Studying in Barbados
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 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 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to Barbados · Residency as a student
A student must obtain a student visa before entering Barbados, not after arriving. The Immigration (Students) Regulations, 1979 require an application in Form H-2 accompanied by a certificate from the head of the institution and written evidence that the student can pay the tuition and keep himself. The visa runs for one year and is renewed annually on a progress report from the institution. Changing course or institution needs permission first, and failing to ask can cost the visa. The regulation that matters most is the last substantive one: time spent in Barbados studying must not be taken into consideration when the student later applies for citizenship or permanent resident status. A degree in Barbados does not shorten the road to staying in Barbados.
At a glance
- Student visa validity
- 1 year, renewable at the end of each year on a progress report
- Longest period a student entrant may be permitted under the Act
- 3 years in the first instance
Students are paragraph 2 of Part I of the Second Schedule to the Immigration Act, which section 13(1)(a) caps at three years in the first instance.
- Address reporting
- Every 3 months, whether or not the address has changed
Regulation 8 requires written notice of the address every three months whether or not it has changed, and within ten days of any change.
- Does study count towards permanent residence or citizenship
- No. Time spent studying must not be taken into consideration
- Fee for a student visa, as the Regulations prescribe
- $200.00
Item 17 of Part I of the Second Schedule to the Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations, which covers an application for a student visa or other non-immigrant visa.
Requirements
- A student visa obtained before entering Barbados
- An application in Form H-2 submitted to the authority responsible for Immigration
- A certificate in Form H-1 signed by the head of the educational institution
- Written evidence that you can pay the tuition cost of the course and maintain yourself while doing it
- An annual progress report in Form H-3 from the institution, for each year the course runs beyond the first
- A written notice of your address every three months, and within ten days of any change
In detail
The visa comes before the flight
Regulation 3 is unambiguous: a student who wishes to attend an educational institution in Barbados must apply for and obtain a student visa before entering. The application goes to the authority responsible for Immigration in Form H-2, with a certificate from the head of the institution in Form H-1 and written evidence that the student can pay the tuition and maintain himself. On grant, the student is issued an entry permit in Form H; a student who is a dependant of a diplomat, or who is studying at a university or college authorised to confer degrees, gets a different permit, Form H 'x'.
Study is kept out of the residence clock
Regulation 9 says that where a non-immigrant student later applies for citizenship or for permanent resident status, the time spent in Barbados pursuing a course of study must not be taken into consideration. That is a deliberate exclusion written in 1979 and still in the subsidiary legislation. A student who spends four years at Cave Hill and then applies for registration on the ground of ordinary residence starts the ten-year count in the Constitution without those four years.
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.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
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
«A non-immigrant student who wishes to attend an educational institution in Barbados must apply for and obtain a student visa before entering Barbados.»A non-immigrant student is defined in regulation 2 as a person who seeks to enter Barbados exclusively for the purpose of undergoing a course of study.
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
«A student visa is valid for 1 year, and where a course of study is of longer duration than 1 year, that visa may be renewed at the end of that year»The renewal is conditional on the head of the institution submitting a report containing evidence of satisfactory progress and deportment, in Form H-3, annually.
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
«Where a non-immigrant student makes application for citizenship or for the status of permanent resident the time spent by him in Barbados while pursuing a course of study must not be taken into consideration for the purpose of assessing his application.»An express exclusion rather than silence. Several countries in this comparison simply do not say whether student time counts; Barbados says it does not.
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
«17. On application for a student visa or other non-$200.00
immigrant visa»Quoted as printed. The publisher's two-column layout drops the money column into the middle of the word "non-immigrant".
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
Changing course or institution without the prior permission of the authority is grounds for cancellation of the visa and for being required to leave.
The Regulations were made in 1979 under section 31 of the Immigration Act and commenced on 21 February 1980. The forms they prescribe are still the forms, and the Immigration Department's downloads page lists them.
This record rests on the Immigration (Students) Regulations, 1979 as the Law Courts publish them, the Second Schedule to the Immigration Act and the Immigration (Forms and Fees) Regulations, 1979.
- consolidatesImmigration (Students) Regulations, 1979, Cap. 190
Supreme Court of Barbados - Laws of Barbados
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
- 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