Suriname

The Vreemdelingenwet 1991 gives a visitor who needs no visa three months, and everyone else eight days unless a visa says otherwise. The Vreemdelingenbesluit 1995 then requires a valid passport carrying a transit visa, a travel visa for a stay of up to three months, or an authorisation for short stay for anything longer. The Act itself names no country: who needs a visa is a ministerial matter, and since 1 July 2022 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a unilateral waiver for tourism and family visits up to ninety days, with a named list of twenty-one countries it does not apply to. The waiver is not free. Every traveller it covers pays an entry fee of USD 50 or EUR 50, plus a USD 8 or EUR 8 service fee to the contractor that collects it, and pays it again on every entry. Holders of a CARICOM passport are among the ten groups exempt from the fee.

There is no residence category in Suriname for someone living on income from abroad, and no threshold to meet, because there are no categories at all. The Vreemdelingenwet 1991 creates a residence permit of at most two years and a settlement permit, and leaves the grounds for both to the Minister: the purpose of the stay appears as a limitation written onto the permit rather than as a route with published conditions. Means of support matter twice - as a condition of lawful presence under article 6(2)(c), and as a ground for withdrawing a permit under article 12(b) when the holder no longer has them - but nothing in the Act or the regulation names a figure. The application is lodged either at the Ministry of Justice and Police or at a Surinamese mission abroad, and a person who is in Suriname as a tourist cannot lodge it at all.

Suriname has no pension or retirement residence category. The Vreemdelingenwet 1991 names no categories at all, and the aliens department's list of application types contains nothing for a retired person. What it does contain is the remigrant: a person living abroad who wishes to return under the remigration provision of the Sociale Verzekeringsbank, who applies as an alien of Surinamese origin and selects remigrant as the means of support. That route is open by descent, not by age, and is a variant of the Surinamese-origin application rather than a route of its own. Anyone else retiring to Suriname applies for the ordinary residence permit of at most two years and satisfies the Minister on means of support.

The Wet Werkvergunning Vreemdelingen 1981 forbids an employer to make an alien work without a permit from the Director of Labour. The duty and the offence both sit on the employer, not on the worker. A permit is applied for jointly by employer and alien, names both the alien and the undertaking, and is treated as not applied for at all unless the alien already holds, or has applied for, a residence permit valid for work - so the immigration file comes first and the labour file second. A labour-market test applies: a permit may be refused where supply exists or can reasonably be expected. Two things sit outside the Act. Persons from whom a work permit may not be required under a treaty or a binding decision of an international organisation are excluded by article 2, which is where the CARICOM skilled national lands; and holders of PSA status may work without the permit by their own Act. Since 1 December 2022 the fee is USD 100 or the equivalent in Surinamese dollars, and the amending Act says why: the 2004 redenomination had turned the old charge into SRD 75.

Suriname grants no residence for investing. What the Investeringswet 2001 does instead is rarer and in some ways stronger: where the Minister of Finance grants a facility under the Act, article 15 provides that the competent authority shall also grant a permit for residence and settlement of foreign personnel, for employment of foreign personnel, for establishment of an undertaking, and for import and export of goods and services. The immigration consequence is statutory rather than discretionary, and compliance with it is policed by the aliens department of the Ministry of Justice and Police. It attaches to the enterprise and its personnel, not to the investor as a person, and there is no qualifying amount: the facilities are open to investment in named sectors, with a separate regime for investments of at least the equivalent of USD 50 million and for bauxite, hydrocarbons, gold and radioactive minerals.

There is no student residence permit in Surinamese law, because the Vreemdelingenwet 1991 creates no categories. A student applies for the ordinary residence permit of at most two years, with study written onto it as the purpose under article 11(3). What is specific to students is at the border rather than in the permit: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that people travelling for an internship, business or work-related purposes remain subject to the visa requirement, so the unilateral waiver that covers tourism and family visits does not cover them. For a stay longer than three months the authorisation for short stay must be obtained at a Surinamese mission before travelling, or through the contractor's online short-stay application, and registration with the aliens police follows within eight days of arrival and the residence application within fourteen.

No other country in the records here has a standalone Act for its diaspora; what the others have, where they have anything, is a returning-resident customs scheme. The Wet PSA of 2014 creates the status of Persoon van Surinaamse Afkomst for anyone who is not a Surinamese national and was born in Suriname, or has at least one parent born in Suriname, or at least one grandparent born in Suriname. The status is activated by asking for it at an embassy, consulate or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; what comes back is a PSA document valid for five years. A holder who is not resident may travel to Suriname from anywhere in the world on the document without a tourist card or any other admission document, stay six months, extend by six at the aliens department, register as a resident at any point inside those windows, and - this is the striking part - work during the stay without the work permit an alien needs. Registering as a resident produces a PSA card, which the Act calls the valid proof of residence, and with it indefinite stay until the holder deregisters on leaving. Family members who have no claim of their own get a document of their own for as long as the family relationship lasts. Alongside it the aliens department operates a separate administrative category of alien of Surinamese origin under a 2016 ministerial instruction.

The nationality law gives a marriage route that is not a residence route at all but a route straight to nationality, and it is written in one direction only. Article 12 provides that a non-Surinamese woman whose husband was Surinamese when the marriage was contracted acquires Surinamese nationality by declaring her will to that effect to the Procurator-General, provided the marriage subsists on the day of the declaration and the man is still Surinamese. There is no corresponding provision for a husband. The aliens department applies it as an option right of marriage available to aliens who can show they have been married to a Surinamese national for at least two years, which is both wider than the statute in the sex of the applicant and narrower in requiring a duration the statute does not mention. For residence as such there is no spouse permit: a spouse applies for the ordinary residence permit and, after at least a year of it, may join the holder of a settlement permit or a Surinamese national on a co-settlement.

Suriname draws the skills certificate line in a place none of the other eight countries draws it. Its Wet Bekwame Burgers van de Caraibische Gemeenschap of 2006 says nothing at all about how long anyone may enter or stay. What it regulates is recognition of status and what recognition does to the labour market: a national of another member state whose status is recognised shall not, notwithstanding any other law, be subject to a restriction on the right to enter the labour market to which a Surinamese national is not subject. Recognition takes one of two forms depending on where the certificate came from - the Minister of Labour issues one where the applicant has none from another member state, and authenticates the applicant's existing certificate where he has. That is the issuer distinction, but it decides the paperwork rather than the period, and the holder of another state's certificate already has labour-market access during the short stay while recognition is pending. Entry, duration and settlement are left entirely to the ordinary aliens law, and the six-month short stay a CARICOM national actually receives at the border comes from the aliens department rather than from any instrument. There is no schedule of qualifying states: article 3 leaves it to the Minister to announce which member states count, and we did not find the announcement. On the right of establishment there is no implementing Act at all - and under articles 105 and 106 of the Constitution Suriname may not need one, because treaty provisions that can bind everyone have binding force once published and displace any inconsistent statute.

Suriname does not naturalise by decision. Article 8(1) of the nationality law provides that Surinamese nationality by naturalisation is acquired by the entry into force of an Act granting it, and the aliens department describes how that is done in practice: applications are compiled into a collective schedule of fifty persons, laid before the National Assembly, debated in public session, confirmed by the President and published. The qualifying condition is five years of domicile or main residence, or loss of Surinamese nationality, or birth in Suriname to parents of no or unknown nationality. Two routes avoid Parliament. A person born in Suriname, a former Surinamese national, or a person born abroad to a parent born in Suriname may be granted nationality by the President under article 16a, provided they have domicile or main residence in Suriname on the day of the request; the aliens department calls this naturalisation by resolution. And a child born in Suriname to a parent living there becomes Surinamese automatically at eighteen after three years of residence, unless the child opts out in the preceding year.

Suriname taxes residents on worldwide income and non-residents on Surinamese-source income only. The charging provision is article 1 of the Inkomstenbelasting 1922: income tax is levied from domestic and foreign taxpayers, and a natural person who lives in Suriname is a domestic taxpayer. Article 4 charges the resident on his zuiver inkomen with no geographic limitation, while article 26 charges the non-resident on binnenlands zuiver inkomen and article 27 defines the domestic sources it is made of. The residence test is the striking part, and a reader arriving from a day-count jurisdiction will look for the wrong thing: article 3(1) says where someone lives is judged according to the circumstances. There is no 183-day rule in the Act. Two deeming rules sit beside it - a person who returns to live in Suriname within a year of leaving, without having lived elsewhere in between, is treated as having lived in Suriname throughout the absence, and a Surinamese national abroad in the service of a Surinamese public-law body is treated as living in Suriname, with spouse and resident minor children. The Wet Fiscale Jurisdictie of 2023 confirms the geographical reach of the taxing power out to the continental shelf; it is about territory, not about a territorial basis of taxation.

The rule a foreigner meets at a Surinamese bank counter is the Wet Identificatieplicht Dienstverleners of 2002. It obliges every service provider to establish the true identity of the client before providing a financial service, and lists what will do it for a natural person: a valid driving licence under the Rijwet 1971, a valid identity card, a valid travel document, or another valid document from the client's country of origin that satisfies that country's legal requirements. That last limb is the one that matters here. The statute does not require a Surinamese document, a residence permit, a Surinamese address or any immigration status at all; it requires that the identity be established and recorded, and it accepts a foreign document for the purpose. Name, address, place of residence, telephone number, date of birth, nationality, occupation and where relevant the employer are recorded, along with the type, number, date and place of issue of whatever document was used.

The Wet Nationale Basiszorgverzekering of 2014 makes basic health insurance compulsory for every ingezetene, and it defines ingezetene more broadly than any other Surinamese statute: anyone who has his domicile, main residence or actual residence in Suriname. Nationality does not appear in the definition and neither does a residence permit. A foreigner who is in fact living in Suriname is inside the scheme, must take out at least the basic cover, and where employed has the premium split equally with the employer unless they agree otherwise, with the employee's share never exceeding the employer's. The Act prices the cover by age band and caps individual treatments by amount, and it says those figures are the maxima at its entry into force and may be changed by State decree, so the 2014 numbers in the text are a floor on how out of date they can be rather than a statement of what is charged now.

Driving in Suriname is governed by the Rijwet 1971, and the National Assembly's collection of legislation does not contain it. What the collection carries are two instruments that amend it - an Act of 18 December 1989 amending the Rijwet 1971 and the Code of Criminal Procedure, and a decree on motor vehicle liability insurance and the Rijwet 1971 - and the 1989 entry has no document attached to its page at all. The existence and the article structure of the Rijwet are confirmed from outside it: the Wet Identificatieplicht Dienstverleners of 2002 identifies a client by, among other things, a valid driving licence as referred to in article 7(1)(3) of the Rijwet 1971. We therefore know the Act is in force and that it issues driving licences under article 7, and we cannot say from a document we have read what it requires of a foreign licence holder, how long one may drive on a foreign or international licence, or on what terms a licence is exchanged.

The Wet Goederenverkeer of 2003 states the starting position in one sentence: trade in goods with abroad is free, subject to measures that may be taken by State decree on grounds such as public order, security, health and the environment, and to a negative list of goods whose import or export is prohibited, requires a licence or gets special treatment. That is the rule about whether goods may come in at all. What it does not touch is duty, and the relief a person moving to Suriname would look for - exemption for household effects, for a vehicle, for the tools of a trade - sits in the Wet Tarief van Invoerrechten 1996, which the National Assembly's collection does not publish. The collection carries amendments to the tariff list and an Act amending the 1996 Act, not the 1996 Act itself. The only duty relief we could read is the investment one: a facility granted under the Investeringswet 2001 brings with it a permit for import and export of goods and services, policed by the import, export and foreign exchange control service.