishes $300 on application where the Regulations say $200, and $1,200 or $1,500 on the grant where the Regulations say $800. It must not be cited for what an instrument requires, for the length of any statutory period, or for the entry visa fee in United States dollars, which no instrument we found carries. Its visa guidance points to a list published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rather than carrying one.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
- administersBarbadian Citizenship
Barbados Immigration Department
About this source
The department that applies the Immigration Act: it controls entry and departure at the ports and processes applications for citizenship, permanent residence, immigrant status, work permits and entry visas. Its pages set out the documents it actually asks for under each statutory head, name the section each application is made under, and state the fees it charges. It also hosts the prescribed forms.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It states practice, not law, and its fees are not the fees the Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations prescribe - it publishes $300 on application where the Regulations say $200, and $1,200 or $1,500 on the grant where the Regulations say $800. It must not be cited for what an instrument requires, for the length of any statutory period, or for the entry visa fee in United States dollars, which no instrument we found carries. Its visa guidance points to a list published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rather than carrying one.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
- consolidatesImmigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations, 1979
Office of the Attorney General of Barbados
About this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source