Saint Lucian descent: two generations since June 2024
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Montserrat 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 Montserrat to Saint Lucia · Residency through ancestry
On 27 June 2024 Saint Lucia extended citizenship by descent from parents to grandparents. The Citizenship of Saint Lucia (Amendment) Act, No. 7 of 2024, rewrote three sections and added a fourth: a person born outside Saint Lucia is a citizen at birth if a father, mother, grandfather or grandmother is a citizen by birth, and a new section 5A sets out how to apply, with a list of documents down to the size of the photographs. This is the single most consequential change to Saint Lucian nationality law in forty years and it is not in the revised edition, which still prints the 1979 Act reaching only to a parent. Two drafting problems sit inside it and a reader should know about both: the substituted section 5 is expressed to apply to a person born after the commencement of the amending Act, which on its face leaves everyone born between 1979 and 2024 outside it; and the substituted section 4(2)(a) reverses the exclusion it replaced, so that the diplomatic-child exception now reads as though it bites when a parent or grandparent is a citizen rather than when none is.
At a glance
- Generations reached
- Twoas of 2024-06-27
Parent or grandparent. Before Act 7 of 2024 the Act reached a parent only.
- In force
- 27 June 2024
The date printed on the face of the Act. Assent was given the same day.
- Stamp on the application
- EC$11.50 for a child
EC$25 for a person other than a child. Section 5A(2)(e). The application fee itself is prescribed and we have not read the instrument prescribing it.
- Certificate of character
- Issued within the last six months
From the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force or from a country where the applicant lived continuously for three years before applying.
- Photographs
- Four, 2cm by 2cm
Certified by a Notary Royal within six months of being taken. Saint Lucia's civil law inheritance shows here: a Notary Royal is not a notary public.
- Whether anyone born 1979 to 2024 is covered
- Unclear on the face of the Act
The substituted section 5 applies to a person born after the commencement of this Act. The old section 5, which applied to anyone born after the appointed date, was deleted. Section 5A nonetheless creates a general application process for citizenship by descent. We record the tension rather than resolve it.
Requirements
- A father, mother, grandfather or grandmother who is a citizen of Saint Lucia by birth
- An application in the prescribed form, which an attorney-at-law may make on the applicant's behalf
- Birth certificate, passport whether valid or expired, and four passport-sized photographs 2cm by 2cm certified by a Notary Royal within the last six months
- A certificate of character from the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, or from any country lived in for three continuous years before applying, issued within the last six months
- The birth certificate of the parent or grandparent relied on, and a marriage certificate or divorce decree where relevant
- A letter of clearance from the Inland Revenue Department
- A stamp of EC$11.50 for a child or EC$25 for anyone else, and the prescribed application fee
In detail
What the 2024 Act did
Four operative sections. Section 3 of the amending Act added grandparents to the independence-date provision. Section 4 substituted the whole of section 4, on citizenship by birth in Saint Lucia. Section 5 substituted section 5, on birth outside Saint Lucia, adding grandparents and requiring that the ancestor be a citizen by birth rather than a citizen of any kind - which closes the chain so that a person naturalised here cannot pass citizenship to a grandchild born abroad. Section 6 inserted section 5A, which is a procedural code: who may apply, through whom, with what documents, with what certification, and what to do if a document is not in English.
Two problems in the text
The first is a date. The old section 5 applied to a person born outside Saint Lucia after the appointed date, meaning after independence on 22 February 1979. The new one applies to a person born after the commencement of this Act. Since the old section was deleted, a person born abroad in 1990 to a Saint Lucian mother is not covered by either section on a literal reading, and section 3(2) does not help them because it is about people who were alive and connected in 1979. The second is a negative. The old section 4 said a person born here does not become a citizen if neither parent is a citizen and the father has diplomatic immunity. The new section 4(2)(a) says they do not become a citizen if a parent or grandparent is a citizen and the father or grandfather has immunity, which is the opposite rule and cannot have been meant. Neither has been corrected in anything published since.
How this compares
Grenada reaches a grandparent through section 5A of its Citizenship Act, inserted in 2016 and invisible in its revised edition. Saint Kitts and Nevis reaches a parent. Saint Lucia now reaches a grandparent too, and does it with an application procedure written into the statute rather than left to a form. The document list is also the strictest of the three: a tax clearance, a police certificate from every country of three years' residence, and photographs certified by a Notary Royal within six months.
Country-level policy
Saint Lucia publishes its statute book at a .com address, and that address is not a republication of the law - it is the law. The Revised Edition of the Laws Act, Cap. 1.07 lets the Attorney General declare a revised edition in force by Order after Parliament has resolved to authorise it, and from that moment the edition is, in the Act's own words carried into the Order, the sole authentic edition. The current edition is the 2023 Supplement, brought into force on 22 July 2025. That is both better and worse than it sounds: better, because the text is authentic rather than merely helpful; worse, because it is authentic as at 2023 and the pages say nothing about the three years since. The Citizenship of Saint Lucia Act printed there does not contain the grandparent descent route enacted in June 2024. The Immigration Act printed there does not contain section 22A, the fee-waiver power enacted in July 2024 and used twice in 2025. The Citizenship by Investment Regulations printed there show a National Economic Fund minimum of US$100,000, which stopped being the law on 1 July 2024.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Montserrat
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 person born outside Saint Lucia after the commencement of this Act becomes a citizen at the date of his or her birth if, at that date, his or her father, mother, grandfather or grandmother is a citizen by birth.»Two changes in one sentence. Grandparents are added; and the trigger moves from "after the appointed date", which meant independence in 1979, to "after the commencement of this Act", which means 27 June 2024. Read literally the second change takes away from everyone born in the intervening forty-five years what the first gives.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
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«A person or an attorney-at law on behalf of a person may make an application for citizenship by descent in the prescribed form.»The general application route, with no date limit in it. It is the strongest textual reason to think the limitation in the substituted section 5 was not intended.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«A person born outside Saint Lucia shall become a citizen on the appointed date, if prior to that date his or her father, mother, grandfather or grandmother becomes or would, but for his or her death or renunciation of the citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies, have become a citizen under subsection (1).»The same extension applied to the independence-date cohort, and here the drafting is clean: it reaches back to 1979 and adds grandparents to it.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«(a) his or her father, mother, grandfather or grandmother is a citizen of Saint Lucia, and his or her father or grandfather possesses immunity from legal proceedings as is accorded to the envoy of a foreign country accredited to Saint Lucia;»The provision it replaced began "neither of his or her parents is a citizen of Saint Lucia". Dropping the negative inverts it: as enacted, the child of a diplomat is excluded from citizenship by birth precisely when a parent or grandparent is Saint Lucian. We record what the Act says.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«(iv) a Certificate of Character, issued within the last six months of making an application under subsection (1), from —»Followed by the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force or a country in which the person resided for a continuous period of three years before applying.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«(d) a letter of clearance from the Inland Revenue Department;»A tax clearance as a condition of claiming citizenship by descent is unusual, and it applies to an applicant who may never have lived in Saint Lucia.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«(iii) four passport-sized photographs sized 2cm. by 2cm. and certified by a Notary Royal, within six months after taking the photographs,»The Notary Royal is a survival of French law in a common-law jurisdiction and the office still exists in Saint Lucia.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«A person born outside Saint Lucia after the appointed date shall become a citizen at the date of his or her birth if at the latter date his or her father or mother is a citizen otherwise than by virtue of this section or section 3(2).»The section as the authentic consolidated text still prints it: one generation, and the trigger is the appointed date in 1979. This is what a reader of the official statute book is told today, two years after Act 7 of 2024 replaced it.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Revised Laws of Saint Lucia, published by the Legislative Drafting Department of the Attorney General's Chambers as a data bank reached by remote computer. It is not a convenience copy of the statute book: the Revised Edition of the Laws Act, Cap. 1.07 lets a revised edition exist in that form (s. 4(2)(e)), requires a Resolution of Parliament before the Attorney General may bring one into force (s. 10(4)), and provides that what results is, in all courts of justice and for all purposes whatsoever, the sole authentic edition of the laws (s. 10(5)). Knowingly altering it to deceive is an offence. Arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and printing on its face the in-force date of the principal Act and of every amending Act and Statutory Instrument - which neither the Grenadian nor the Vincentian portal does, and which is what makes a commencement question answerable here.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must never be cited for what the law is now. The current edition is the 2023 Supplement, in force 22 July 2025 by S.I. 112 of 2025, and the masthead says only 'Revised Laws of Saint Lucia (2023)' - nothing on any page says anything is missing. The Citizenship of Saint Lucia Act printed there reaches a parent and not a grandparent, because Act 7 of 2024 is not in it. The Immigration Act printed there has no section 22A, because Act 10 of 2024 is not in it, so the two 2025 fee-waiver Orders rest on a power the edition does not show. The Citizenship by Investment Regulations printed there show a National Economic Fund minimum of US$100,000, amended to S.I. 162 of 2023 and no further; the figure in force since 1 July 2024 is US$240,000 and three later instruments are invisible. It must also not be relied on for reachability: on 5 October 2026 roughly a third of section addresses answered with the publisher's own 'The page can't be found' or a content-management login page while serving the real text to a plain request, including the Immigration Act interpretation and entry sections, every Schedule to the Immigration (Visa) Order, the whole Citizenship of Saint Lucia Act, the whole Labour Act, the Income Tax Act interpretation section, and every operative section of both customs Acts. A negative claim must never be made from a page that would not load. It is also not the publisher of record for anything gazetted after the revision: that is the National Printing Corporation.
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Practical notes
The Act is on the National Printing Corporation's site as enacted. The consolidated Citizenship of Saint Lucia Act on the Attorney General's Chambers site is stored and quoted, and it does not contain the 2024 amendment: its section 5 still reaches a father or mother only and still runs from the appointed date.
Nothing in the Act or in section 5A says how long a decision takes or what it costs beyond the stamp. The application fee is prescribed and we have not read the prescribing instrument.
The substituted section 5 requires the ancestor to be "a citizen by birth". A grandparent who was registered or naturalised, rather than born a citizen, does not satisfy it.
- issuesCitizenship of Saint Lucia (Amendment) Act, No. 7 of 2024
National Printing Corporation, Saint Lucia
About this source
The Government printer. Prints the Gazette and publishes Acts and Statutory Instruments as enacted, year by year, as individual PDFs. This is the only place a Saint Lucian instrument later than the 2023 Supplement can be read, and it is where the amendments that matter most live: the grandparent descent route, the immigration fee-waiver power, the ECCIRA Act, the 2026 income tax changes.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: A printer, not a consolidator. Everything here is text as enacted: it shows what an Act did to another Act, never what the amended Act now says, and it is on the reader to apply it to the Chapter. It must not be cited for the current state of any provision. Its documents sit on opaque base64 download addresses whose contents cannot be guessed from the URL, so there is no way to reach an instrument you know the number of without opening the year listing and finding it - and a listing paginates, so reading only the first page loses instruments. It must also not be cited for completeness: the listings are the printer's record of what it printed, not a register of what is in force, and nothing on a PDF says whether a commencement Order has been made. Its print of a section number renders an em dash as a Chinese character, so a reading of it will carry foreign glyphs that are a font mapping and not an extraction fault.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
- consolidatesCitizenship of Saint Lucia Act, Cap. 1.04, section 5 as printed in the revised edition
Attorney General's Chambers, Saint Lucia · consolidated to 2023
About this source
The Revised Laws of Saint Lucia, published by the Legislative Drafting Department of the Attorney General's Chambers as a data bank reached by remote computer. It is not a convenience copy of the statute book: the Revised Edition of the Laws Act, Cap. 1.07 lets a revised edition exist in that form (s. 4(2)(e)), requires a Resolution of Parliament before the Attorney General may bring one into force (s. 10(4)), and provides that what results is, in all courts of justice and for all purposes whatsoever, the sole authentic edition of the laws (s. 10(5)). Knowingly altering it to deceive is an offence. Arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and printing on its face the in-force date of the principal Act and of every amending Act and Statutory Instrument - which neither the Grenadian nor the Vincentian portal does, and which is what makes a commencement question answerable here.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must never be cited for what the law is now. The current edition is the 2023 Supplement, in force 22 July 2025 by S.I. 112 of 2025, and the masthead says only 'Revised Laws of Saint Lucia (2023)' - nothing on any page says anything is missing. The Citizenship of Saint Lucia Act printed there reaches a parent and not a grandparent, because Act 7 of 2024 is not in it. The Immigration Act printed there has no section 22A, because Act 10 of 2024 is not in it, so the two 2025 fee-waiver Orders rest on a power the edition does not show. The Citizenship by Investment Regulations printed there show a National Economic Fund minimum of US$100,000, amended to S.I. 162 of 2023 and no further; the figure in force since 1 July 2024 is US$240,000 and three later instruments are invisible. It must also not be relied on for reachability: on 5 October 2026 roughly a third of section addresses answered with the publisher's own 'The page can't be found' or a content-management login page while serving the real text to a plain request, including the Immigration Act interpretation and entry sections, every Schedule to the Immigration (Visa) Order, the whole Citizenship of Saint Lucia Act, the whole Labour Act, the Income Tax Act interpretation section, and every operative section of both customs Acts. A negative claim must never be made from a page that would not load. It is also not the publisher of record for anything gazetted after the revision: that is the National Printing Corporation.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source