CARICOM full free movement (enhanced cooperation)
Four countries opened full free movement to each other on 1 October 2025 - not a skills certificate, not a category, but a right for any national to enter, stay indefinitely and work. The announcement was the same in all four. The law underneath it is not, and the difference decides what happens to a person who is refused at the border.
**Belize legislated.** Its Act of 2026 creates an Indefinite Stay Stamp, treats the holder as a national for the purposes it names, and gives a refused applicant fourteen days to seek administrative review and then the courts, with the right to remain while that is decided.
**Saint Vincent legislated, two days before the regime began, and will not let anyone read it.** Four instruments were assented and published on 30 September 2025 for a start on 1 October: an Immigration (Restriction) (Amendment) Act, a Protocol on Contingent Rights Act, and two statutory instruments. The Gazette that names them says in terms that they can be purchased at the Government Printing Office. They are named, dated to the day, and their contents are not published anywhere.
**Barbados did not legislate at all, and says so itself.** Asked in its own launch FAQ which laws govern free movement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs answers with four Acts that all predate the arrangement - the Caribbean Community Act, the Caribbean Community Skilled Nationals Act, the Immigration Act and the Barbados Accreditation Council Act. No instrument was made under any of them. The mechanism Barbados would have used is visible and unused: its Caribbean Community Act gives the Treaty the force of law by carrying it as a Schedule, and the enhanced cooperation protocol is not there. Its Skills Certificate Schedule still lists Belize, Dominica and Saint Vincent, where Belize deleted the three others from its own.
**Dominica's published collection has no corresponding Act.**
The asymmetry is the finding. A Barbadian refused entry to Belize has a statutory appeal and a right to remain while it is heard. A Belizean refused entry to Barbados has the CARICOM complaints procedure, because there is no Barbadian instrument to appeal under.
Grenada and Saint Lucia are not parties, and Saint Lucia's non-membership has a date on it: a month before the regime opened, it was making an Order waiving extension fees for CARICOM nationals extending ordinary permits. A state inside full free movement would have had no such fees to waive.
Where it actually bites
Membership is one thing and what a destination does with it is another. These are the countries covered here that treat these nationalities differently, and on which question.
Barbados- Access to healthcare · The Foreign Ministry Says You Have This; No Barbadian Instrument Confers It
Saint Vincent And The Grenadines- Access to healthcare · Emergency and Primary Care on the Same Basis, Stated in an Information Note
- administersFrequently Asked Questions: CSME Full Free Movement
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados
About this source
The ministry responsible for consular policy and for CARICOM affairs, and the Government's voice on both. It publishes the complete visa table for every country in the world - the only such list any Caribbean country in this comparison puts out as a readable document - and it published the frequently asked questions for the launch of enhanced cooperation in free movement on 1 October 2025, including the Government's own answer to which laws govern it.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It administers and does not issue: nothing it publishes is an instrument, and its free movement FAQ is explicitly an explanation of a decision rather than a text of law. Its visa table carries its own revision date - August 2022 - and nothing says whether it has been reviewed since, so it must not be cited as the position today without checking. Its visitor page states a driving permit requirement that the Road Traffic Act as consolidated to 2022 does not contain.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
- issuesGazette of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Vol. 158 No. 49, 30 September 2025
Official Gazette, Ministry of Legal Affairs (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines)
About this source
The State's gazette, published weekly and archived online from 2016. Each issue opens with a Legislations notice naming every Act and every Statutory Rule and Order published that week, and carries Governor-General's notices, including the assignment of departments and subjects to each Minister under section 53 of the Constitution. It is the authoritative record that an instrument exists and of the date it was published.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It must never be cited for the content of an Act or a Statutory Rule and Order. The notice says in terms that the instruments 'can be purchased at the Government Printing Office, Campden Park Industrial Estate' - the issue announces them and does not contain them. A handful of Statutory Rules and Orders are posted as separate PDFs beside the 2026 issues; most are not. It must also not be cited for anything before 2016, which is where the online archive starts. File names are not a reliable guide to contents: the file named Gazette_No50_2025.pdf contains issue No. 40 of 30 July 2025.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
- issuesImmigration (Waiver of Fee for Extension of Permit) Order, S.I. 128 of 2025
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