Claiming Saint Kitts and Nevis Through a Parent or Grandparent
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Antigua and Barbuda 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 Antigua and Barbuda to Saint Kitts and Nevis · Residency through ancestry
Descent reaches exactly one generation outside the Federation and then stops. A person born abroad is a citizen at birth only if a parent was, at the date of that birth, a citizen by having been born in Saint Christopher and Nevis - or a citizen serving the Government abroad. A grandchild has nothing: the grandparent provision in section 90(f) of the Constitution applied only to people who were already British citizens or British Dependent Territories citizens immediately before 19 September 1983, and that cohort closed on independence day. There is no residence category for a descendant either. What an adult grandchild of a Kittitian actually has is the ordinary route: fourteen years.
At a glance
- Citizenship by descent abroad
- One generation
Section 91(b) of the Constitution reaches back only to a parent who is a citizen by virtue of section 90(a), which is citizenship acquired by birth in the Federation. A child born abroad to a parent who was themselves born abroad does not qualify.
- Grandparent route
- Closed on 19 September 1983
Section 90(f) conferred citizenship at independence on a person with a Kittitian-born grandparent, but only if that person was already a British citizen or British Dependent Territories citizen immediately before that date. It conferred nothing afterwards.
- Residence category for descendants
- None
The classes of resident in section 6(1) of the Immigration Act contain nothing ancestry-based. The only parent-child provision, section 5(2)(c), runs downwards - a child under eighteen of a resident or citizen - not upwards or sideways.
- Fallback for an adult descendant
- 14 years of residence
Either naturalisation under section 6 and the Second Schedule of the Citizenship Act, or registration under section 92(1)(b) of the Constitution if you are a Commonwealth citizen.
Requirements
- For citizenship at birth abroad: a parent who, at the date of your birth, was a citizen by virtue of having been born in Saint Christopher and Nevis, or a citizen employed in service under the Government and required to reside abroad
- For a grandchild: nothing, unless you were a British citizen or British Dependent Territories citizen immediately before 19 September 1983
- For anyone else with Kittitian ancestry: the ordinary routes - fourteen years of residence, marriage to a citizen, or investment
In detail
Why the grandparent rule is real and gone
It is worth separating two things that look alike. Saint Kitts and Nevis did have a grandparent rule: section 90(f) of the Constitution gave citizenship at independence to a person with a grandparent born in the Federation. But section 90 as a whole operates on 19 September 1983 and on no other day, and it had a second condition - the applicant had to be a British citizen or British Dependent Territories citizen immediately before that date. Anyone who satisfied both became a citizen then. Nobody can satisfy them now. The provision has not been repealed and it still reads as live in the text, which is exactly why it keeps being cited as though it were available.
What the one-generation rule actually cuts off
Section 91(b) is narrower than most descent provisions in this comparison and the narrowness is in a cross-reference. It passes citizenship to a child born abroad only where the parent is a citizen "by virtue of paragraph (a) of section 90" - that is, by having been born in the Federation before independence. The consequence is that the chain cannot repeat: a person who is a citizen under section 91(b) cannot pass citizenship to their own child born abroad. Contrast Italy, where descent runs indefinitely until an ancestor naturalised elsewhere, or Ireland's three generations with registration. Here it is one, and it is keyed to a parent's birthplace rather than to a parent's citizenship.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda
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
«every person born outside Saint Christopher and Nevis if at the date of his or her birth either of his or her parents is, or but for death would have become, a citizen by virtue of paragraph (a) of section 90; and»The cross-reference is the whole limitation. Section 90(a) is the person born in Saint Christopher and Nevis who was a British citizen or British Dependent Territories citizen before independence. A parent who is a citizen under any other head - registration, naturalisation, investment, or section 91(b) itself - does not pass citizenship to a child born abroad.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Prepares the revised editions of Kittitian law and hosts the annual collections of Acts and statutory rules and orders.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for the current state of the citizenship-by-investment rules: it prints the 2011 Regulations as a schedule to the Citizenship Act with no indication they were repealed in 2023. Nor for completeness - the 2020 edition is a supplement of fifty-six chapters rather than a corpus, so absence from it is not evidence that a law does not exist, and the social security and income tax Acts are simply not in it. Nor for anything after a revision's cut-off: the income tax Act it serves is as at 31 December 2002 and prints Omitted because of cut-off date in place of a section. Its annual instrument folders are not exhaustive either; one begins at number five.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«every person born outside Saint Christopher and Nevis if at the date of his or her birth either of his or her parents is, or but for death would have become, a citizen employed in service under the Government or»The second and only other route to citizenship at birth abroad. It is a posting rule, not an ancestry rule.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Prepares the revised editions of Kittitian law and hosts the annual collections of Acts and statutory rules and orders.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for the current state of the citizenship-by-investment rules: it prints the 2011 Regulations as a schedule to the Citizenship Act with no indication they were repealed in 2023. Nor for completeness - the 2020 edition is a supplement of fifty-six chapters rather than a corpus, so absence from it is not evidence that a law does not exist, and the social security and income tax Acts are simply not in it. Nor for anything after a revision's cut-off: the income tax Act it serves is as at 31 December 2002 and prints Omitted because of cut-off date in place of a section. Its annual instrument folders are not exhaustive either; one begins at number five.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«any person who was immediately before 19th September 1983 a British citizen or a British Dependent Territories citizen and one of whose grandparents becomes, or but for death or renunciation of citizenship would have become, a citizen by virtue of paragraph (a) or (b);»The grandparent rule existed and it is spent. Section 90 is headed "Persons who become citizens at independence" and operates on a single day.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Prepares the revised editions of Kittitian law and hosts the annual collections of Acts and statutory rules and orders.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for the current state of the citizenship-by-investment rules: it prints the 2011 Regulations as a schedule to the Citizenship Act with no indication they were repealed in 2023. Nor for completeness - the 2020 edition is a supplement of fifty-six chapters rather than a corpus, so absence from it is not evidence that a law does not exist, and the social security and income tax Acts are simply not in it. Nor for anything after a revision's cut-off: the income tax Act it serves is as at 31 December 2002 and prints Omitted because of cut-off date in place of a section. Its annual instrument folders are not exhaustive either; one begins at number five.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«(c) any person who, having been a citizen, has renounced his or her citizenship;
(d) any person who, but for renunciation of citizenship, would have become a citizen by virtue of section 90;»Quoted to close the list. Section 92(1) sets out the eight heads of entitlement to registration - marriage, fourteen years as a Commonwealth citizen, former citizens, people who renounced, their spouses, certain widowed or divorced spouses, children under eighteen of citizens, and whoever Parliament prescribes. None of them is a descendant of a citizen who is over eighteen.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Prepares the revised editions of Kittitian law and hosts the annual collections of Acts and statutory rules and orders.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for the current state of the citizenship-by-investment rules: it prints the 2011 Regulations as a schedule to the Citizenship Act with no indication they were repealed in 2023. Nor for completeness - the 2020 edition is a supplement of fifty-six chapters rather than a corpus, so absence from it is not evidence that a law does not exist, and the social security and income tax Acts are simply not in it. Nor for anything after a revision's cut-off: the income tax Act it serves is as at 31 December 2002 and prints Omitted because of cut-off date in place of a section. Its annual instrument folders are not exhaustive either; one begins at number five.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«is a child under eighteen years whose father or mother—
(i) is a permanent resident or citizen of Saint Christopher and Nevis residing in Saint Christopher and Nevis;»The only family link in the resident classes, and it runs one way and stops at eighteen. The same shape as Peru, where the nearest category reaches a parent but not an adult child.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Prepares the revised editions of Kittitian law and hosts the annual collections of Acts and statutory rules and orders.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for the current state of the citizenship-by-investment rules: it prints the 2011 Regulations as a schedule to the Citizenship Act with no indication they were repealed in 2023. Nor for completeness - the 2020 edition is a supplement of fifty-six chapters rather than a corpus, so absence from it is not evidence that a law does not exist, and the social security and income tax Acts are simply not in it. Nor for anything after a revision's cut-off: the income tax Act it serves is as at 31 December 2002 and prints Omitted because of cut-off date in place of a section. Its annual instrument folders are not exhaustive either; one begins at number five.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
This is a negative claim. It rests on Chapter VIII of the Constitution - sections 90, 91, 92 and 93 - as printed with the West Indies Act, Cap. 1.01, on sections 3 to 6 and the Second Schedule of the Citizenship Act, Cap. 1.05, and on sections 5 and 6 of the Immigration Act, Cap. 6.02. All were read in full.
Section 92(1)(h) lets Parliament prescribe further persons entitled to registration. An Act doing so would not appear in the Constitution's text, and we did not survey the annual Acts for one. The absence recorded here is an absence in the four instruments named above.
A child under eighteen of a citizen is entitled to be registered under section 92(1)(g) of the Constitution, so a minor's position is entirely different from an adult's. But section 3(11)(m) of the Citizenship Act bars that route to the child of a person who obtained citizenship by investment.
Nothing in this country's law turns on where a grandparent lived, as opposed to where they were born. Material offering a "Saint Kitts ancestry visa" is describing something that does not exist.
- consolidatesSaint Christopher and Nevis Constitution, Chapter VIII, printed with the West Indies Act, Cap. 1.01
Law Commission of Saint Christopher and Nevis · consolidated to 2020-12-31
About this source
Prepares the revised editions of Kittitian law and hosts the annual collections of Acts and statutory rules and orders.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for the current state of the citizenship-by-investment rules: it prints the 2011 Regulations as a schedule to the Citizenship Act with no indication they were repealed in 2023. Nor for completeness - the 2020 edition is a supplement of fifty-six chapters rather than a corpus, so absence from it is not evidence that a law does not exist, and the social security and income tax Acts are simply not in it. Nor for anything after a revision's cut-off: the income tax Act it serves is as at 31 December 2002 and prints Omitted because of cut-off date in place of a section. Its annual instrument folders are not exhaustive either; one begins at number five.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
- consolidatesImmigration Act, Cap. 6.02, Revised Edition showing the law as at 31 December 2020
Law Commission of Saint Christopher and Nevis · consolidated to 2020-12-31
About this source
Prepares the revised editions of Kittitian law and hosts the annual collections of Acts and statutory rules and orders.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for the current state of the citizenship-by-investment rules: it prints the 2011 Regulations as a schedule to the Citizenship Act with no indication they were repealed in 2023. Nor for completeness - the 2020 edition is a supplement of fifty-six chapters rather than a corpus, so absence from it is not evidence that a law does not exist, and the social security and income tax Acts are simply not in it. Nor for anything after a revision's cut-off: the income tax Act it serves is as at 31 December 2002 and prints Omitted because of cut-off date in place of a section. Its annual instrument folders are not exhaustive either; one begins at number five.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source