Grenada

Twelve months is the ceiling the Immigration Act sets for a visitor, and that is the longest ordinary visitor period anywhere in this comparison. An officer may grant up to twelve months on arrival; a shorter permit can be extended, but only up to twelve months from the date of entry, so the ceiling is counted from when you landed rather than from each renewal. Extensions cost EC$75 a month. Whether you need a visa first is the hardest question here, because the only visa-exemption instrument inside the consolidated law is a list of twelve countries from 1958, and the real exemptions sit in a 2016 amendment for Schengen passports and in practice at the border. Citizens of the Eastern Caribbean are in a different position entirely: they are entitled to remain, and they need no passport.

There is no income threshold, because there is no income-based residence permit. Grenada's Immigration Act has exactly one residence status - the permit of permanent residence in section 24 - and the only things it asks for are good character and a stated intention to live here permanently. No sum of money appears anywhere in the section. What makes the arrangement work for someone living on money from abroad is the tax side rather than the immigration side: income tax reaches only income from sources in Grenada, so a foreign pension, foreign rent or foreign dividends are outside the charge whether or not you become resident. The fee for the permit is EC$1,000 for a CARICOM or Cuban citizen and EC$5,000 for everyone else.

There is no retirement programme and no pensioner visa. A retiree uses the same permit of permanent residence as everyone else, with the same two conditions and no income test. What Grenada does have, and does not advertise, is a retirement provision in its tax law: section 25(1)(y) of the Income Tax Act exempts income from a source outside Grenada accruing to a retired individual who was not resident here before retiring. Since section 8 already keeps foreign income outside the charge for everybody, that exemption is belt and braces - but it is the only place in Grenadian law where the word retirement does any work for an incomer, and it is written for a person who retires to Grenada rather than in it.

A work permit is not issued under the Immigration Act at all. It comes from a separate 1968 statute, the Foreign Nationals and Commonwealth Citizens (Employment) Act, which makes it an offence for a foreign national or a Commonwealth citizen to work without one and for anyone to employ them. The Minister of Labour decides in his absolute discretion; permits run twelve months and the fee is set by nationality - nothing for a CARICOM skills certificate holder and for a citizen of five named Eastern Caribbean states, EC$1,000 for a short list of CARICOM countries and Cuba, EC$3,000 for other Commonwealth, European and American nationals, EC$5,000 for everyone else. The Ministry's own guidance adds categories, deadlines and an advertising requirement that the Act does not contain.

Investment in Grenada buys citizenship, and it used to buy permanent residence first. The Citizenship by Investment Act of 2013 was built as a ladder - permanent residence, fourteen days in the country, twelve months, then citizenship - and in 2019 the ladder was taken away: Act 3 of 2019 struck the words that made the citizenship application follow a permanent residence one and repealed the fourteen-day rule outright. Permanent residence by investment still exists in the Act, and the Regulations still price a residence card, but nothing in the scheme now requires anyone to pass through it. Outside that statute there is no investor residence permit at all, and a foreign buyer of land needs a licence from the Minister or forfeits the land to the Government.

Grenada has no student visa and no student permit. The Immigration Act runs from section 1 to section 39 with no study category anywhere in it, and the one place students are named in the whole of the immigration legislation is an exemption from a fee: St George's University students and faculty do not pay the monthly charge for extending a stay. In practice a student enters as a visitor, which in Grenada means a permit of up to twelve months - long enough for an academic year, and the reason no separate status was ever needed. Working while studying is a different matter: that needs a work permit like anybody else, and the Ministry of Labour runs a Students and Trainees permit category for internships that the statute does not contain.

Grenada is one of the few countries in this comparison to have written a grandparent route into statute, and it did so recently and deliberately. The Constitution already gave citizenship at birth to anyone born outside Grenada with a Grenadian father or mother, and stopped there - a descent citizen cannot pass descent on. In 2016 Parliament filled the next generation in: section 5A of the Citizenship Act lets a person born abroad to parents who were never Grenadian citizens be registered if they have a grandparent who is or was a citizen. It is registration at the Minister's discretion rather than an entitlement, it carries an oath and a condition about service to the State, and it has one unusual consequence - the spouse of such a citizen does not get the ordinary marriage route.

Marriage to a Grenadian is one of the strongest claims in this comparison, and it skips residence entirely. The Constitution itself says a person married to a citizen is entitled to be registered as a citizen, and so does the Citizenship Act; both use the word entitled rather than may, and neither imposes a waiting period, a residence requirement or a language test. The constitutional provision goes further still - it reaches a person who has been married to someone who was a citizen during the marriage, so a widow or widower, and a divorced spouse, keep the claim. The only conditions are the oath of allegiance for an alien and an application in the manner Parliament prescribes. There is one exception, and it is in the grandparent route.

Three regimes, and they confer three different things. A citizen of one of the six other Eastern Caribbean states party to the Protocol of the Eastern Caribbean Economic Union gets a permit to enter and remain for a stay of indefinite duration, and is exempt from the work permit requirement outright - unless they bought that citizenship, which Grenada alone has written an exclusion for. A CARICOM national holding a Certificate of Recognition of Caribbean Community Skills Qualification gets indefinite entry, the right to work, and the right to buy property for a home or a business, which overrides the alien land-holding statute. And every CARICOM national has a right of establishment and a right to provide services written into Grenadian law since 2006. What nobody has is general free movement: Grenada is not among the four states in the 2026 full free movement arrangement.

Four doors, and they are very different sizes. Birth in Grenada confers citizenship unconditionally. Marriage to a citizen is an entitlement with no waiting period at all. Naturalisation needs a residence permit, twelve months in the country immediately before the application and five years out of the preceding seven - and since 2012 the residence permit has been a precondition rather than an alternative. And investment buys it directly: since 2019 there is no permanent residence step and no days in the country, the National Transformation Fund figure is US$235,000 for a main applicant and up to three dependants, and the approved project minimum is US$350,000. A regional agreement given force of law in 2025 would add a thirty-day residence requirement; the agency administering the programme announced in August 2026 that it is not taking effect yet.

Grenada taxes income from sources in Grenada and nothing else. Section 8 of the Income Tax Act gives a resident and a non-resident the same definition of assessable income - amounts accrued from all sources in Grenada - so becoming resident changes which allowances and rates apply and does not bring your foreign income into charge. Residence itself is defined three ways: a permanent place of abode here plus any physical presence in the year, a hundred and eighty-three days, or a presence continuous with a qualifying presence in the year before or after. The rates are not in the Act. The Fifth Schedule as published says thirty per cent, and three Orders made by the Minister under section 128 moved it to a personal allowance of EC$36,000, ten per cent on the next EC$24,000 and twenty-eight per cent above that.

Nothing in Grenadian law says who may open a bank account, and the question a reader actually faces is not about accounts but about moving money. The Exchange Control Act is still in force and was amended as recently as 2024; section 25A prohibits exporting foreign currency from Grenada without the permission of the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, and a 2024 Order grants that permission in general terms for amounts below the equivalent of US$10,000. Above that, permission is needed. The banks themselves are licensed under the Banking Act of 2015, which replaced the Chapter the law portal still publishes, and Grenada has reported account information to the United States under a FATCA statute in force since 2017.

Public hospital treatment in Grenada is charged, and a foreigner pays a third more. The Grenada General Hospital (Fees) Rules set a schedule of ward, surgery and dispensary charges and then provide, in rule 5, that patients who are not citizens of Grenada and who have been resident here for less than three months, or who are not in local employment, pay those fees increased by one-third. The Rules were made under an Act repealed in 1998 and survive because the repealing Act saved them until new ones are made; the amounts in them were last set in 1988. The National Insurance Scheme pays cash benefits and does not pay for treatment, so there is no contributory health cover to join.

A visitor drives on a temporary licence. The Licensing Authority may grant one for up to three months to a bona fide visitor who is competent to drive, with or without a test and with or without photographs. A valid international driving licence issued under a convention Grenada adheres to displaces the requirement altogether. And a CARICOM licence is recognised - but with a proviso that reverses the usual direction: the recognition applies only to someone ordinarily resident in Grenada who was resident in the issuing state for more than six months when the licence was issued, so it is a rule for residents rather than for visitors. A Grenadian licence costs EC$100 for a year or EC$270 for three and expires on your birthday.

Everything you bring must be declared, and the penalty for not declaring is the greater of EC$10,000 and three times the value. For small quantities there is a flat rate: non-commercial goods falling within three or more tariff headings and worth no more than EC$270 are charged thirty per cent instead of the tariff, with alcohol and tobacco carved out. Above that the Common External Tariff applies - and that is where the record stops, because Grenada's tariff is not published. The Customs Duties Act incorporates the Common External Tariff of the Caribbean Common Market, including its conditional duty exemptions, by reference and prints none of it. We could not reach the document, so we state no rate and no settler's concession.