Investor citizenship in Antigua is registration, and it does not pass at birth

The Act grants citizenship by registration. On the 1981 constitutional text reviewed, citizenship passes to a child born abroad through two named categories, and registration is not one of them.

An investor buying Caribbean citizenship files an application that names the family joining it. Checked on 24 August 2026, the instruments answer a further question: what a child born after the parent is registered acquires. In Antigua and Barbuda the Constitution answers it, and the answer turns on the category the programme uses.

The Act grants citizenship by registration

The Antigua and Barbuda Citizenship by Investment Act, 2013, published in the Official Gazette on 11 April 2013, names the mechanism in its long title: AN ACT to enable persons to acquire citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda by registration following investment in Antigua and Barbuda and for incidental and connected purposes.

Section 3(1) reads in full: Subject to the provisions of the Citizenship Act, a person may, after applying under this section to the Minister in the prescribed manner and upon payment of any fee that may be prescribed, be registered under the provisions of the Citizenship Act as a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda. Under section 3(2) that registration is at the Minister’s discretion and subject to the approval of Cabinet.

The Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Act, 2016 does not amend section 3; its clauses reach sections 2, 2A to 2K, 4 and the Schedule. No conclusion is drawn beyond the instruments obtained: a further amendment exists in bill form on the Government’s legal affairs site and was not obtained.

On the text reviewed, citizenship descends through two categories, and registration is neither

Chapter VIII of the Constitution sorts citizens by how they became citizens, and then treats the categories differently.

Section 113 sets out who becomes a citizen at birth on or after 1 November 1981. Its second limb reads: every person born outside Antigua and Barbuda if at the date of his birth either of his parents is or would have been but for that parent's death, a citizen by virtue of section 112 of this Consititution or paragraph (a) of this section — the typographic slip is in the published text.

Two categories are named. Section 112 is the independence cohort, those who became citizens on 1 November 1981. Paragraph (a) of section 113 is birth in Antigua and Barbuda itself. A parent who holds citizenship by registration is in neither, so on the face of the provision a child born abroad to that parent does not become a citizen at birth.

The registration power sits outside that scheme by its own terms. Section 116(1) reads: Without prejudice to and subject to the provisions of sections 111, 112, 113, 114 and 115 of this Constitution, Parliament may, pursuant to the provisions of this section, make provision for the acquisition of citizenship by registration. The opening words are the operative ones. Parliament’s power to create a registration route is expressly subject to the sections that govern who is a citizen by birth and by descent, not an exception to them.

All of that is the 1981 text as published. It was not checked against any amendment history, and that limit is repeated below.

The child already born has a route, and it closes at 18

For a child already alive, the Constitution offers something else. Section 114(1) lists persons entitled, on making application, to be registered on or after 1 November 1981, and paragraph (f) reads: any person under the age of eighteen years who is the child, stepchild or child adopted in a manner recognised by law of a citizen or is the child, stepchild or child so adopted of a person who is or would but for his death have been entitled to be registered as a citizen under this subsection.

Three features are worth keeping apart. It is an entitlement, upon application, to be registered — not a status held from birth. It produces registration, so the child lands in the same category as the parent. And it is open only while the child is under 18.

Saint Kitts and Nevis appears to have the same shape in the reproduction reviewed

The Saint Christopher and Nevis Citizenship Act, in the revision dated 31 December 2017, carries the investment route at section 3(5), which reads in full: Subject to subsections (8), (9) and (13) of this section, a person is entitled, upon making application under this subsection to the Minister in the prescribed manner and upon payment of any fee that may be prescribed, to be registered as a citizen of Saint Christopher and Nevis without any rights of voting save under and in accordance with the provisions of any law governing the qualification of voters, if the Cabinet is satisfied that such person has invested substantially in Saint Christopher and Nevis.

Registration again. The grant carries its own qualification on voting — not an absolute bar, but a restriction subject to whatever the law on the qualification of voters provides, which is a question this article does not reach.

The same Act treats section 3(5) citizens as a distinct class in one further respect: among the grounds on which the Minister may refuse registration, it separately names a child of a person who obtained citizenship under that subsection, and the spouse of such a person. That shows the statute tracking the investment route as its own category. It is not evidence about descent, which is a different question.

On the constitutional side the structure appears to match Antigua’s, with a person born outside Saint Christopher and Nevis becoming a citizen at birth only where a parent is a citizen by virtue of paragraph (a) of section 90. That wording was read from the UN Women constitutional database, not from the gazette: oas.org and refworld.org both returned HTTP 403 to automated requests. It is the one proposition here that does not rest on a first-hand reading of an official text, it is reported as a reproduction, and the comparison should be treated as provisional until a first-hand copy replaces it.

What is not established

The instruments were read; practice was not. Whether the Citizenship by Investment Unit registers a child born abroad after the parent’s registration, and whether any court has construed section 113(b) against a citizen by registration, was not established, and the instruments reviewed do not answer it.

Nor is the generation after that settled. A child registered under section 114(1)(f) is a citizen by registration, so on the face of section 113(b) that child’s own child born abroad would meet the same bar. No authority applying it that way was read here, and none is claimed.

Amendment history is the third gap, and it runs both ways. The 2016 amending Act does not touch section 3, but its own commencement clause makes it effective on a day appointed by the Minister and published by Notice in the Gazette, and no such Notice was obtained. The Constitution’s citizenship chapter was not checked against any amendment history at all.

What to watch

The narrow question for counsel is not who is named on the application. It is what a child born in the third year is, under which section, and until what birthday the answer holds.