Country-wide policy
The Parts of the 2022 CARICOM Act the President Did Not Proclaim
Act No. 9 of 2022 was brought into operation on 28 February 2023 by Proclamation, and the Proclamation is partial. It names sections 1 through 10, section 11(a), (b) and (c) limited to the subparagraphs (2)(a) and (2A)(b), section 12, sections 14 through 19, and section 20(a) and (b) as to Schedules III and IV. What it does not name is section 13, which would have given the spouse of a six-month entrant the right to work without a work permit, and it does not name the part of section 20(b) that inserts Schedule V, which prescribes the skills certificate fees of $750 to apply, $400 to renew and $1,000 to replace. The holes line up: section 11(c) was proclaimed only as to the subparagraphs that do not mention Schedule V, so the fee machinery was held back as a piece. The consequence is a live dangling reference - section 7C(2), which is in force, requires an applicant for a replacement certificate to pay the fee prescribed in paragraph (c) of Schedule V, and paragraph (c) has not commenced.
Topics it changes
At a glance
- Act
- Immigration (Caribbean Community Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act, 2022 (Act No. 9 of 2022)
- Assented
- 17 June 2022
The date on the face of Act No. 9 of 2022, which carries the words Assented to 17th June, 2022.
- In force
- 28 February 2023 (in part)
The Proclamation fixes the 28th day of February, 2023 as the date on which the listed sections come into operation.
- Instrument
- Proclamation No. 3 of 2023 (Legal Notice No. 70 of 2023)
Published in Legal Supplement Part B to the Trinidad and Tobago Gazette of 27 February 2023.
- Section 13 - spouse's right to work without a permit
- Not proclaimed
- Schedule V - certificate fees
- Not proclaimed
- Section 11(c)
- Proclaimed only in part
Only the inserted subsections (2)(a) and (2A)(b) were brought into force; the two paragraphs that mention Schedule V were not.
Reading a partial proclamation
The Proclamation lists what comes into force rather than what does not, so the gaps have to be found by subtraction against the Act as enacted. The Act has twenty sections. Proclaimed: 1 to 10, 11(a), 11(b), 11(c) as to the inserted subsections (2)(a) and (2A)(b), 12, 14 to 19, and 20(a) and 20(b) as to Schedules III and IV. Omitted: section 13 entirely, the remainder of section 11(c), and the Schedule V limb of section 20(b). Section 11(c) repeals and replaces section 8(2) of the principal Act with a new subsection (2) in two paragraphs and a new subsection (2A) in two paragraphs. The paragraphs brought into force are (2)(a), which requires registration and certification by an approved competent body, and (2A)(b), which lets the Minister approve such a body. The paragraphs left out are (2)(b), which requires payment of the fee prescribed in paragraph (b) of Schedule V, and (2A)(a), which would let the Minister amend Schedule V. That is a deliberate and coherent hold: everything that mentions the fee schedule stayed out, along with the fee schedule itself.
What it leaves broken
Section 10 of the Act inserts sections 7A, 7B and 7C into the principal Act, and section 10 is in force. Section 7C(2) provides that a person whose certificate is lost, stolen, mutilated or destroyed may apply to the CSME Registrar for a replacement on furnishing satisfactory proof and shall pay the fee prescribed in paragraph (c) of Schedule V. Paragraph (c) of Schedule V is the TT$1,000 replacement fee, and it has not commenced. The provision requiring payment is in force and the provision prescribing the amount is not.
What the law says
«And whereas it is expedient that sections 1 through 10, section 11(a),
(b), (c) (“(2)(a) and (2A)(b)”), section 12, sections 14 through 19
and section 20(a) and (b) Schedules III and IV of the Act come into
operation:»About this source
The Government's legislative database at laws.gov.tt. It carries three things nothing else does: a chronological list of Legal Notices and Government Notices from 1838 to 2026, each downloadable as the Government Printer's PDF of the Legal Supplement; an alphabetical and chronological register of Acts and Ordinances from 1838 to 2026 with commencement dates; and lists of Acts by status, including unproclaimed Acts. This is where the Proclamation bringing parts of the 2022 CARICOM Act into force, the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Immigration Regulations amendments, the work permit exemption Orders and every Finance Act from 2017 to 2026 were read. Documents are reached by a numeric download identifier rather than by name.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: Its consolidated Acts are the same edition as the Law Revision Commission's, updated to 31 December 2016, and it labels its own post-2006 versions Unofficial Update; it must not be cited for the current text of any Act. Its Unproclaimed Acts page is captioned Acts not in operation as at December 2015 and must not be read as current. Its download addresses are opaque numeric identifiers with no relation to the Act or Notice number, so an instrument cannot be reached without going through a listing first, and the year filter on the legal notices page works only by HTTP POST - a year in the query string is silently ignored and the current year is served instead, which is how a reading can appear to cover 2023 and in fact cover 2026. Its full-text search returns results in a sidebar without the document, so an apparently empty result is not evidence of absence.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«do
hereby fix the 28th day of February, 2023, as the date on which sections
1 through 10, section 11(a), (b), (c) (“(2)(a) and (2A)(b)”), section 12, sections
14 through 19 and section 20(a) and (b) Schedules III and IV of the Act
come into operation.»About this source
The Government's legislative database at laws.gov.tt. It carries three things nothing else does: a chronological list of Legal Notices and Government Notices from 1838 to 2026, each downloadable as the Government Printer's PDF of the Legal Supplement; an alphabetical and chronological register of Acts and Ordinances from 1838 to 2026 with commencement dates; and lists of Acts by status, including unproclaimed Acts. This is where the Proclamation bringing parts of the 2022 CARICOM Act into force, the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Immigration Regulations amendments, the work permit exemption Orders and every Finance Act from 2017 to 2026 were read. Documents are reached by a numeric download identifier rather than by name.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: Its consolidated Acts are the same edition as the Law Revision Commission's, updated to 31 December 2016, and it labels its own post-2006 versions Unofficial Update; it must not be cited for the current text of any Act. Its Unproclaimed Acts page is captioned Acts not in operation as at December 2015 and must not be read as current. Its download addresses are opaque numeric identifiers with no relation to the Act or Notice number, so an instrument cannot be reached without going through a listing first, and the year filter on the legal notices page works only by HTTP POST - a year in the query string is silently ignored and the current year is served instead, which is how a reading can appear to cover 2023 and in fact cover 2026. Its full-text search returns results in a sidebar without the document, so an apparently empty result is not evidence of absence.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«13. Section 10 of the Act is amended, by inserting Section 10 amended
after subsection (2), the following subsection:
“(2A) For the period of the duration of a
permission under section 3(1), the spouse to
whom section 3 applies shall, notwithstanding
the provisions of any other law but subject to
sections 4 and 15, have the right to work in
Trinidad and Tobago without the need to
obtain a work permit.”.»Not in the Proclamation. The spouse of a six-month entrant therefore has no statutory right to work.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The legislature's own site, publishing every Bill and every Act as printed in the Legal Supplement Part A to the Gazette, with the assent date, the Act number, the commencement section and the dates of passage in each House on the face of the document. Files sit under a WordPress uploads path named a<year>-<number>.pdf, sometimes with a g suffix where the Gazette imprint is included. Act No. 9 of 2022 and the Law Revision (Amendment) Act, 2026 were read here.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments as enacted and does not consolidate, so an Act read here is the amending Act and its section numbering is its own rather than that of the law that results. It must never be cited for the current state of a provision. It says nothing about whether an Act whose commencement is left to Proclamation has been proclaimed - for that the Legal Notices are the record - and an Act on this site is therefore not evidence that any of it is in force. The upload directory in the path bears no relation to the date of the Act, so a document cannot be found by constructing its address from the Act number and year.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«NON-REFUNDABLE APPLICATION, RENEWAL AND
REPLACEMENT FEES FOR SKILLS CERTIFICATE
(a) Application for a certificate …………………….………....… $750
(b) Renewal of a certificate …………………………….…...…… $400
(c) Replacement of a lost, stolen or mutilated
certificate ………….......................................................… $1000»Section 20(b) inserts Schedules III, IV and V in one paragraph. The Proclamation brought section 20(b) into force as to Schedules III and IV only.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The legislature's own site, publishing every Bill and every Act as printed in the Legal Supplement Part A to the Gazette, with the assent date, the Act number, the commencement section and the dates of passage in each House on the face of the document. Files sit under a WordPress uploads path named a<year>-<number>.pdf, sometimes with a g suffix where the Gazette imprint is included. Act No. 9 of 2022 and the Law Revision (Amendment) Act, 2026 were read here.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments as enacted and does not consolidate, so an Act read here is the amending Act and its section numbering is its own rather than that of the law that results. It must never be cited for the current state of a provision. It says nothing about whether an Act whose commencement is left to Proclamation has been proclaimed - for that the Legal Notices are the record - and an Act on this site is therefore not evidence that any of it is in force. The upload directory in the path bears no relation to the date of the Act, so a document cannot be found by constructing its address from the Act number and year.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«2. This Act shall come into operation on such day as Commencement
is fixed by the President by Proclamation.»About this source
The legislature's own site, publishing every Bill and every Act as printed in the Legal Supplement Part A to the Gazette, with the assent date, the Act number, the commencement section and the dates of passage in each House on the face of the document. Files sit under a WordPress uploads path named a<year>-<number>.pdf, sometimes with a g suffix where the Gazette imprint is included. Act No. 9 of 2022 and the Law Revision (Amendment) Act, 2026 were read here.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments as enacted and does not consolidate, so an Act read here is the amending Act and its section numbering is its own rather than that of the law that results. It must never be cited for the current state of a provision. It says nothing about whether an Act whose commencement is left to Proclamation has been proclaimed - for that the Legal Notices are the record - and an Act on this site is therefore not evidence that any of it is in force. The upload directory in the path bears no relation to the date of the Act, so a document cannot be found by constructing its address from the Act number and year.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
Practical notes
A partial proclamation of this kind is hard to see from the consolidated text, because no consolidated text of Chapter 18:03 incorporating the 2022 Act exists: the published Chapter stops at 31 December 2016. The only way to know which parts are law is to read the amending Act against the Proclamation, which is what this record does.
Nothing we found revokes or supplements Legal Notice No. 70 of 2023. The legal notices of 2024, 2025 and 2026 contain no further proclamation naming this Act.
This record rests on Act No. 9 of 2022 as enacted and on Legal Notice No. 70 of 2023, both read in full, and on the Digital Legislative Library's chronological lists of legal notices for 2023 to 2026.