Which text applies to a file: four questions, one still open

An investor comparing routes reads the rules as they stand. A file is decided under the text that applies to it. Those are different questions.

They are also not one question with four names. The commencement of a statute, the entry into force of a treaty, the temporal provisions that govern an individual filing, and the standing of competing official texts each turn on something different. What follows separates them, using instruments read at first hand, and ends with a case where the records read here do not answer the question at all.

When a statute commences, where the statute itself is silent

Latvia’s Immigration Law, adopted on 20 August 2026, contains no general commencement clause. The phrase Likums stājas spēkā — this law enters into force — does not occur in it, on a search of two independent renderings of the text.

The Constitution supplies the rule rather than the date. Article 69 provides that a law enters into force fourteen days after proclamation unless the law itself sets another term, and the Official Publications and Legal Information Law directs that such periods run from the day after the event that starts them. Together they give a formula. They do not give a calendar date until proclamation has happened, because proclamation is the event the count runs from.

A separate provision governs the step before. Under Article 72 the President may suspend publication of a law for two months, and must do so if not less than one third of the Saeima requests it, but the right has to be exercised within ten days of the law’s adoption. For a law adopted on 20 August, that window closed on 30 August.

The commencement date of such a statute is therefore not recorded anywhere as a date. It exists as a formula and an event.

When a treaty enters into force, where the trigger is a deposit rather than a date

The Agreement establishing the Eastern Caribbean’s regional citizenship-by-investment regulator provides, in Article 95.1: “This Agreement shall enter into force on the thirtieth (30th) day following the date of deposit of the fifth (5th) instrument of ratification.”

The count does not run from a calendar date. It runs from the deposit of the fifth instrument of ratification, and no notice of such a deposit was located when the records were checked on 27 August 2026.

The text the Agreement carries is nonetheless complete. It provides for thirty days of physical presence in aggregate across the first five years after a grant, and five days in the first twelve months. Grenada’s amending Bill would insert those same figures into national law, in a new section 7A — a Bill, which the evidence read here does not show has been enacted.

Everything about the obligation can therefore be quoted, and none of it establishes that the Agreement has entered into force.

The temporal provisions inside one regime, and what each is anchored to

Commencement asks when an instrument begins. A different set of questions arises inside a regime that is already running, and United States EB-5 practice shows that a single regime can carry several temporal provisions anchored to different events. Not all of them select which version of a rule applies.

Anchored to the date the petition was filed. The statutory minimum investment of $1,050,000 applies to petitions filed on or after 15 March 2022. This one does select a version.

Anchored to the date an investment was made. The statute’s protection from expired legislation requires the Secretary to continue processing petitions based on an investment made before a stated date, notwithstanding the expiry of the legislation authorising the regional centre programme. That is a savings provision about continued processing rather than a rule-version selector, and its anchor is the investment, not the filing.

Anchored to a rule’s effective date, which then selects by filing date. The high-employment-area amount proposed in 2026 would apply to petitions filed on or after 60 days after publication of a final rule. When the regulatory text was checked on 28 August 2026 it carried a bracketed placeholder where that date would go. The proposal states it would be implemented prospectively to petitions and applications filed on or after its effective date, subject to six listed exceptions carried in the same proposed provision.

Anchored to a calendar window. Visas under the Regional Center Program are made available through 30 September 2027. That is a period of availability, not a rule that decides which version governs a filing.

A further date sits inside the proposal: it would begin adjusting its amount on 1 January 2027 and every five years afterwards, again by reference to petitions filed on or after each adjustment date. That, like the high-employment-area figure itself, is proposed text rather than current law.

Which text governs, where the official texts diverge

The fourth question arises after commencement rather than before it, and it is the least tidy.

Immigration New Zealand certified Amendment Circular 2026-22 on 12 August 2026 and directed officers to “operate in accordance with the amended instructions from the effective date”, given in Appendix 1 as 12 August 2026. The consolidated Operational Manual was reissued on 28 August, and its page for the amended instruction still showed the pre-amendment text, ending “Effective 01/04/2025”.

The applicant-facing guidance page carries the amended limb and adds a condition the certified instruction does not contain — that the applicant borrowed funds due to a change of circumstances outside their control. On the connecting factor, the certified instruction says the funds must be “obtained” in the same jurisdiction, the circular’s summary says they must “originate” there, and the guidance page says they must be “located” there.

That is three documents carrying four textual layers, because the circular contains both the certified amendment and its own summary of it. They do not occupy the same position. The circular settles the direction to officers about the effective date; it does not resolve the differences in wording between the layers, and which text would be preferred if the question were tested is not something the records read here answer.

The case the records read here do not settle

The fifth situation is not a mechanism, and presenting it as one would be the error.

On 21 August 2026 the Investment Migration Agency Grenada published Circular No. 2 of 2026, stating that the residence requirement and the other obligations arising under the regional framework “will not take effect until the relevant regional regulator has been operationalized and all participating Member States have formally agreed upon and communicated an effective commencement date”. The two conditions are cumulative, and neither carries a date.

The circular also names a commencement date of 31 August 2026 without identifying the instrument that fixed it: no Act, section, order or gazette reference appears in its text. A reading of Grenada’s Government Gazette across issues 35 to 39 of Volume 144 — covering 31 July to 21 August 2026, the period up to the circular’s own date — found the words “citizenship”, “investment” and “ECCIRA” in none of them, and no commencement order among the subsidiary instruments circulated with them. The circular and what those records do and do not show were set out here on 31 August.

The document is styled as a circular, and it cites no statutory power. Whether an announcement of that kind can defer an obligation, and what obligation it would be deferring, are not answered by the circular itself or by the gazette issues read. That is a statement about the records examined, not a finding that no answer exists anywhere.

What separates the four questions

They fail in different ways.

Commencement of a statute turns on an event plus a formula. Entry into force of a treaty turns on a condition precedent that a document can record. The temporal provisions inside a running regime turn on what each provision is anchored to, and a single regime can anchor to filing, to investment, to a rule’s effective date and to a calendar window. Divergence between official texts turns on the standing of each document, not on chronology at all.

The first three can in principle be answered from published records: a proclamation notice, a deposit record, the text of the temporal provision. The fourth depends on how documents rank against one another, and none of the records read here settles that.

The fifth situation is different again. There the question is not which text applies, but whether the announcement had authority to change anything — and the circular and gazette issues read do not address it.