Living on Foreign Income in Saint Kitts and Nevis
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Grenada 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 Grenada to Saint Kitts and Nevis · Residency on passive income
There is no income visa. The Immigration Act lists six classes of resident and none of them is granted on the strength of money arriving from abroad. Means appear twice in the Act, but never on their own: once as part of the test for someone who is likely to establish himself in a profession, trade, business or agricultural enterprise, and once in the permanent-residence route for someone who intends to retire here. A person with a remote salary and no Kittitian employer, no business here and no intention to retire falls outside both. What such a person actually has is the visitor permit, which runs to six months and can be extended to six years from entry - long enough that the question rarely gets asked.
At a glance
- Income or passive-income residence permit
- None
Section 6(1) sets out the classes of resident exhaustively - permanent, annual, temporary, work permit holder, approved CARICOM citizen, citizen of a Protocol Member State. None of them is granted for having an income.
- Minimum income threshold
- None stated anywhere in the Act
Where the Act asks for means it asks for "sufficient" means and leaves sufficiency to the Minister. No figure appears in the Act or in the Immigration Regulations.
- Nearest thing to a route
- Visitor permit, up to 6 years from entry
Section 14(4)(a) writes "a maximum of six years from the date of the entry". It is a visitor permit, not residence, and it carries no right to work.
- Digital-nomad visa
- Not in the Act or its Regulations
Several Caribbean states created one by regulation after 2020. Nothing of the kind appears in the Immigration Act as consolidated to 2020 or in the Immigration Regulations printed with it, and we found no later instrument.
Requirements
- There is no category to apply under: the Act's six classes of resident are closed and none is income-based
- If you intend to establish yourself here in a profession, trade, business or agricultural enterprise, resident status under section 5(2)(b)(iii) asks for sufficient means to support yourself and your dependants until you have done so - the means qualify the enterprise, they do not replace it
- If you intend to retire here, the permanent-residence route in section 6(2)(b) asks for sufficient assets and means of support - see the retirement record
- Otherwise, entry as a visitor under section 14, with no employment and no occupation in the Federation
In detail
An absence, and how far it is bounded
Saying a country has no income route is a claim about a closed list, so the list has to be closed and it has to have been read. Section 6(1) of the Immigration Act enumerates six classes of resident and section 5(2) enumerates the grounds on which the Minister may grant resident status. Both were read in full in the Law Commission's consolidation to 31 December 2020, together with the Immigration Regulations of 1947 printed as the Third Schedule. Neither contains a category defined by income, by pension, by remote employment or by investment held abroad. What we cannot close is section 5(2)(d): the Minister may prescribe further categories by Order, and an Order is subsidiary legislation published separately from the Act. We searched the Law Commission's annual Statutory Rules and Orders for 2023, 2024 and 2025 and found none creating a residence category; the 2025 folder, however, lists only sixteen files beginning at number 5, so that search is not exhaustive and this record does not claim it is.
Why the question is less pressing here
In most of this comparison the absence of an income route is a real obstacle, because a visitor gets ninety or a hundred and eighty days and then has to leave or convert. Saint Kitts and Nevis is different in degree. Section 14 lets an officer admit a visitor for up to six months at a time, and section 14(4) lets the Chief Immigration Officer extend a permit, with the Minister's approval, up to six years from the date of entry. Someone living on foreign income is not thereby a resident - they hold no status, acquire no path to permanent residence or citizenship from the time, and may not work - but the practical pressure to find a category is lower than it is in Lima or Bogotá.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Grenada
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
«For the purposes of this Act, there shall be the following classes of residents, that is to say—
(a) permanent residents;
(b) annual residents;
(c) temporary residents;
(d) work permit holder residents;
(e) approved CARICOM citizens;»Paragraph (f), citizen of a Protocol Member State, was added by Act 1 of 2012 and follows an editorial note in the printed text. The list is closed: a person who is not in one of these six classes is not a resident for the purposes of the Act.
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 likely to establish himself or herself successfully in Saint Christopher and Nevis in a profession, trade, business or agricultural enterprise and has sufficient means to support himself or herself and his or her dependants in Saint Christopher and Nevis until he or she has so established himself or herself;»The missed condition here is the one that matters: the means are there to carry you until the enterprise stands up. Strip the enterprise out and the test becomes "has money", which is not what the paragraph says.
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
«because of his or her education, occupational qualifications, personal history, employment record, training skills or other special qualification»Everything in section 5(2)(b) hangs off this opening. What qualifies a person for resident status is what they can do, not what they receive.
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
«falls under a category prescribed by Order by the Minister.»The door the Act leaves open. A new category - an income route, a remote-worker route - would be made by Ministerial Order rather than by amending the Act, so the absence recorded here is an absence of Orders we could find as well as an absence in the Act.
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 and it rests on four documents: the Immigration Act Cap. 6.02 as consolidated to 31 December 2020 including its Second and Third Schedules, the Saint Christopher and Nevis Citizenship Act Cap. 1.05 and its Fifth Schedule, the Citizenship by Substantial Investment Regulations 2024 as amended, and Chapter VIII of the Constitution. It does not rest on an exhaustive reading of every Statutory Rule and Order ever made under section 33.
Guidance written by firms selling citizenship frequently describes Saint Kitts and Nevis as having "no residency requirement". That is a statement about the citizenship-by-investment programme, which indeed asks for no residence, and it is not a statement that a residence category exists for people with income. The two get run together constantly.
A person who does acquire citizenship by investment has solved this question by skipping it. The route to live here on foreign income without investing is the visitor permit, and the route with investing is citizenship - there is nothing of the usual middle kind between them.
- 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
- consolidatesSaint Christopher and Nevis Citizenship Act, Cap. 1.05, 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