Country-wide policy
Guyana is not in the four-state full free movement arrangement
Four CARICOM states - Barbados, Belize, Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines - have extended free movement among themselves beyond the Skills Certificate, so that each other's nationals may enter, live, work and remain indefinitely without a permit. Guyana is not one of them, and the right place to see that is its own statute book rather than a communique. Belize legislated for its version, with an Indefinite Stay Stamp at the port and a statutory appeal; Guyana has no equivalent Act and no equivalent provision. What Guyana's law does contain is the Skills Certificate regime of Chapter 18:08, the right of establishment in Chapter 18:10, and section 12(7A) of the Immigration Act, which admits Community nationals exercising rights under either of those Acts without a permit. Nothing in any of them extends to a Community national who holds no certificate and is establishing no enterprise. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs list confirms the position from the other side: a CARICOM national gets visa-free entry under article 45 of the Revised Treaty, and the Immigration Act then gives six months.
Topics it changes
What it requires
- A national of Barbados, Belize, Dominica or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines coming to Guyana still needs a Skills Certificate, or the right of establishment, or an ordinary permit
- The six-month entry a Part B national receives on arrival is an Immigration Act permit, not free movement
At a glance
- Parties to the enhanced free movement arrangement
- Barbados, Belize, Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Is Guyana a party
- No
- Guyanese statute giving indefinite stay to a Community national without a certificate
- None found
- What Guyana does give a Community national on arrival
- Six months under section 12(1)(b) of the Immigration Act, if the person is a national of a Part B country
12(1)(b) is a section reference, not a quantity. The six months is quoted on the visiting record for this country.
- Treaty basis the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cites
- Article 45 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, Movement of Community Nationals
45 is the treaty article number quoted below, not a quantity.
A negative answered from the statute book
It would be easy to answer this from a communique, and that would prove nothing: a decision of Heads of Government binds a state to legislate, it does not legislate. The Guyanese test is what section 12(7A) of the Immigration Act lets an officer do without a permit, and the answer is a closed list of four classes, each of which turns on a Skills Certificate under Chapter 18:08 or on the exercise of the right of establishment under Chapter 18:10. There is no class defined by nationality alone. Belize, which is a party to the four-state arrangement, wrote a separate Act with an Indefinite Stay Stamp granted at the port on production of a passport and an address. Guyana has nothing of that shape, and the search for it is what makes the negative worth publishing.
What a Barbadian or a Vincentian actually gets
Six months at the border, because Barbados and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are both in Part B of Schedule I to the Immigration Act, and whatever the Skills Certificate regime gives them if they hold a certificate. A Barbadian with a certificate issued by Barbados gets six months and the right to work; verified by the Guyanese Minister under section 4A, the same certificate opens a route to indefinite stay. That is more than a tourist gets and considerably less than the reciprocal arrangement those four states run among themselves.
What the law says
«Under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas Establishing the Caribbean Community Including the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, Article 45: Movement of Community Nationals, Member States commit themselves to the goal of free movement of their nationals within the Community.»The Ministry cites article 45 as the basis of visa-free entry and describes free movement as a goal Member States commit to, not as a right now in force in Guyana. The fourteen Caribbean states listed under it get visa-free entry, which is a different thing from indefinite stay.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Publishes Guyana's visa policy: a numbered list of the countries whose nationals need no visa to enter, a second list of the countries Guyanese may enter without one, the visa application forms, and an advisory setting out the criteria and fees for visas issued on arrival to visitors, employees, students and business people. It is also the ministry that determines whether a person qualifies as a re-migrant, settler or returning student for the customs concession.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: The two lists sit on one page under separate headings and are about opposite directions of travel; they overlap, they are dated differently - 17 July 2025 and 16 October 2025 - and they disagree on entries such as Haiti. Any capture that loses the headings merges them into one list, and a reading taken through an extraction service does exactly that. Read it with the headings intact or not at all. The visa-on-arrival advisory is undated on its face and gives periods the Immigration Act cannot produce - a five-year business visa against a three-year statutory ceiling - so it must be cited as the Ministry's practice and never as the law. The visa-exempt list is not an instrument: the statutory list is the Schedule to the Immigration (Passports) Order, which is much shorter and from 1993.
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«Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection
(7) and subject to such requirements as may be prescribed by
regulations made by the Minister under section 37, an
immigration officer shall allow to enter and remain in Guyana
for a period of definite or indefinite duration without the»Known to be out of date. The last amendment worked into this Chapter predates 2013. Guyana completed a revision to 31 December 2022 which the Attorney General laid before the National Assembly in June 2026, and the law portal has not yet replaced this Chapter with it.
Permit-free admission is confined to the four classes this sub-section goes on to name, all of which require either a Skills Certificate under Chapter 18:08 or the exercise of a right under Chapter 18:10. A Community national with neither is outside it.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Guyana's law portal, publishing the Laws of Guyana chapter by chapter as PDFs. The Law Revision Act, Chapter 2:02, makes the Law Revision Commission - chaired by the Attorney General, with the Chief Parliamentary Counsel a member by office - responsible for preparing, publishing and maintaining the edition, lets it choose the form of publication, requires every page to carry the number of the Law Revision Order that authorised it, and provides by section 9 that those pages are in all courts and for all purposes the sole and proper Statute Book of Guyana for the law in force on the relevant revision date. The portal also carries draft bills and ministry news.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It serves two editions at once and says so nowhere on its listing. On 2026-10-06, 52 of its 461 chapter entries carried L.R.O. 1/2022 - volumes 1 and 2 and part of volume 3 - and the remaining 409 carried L.R.O. 1/2012. The Attorney General told the National Assembly in June 2026 that 1/2012 shows the law as at 31 December 2012 and 1/2022 all laws enacted to 31 December 2022, so the L.R.O. number at the foot of each page is the only way to tell which edition you are reading. Everything that matters for migration - the Immigration Act, the Guyana Citizenship Act, the Aliens Act, all five CARICOM chapters, the Income Tax Act, the Customs Act, the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act - is still in the 2012 half. It must never be cited for what the law is now: the Income Tax Act it publishes prints a flat 33 1/3 per cent and has no section 36A, while the Revenue Authority charges 25 and 35 per cent under a section 36A. It publishes no amending Acts and no statutory instruments at all, so there is nothing on the site to check a Chapter against. Several chapters omit their own subsidiary legislation or schedules and say so in a note. Filenames carry a volume label and a unix timestamp, so a chapter's URL cannot be guessed and changes when the file is replaced.
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«(2) This section applies to the holder of a passport
issued by a qualifying State who was born in the State issuing
the passport or in another qualifying State and presents on
entry to Guyana a Schedule II Certificate.»Indefinite entry is conditioned on presenting a certificate. There is no limb for a national of a particular member state as such.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Guyana's law portal, publishing the Laws of Guyana chapter by chapter as PDFs. The Law Revision Act, Chapter 2:02, makes the Law Revision Commission - chaired by the Attorney General, with the Chief Parliamentary Counsel a member by office - responsible for preparing, publishing and maintaining the edition, lets it choose the form of publication, requires every page to carry the number of the Law Revision Order that authorised it, and provides by section 9 that those pages are in all courts and for all purposes the sole and proper Statute Book of Guyana for the law in force on the relevant revision date. The portal also carries draft bills and ministry news.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It serves two editions at once and says so nowhere on its listing. On 2026-10-06, 52 of its 461 chapter entries carried L.R.O. 1/2022 - volumes 1 and 2 and part of volume 3 - and the remaining 409 carried L.R.O. 1/2012. The Attorney General told the National Assembly in June 2026 that 1/2012 shows the law as at 31 December 2012 and 1/2022 all laws enacted to 31 December 2022, so the L.R.O. number at the foot of each page is the only way to tell which edition you are reading. Everything that matters for migration - the Immigration Act, the Guyana Citizenship Act, the Aliens Act, all five CARICOM chapters, the Income Tax Act, the Customs Act, the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act - is still in the 2012 half. It must never be cited for what the law is now: the Income Tax Act it publishes prints a flat 33 1/3 per cent and has no section 36A, while the Revenue Authority charges 25 and 35 per cent under a section 36A. It publishes no amending Acts and no statutory instruments at all, so there is nothing on the site to check a Chapter against. Several chapters omit their own subsidiary legislation or schedules and say so in a note. Filenames carry a volume label and a unix timestamp, so a chapter's URL cannot be guessed and changes when the file is replaced.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source