A citizenship by investment (CBI) application names a main applicant and the dependants who exist on the day it is filed. A child born a year after the passport arrives is named in nothing.
That child’s status is settled by the country’s nationality law before the program sees a second file.
Across the 14 programs open in September 2026, the law gives two answers. In ten the child is a citizen at birth, and in four the family applies for the child and pays again.
The 14 are the five Caribbean programs, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Nauru, Vanuatu, Cambodia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, and El Salvador. Malta replaced its investor citizenship route with a discretionary merit route in 2025, so it is out.
The descent clause decides, and it is written two ways
Every nationality law has a descent clause, the sentence that makes a person a citizen because a parent was one. Ten of the 14 write that clause around the parent’s status on the day of the birth and ask nothing about how the parent came by it.
Turkey’s Law No. 5901 is the plainest example: “A child born to a Turkish mother or through a Turkish father within the unity of marriage either in Turkey or abroad is a Turkish citizen.” An investor naturalized under article 12 is a Turkish mother or father, so the child born after the grant is Turkish from birth.
Four laws write the clause narrower, and Sierra Leone’s section 5, as Parliament substituted it in 2017, covers a child born abroad “of a father or mother who was or would but for the death of the person, have been a citizen of Sierra Leone by birth”.
A parent who naturalized through the program was never a citizen by birth, so the clause misses the child.
Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Saint Kitts and Nevis reach the same result through their constitutions, which IMI examined in August. Each limits descent to a parent who was born there or was a citizen at independence, and an investor is neither.
Turkey registers the birth and asks nothing else
Article 7(1) names the parent’s status and the place of birth and names no third condition.
Article 12(1)(b), the route the investor program uses, reaches the investor’s “underage and dependent alien children”, the ones on the application. A child born afterwards never needs article 12.
The one step is administrative, and it has a deadline. The civil registration law requires that a birth abroad be notified “to the foreign representative office within sixty days”.
The status exists from the moment of birth and the passport waits for the consulate.
Murat Yüksel of Yüksel Law, the in-house firm of CIP Turkey, told IMI in August that the point clients most often get wrong is to treat investment citizenship as a lesser status: “What is transmitted to future generations is not a special ‘CBI status,’ but Turkish citizenship itself.”
The Investment Office’s program page lists “Acquiring a property worth a minimum of USD 400,000” , USD 500,000 for the other capital routes, and no line for a child born after the grant, because there is nothing to add.
Egypt transmits on the parent’s status and Jordan only through the father
Egypt’s nationality law, Law No. 26 of 1975 as amended in 2004, counts as Egyptian “Anyone who is born of an Egyptian father, or an Egyptian mother”, in the text quoted by the European Union Agency for Asylum. The clause names no place of birth and asks nothing about how the parent became Egyptian.
The program folds existing children into the grant. The General Authority for Investment’s citizenship page, as it read in February 2026, grants citizenship “to the investor and their minor children up to the age of 21” against a US$10,000 administrative fee and a donation IMI has put at US$250,000 since a 2023 decree.
The page publishes no line for a child born after the decision.
Since a 1987 amendment, Jordan’s nationality law reads, “The children of a Jordanian man shall be Jordanian wherever they are born.” The 1954 original said “of a Jordanian”. Article 14 deems a naturalized citizen “a Jordanian in every respect”, so an investor father passes citizenship to a child born anywhere, and IMI noted in August that a Jordanian mother married to a foreign national passes nothing.
The Cabinet criteria the program uses, restructured on July 2, 2025 and amended again in 2026, admit the spouse, dependent daughters, unmarried sons under 24 and dependent parents to the original file, and unmarried sons under 30 with their own spouses and children where the investment exceeds JOD 2 million, according to Jordan News. None of it reaches a child born after the grant, because article 9 already does.
Nauru writes the child into the law and into the fee schedule
Nauru’s Citizenship Act 2017 deems “A person born outside the Republic” a citizen “if at the time of the person’s birth, either one or both parents were citizens”, with no exception for a parent who came in through the program, and the 2024 program Act makes its certificate “conclusive evidence that the person is a citizen”.
The 2017 Act shows it can write an exception when it wants to, because section 18 denies descent to the children of a one-off fiftieth-anniversary grant.
The program’s own statute adds a second door. Section 7(1) of the Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship Act 2024 lets a dependant “apply for citizenship concurrently with the Principal Applicant or at any time after the Principal Applicant has been granted citizenship”, and the Act as certified in August 2024 defines a dependant child as under 18, or 18 to 30 if unmarried and supported by the principal.
The program prices that door on its contribution page.
It lists an application fee of “USD 2,000 for each eligible dependent”, due diligence of “USD 3,000 for each additional dependent, aged 16 or above”, and a contribution of “USD 2,000 for each additional dependent, aged 16 and above”. Those lines price a dependant on the original application.
For a child added after the grant, the program applies Schedule 3 of its regulations, the schedule for additions to an application after approval, which the government rewrote in the Amendment Regulations 2026.
It sets an application fee of USD 5,000 for a child of the principal applicant or spouse up to two years of age, and a contribution of zero for that child. From age three to 18 the application fee is the same USD 5,000 and the contribution is USD 25,000.
Parliament widened the definition of a dependant in 2026. The government’s Nauru Bulletin, in its first issue of 2026, records the Nauru Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2025 as tabled in December.
The bill’s definition of a dependant includes “any child (biological or adopted) of any age of the applicant or their spouse”. IMI reported in February that the program removed its age limits on dependant children.
The Government Gazette of March 2026 certifies the Nauru Economic Climate Resilience Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2026 as Act No. 13 of 2026. The amended text was not online as of September 2026, so the 2024 bands above are the last ones published.
Vanuatu’s constitution says one thing and its Citizenship Office writes another
The constitution is the broadest text of the 14: “Anyone born after the Day of Independence, whether in Vanuatu or abroad, shall become a citizen of Vanuatu if at least one of his parents is a citizen of Vanuatu.”
The Citizenship Office’s own guidance is written differently.
Its list of citizenship types files the Development Support Program under “Honorary Citizenship”, a category granted under section 20 of the Citizenship Act and listed apart from naturalization. Its application guide reserves the automatic route, called Entitlement, for the child or grandchild of “a citizen by naturalization”, and adds that “the eligible applicant must have been born after his parent (s) became (naturalized) citizen (s)”.
Whether an honorary citizen counts as a citizen by naturalization for that form is a question the Citizenship Act would settle, and the copies of the Act on the Office’s own site and on the Pacific Islands legal database are scanned images with no text.
IMI reported in August that practitioners put children born after an investor’s grant “through a paid post-approval application rather than recognized automatically”. No source publishes the fee, and the Office’s fee page prices an “Additional Applicant” at USD 10,000 on the original file and says nothing about a later one.
Cambodia and El Salvador cover the child in the law’s own words
Cambodia’s Law on Nationality gives Khmer nationality “regardless of the place of birth” to “any legitimate child who is born from a parent ( a mother or father) who has khmer nationality”. The amendment the National Assembly passed on August 25, 2025 changed seven other articles and left this one alone.
Sub-Decree No. 225 of December 1, 2025 then gives a family a second route, in the words of a note by Andersen in Cambodia published on January 28, 2026: “If children were not included in the original application, parents may apply subsequently with proof of parentage and confirmation of the parents’ Khmer nationality.” The same sub-decree set the program’s entry price at KHR 4 billion invested or KHR 12 billion donated.
El Salvador’s Freedom Passport program grants citizenship for a US$1 million donation in Bitcoin or USDT.
The constitution counts among Salvadorans by birth the “Children of a Salvadoran father or mother, born in a foreign country”, in the Constitute Project’s translation, and says nothing about how the parent became Salvadoran. On that text, a Freedom Passport citizen transmits at birth.
The reform the Legislative Assembly passed on March 17, effective from March 31, answers the opposite case. Decreto Legislativo No. 531 adds an article 164 for children under eighteen “nacidos en el extranjero antes de que sus padres obtengan la calidad de salvadoreños”, born abroad before their parents became Salvadoran, who become Salvadoran at their parents’ request and must confirm the choice on reaching majority.
IMI covered the decree in April.
The program publishes no rule for a child born after the grant. IMI’s program page lists an “Administrative fee of US$999 in BTC or USDT per family member for family applications”, and no government page sets out the mechanism from payment to passport, a gap IMI flagged in its first look at the program.
São Tomé prices the newborn at US$500 and its law asks for a declaration
Nationality Law No. 07/2022 lists among São Toméans of origin “Os filhos de pai ou mãe São-tomense, nascidos no estrangeiro, que se declarem querer ser São-tomense”, the children of a São Toméan father or mother born abroad who declare that they want to be São Toméan. The clause treats a parent naturalized on the investment ground like any other parent, and it makes the child declare.
The program then charges for the paperwork, and the Citizenship by Investment Unit’s fee schedule prices a “Newborn child of a citizen (up to 1 year of age)” at US$500, against US$5,000 for any other qualifying dependant added after approval in principle and US$10,000 for a spouse.
It is the lowest price any program in the market publishes for a newborn.
The Unit’s FAQ confirms that “Eligible future dependents may be added, subject to applicable fees and due diligence”.
Adult dependants wait. A memorandum dated 10 April froze passport issuance for dependants over 18 until a revised dependency framework is published, IMI reported.
Grenada answers in its constitution and Saint Lucia charges anyway
Grenada’s constitution answers the question directly in section 97, which makes a person born outside Grenada a citizen “at the date of his or her birth if, at that date, his or her father or his or her mother is a citizen of Grenada otherwise than by virtue of this section or section 94(3)”.
An investor is a citizen by registration under the Citizenship by Investment Act of 2013, so the exclusion misses him, and his child born in Dubai or London is Grenadian from birth.
The Investment Migration Agency publishes fees for the contribution, the application, due diligence, processing and the interview, and no line for a child added after the grant. The child is a citizen by virtue of section 97, and section 97 excludes its own products, so a grandchild born abroad acquires nothing automatically.
Saint Lucia copies Grenada’s constitutional wording, IMI noted in August, and its program prices the child anyway.
The fee schedule lists a “Newborn child of a citizen (child of 12 months of age & below)” at US$5,000, and a “Qualifying dependent of a citizen (other than a spouse)” at US$25,000 once the child passes that age. The board’s own list of add-on cases includes a dependent who “is a child born after the application was made by the citizen”.
The Caribbean’s new rulebook was written around this child
The five Caribbean governments signed a shared rulebook in September 2025. The Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority Agreement limits a dependant to “a person named in the application of a main applicant”, so a child born after the grant falls outside it and back on national law.
The authority has yet to begin work. Grenada’s Investment Migration Agency told the market in August that the regional obligations “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”.
Grenada’s own residence amendment, 30 days of presence across five years, attaches to people named in the application. IMI noted that “nothing in the bill covers a dependent added later, such as a spouse or a newborn”.
Jeremy Savory of Savory & Partners put the gap to the drafters. “If a main applicant already met the 30-day stay requirement and later adds a spouse or newborn,” he asks, “does that dependent have to complete an independent 30-day stay, or do they benefit from the main applicant’s status?”
Sierra Leone’s statute excludes the investor’s child in its own words
Sierra Leone’s statute excludes the investor’s child twice, and the second exclusion is an ancestry test. A child born in Sierra Leone is a citizen by birth only if, under the 2006 amendment, “his father, mother or any of his grand parents was born in Sierra Leone and is or was a person of Negro African descent”, a test a first-generation investor family fails on the first half.
The program rests on presidential discretion. The administrator’s update of November 1, 2025, which IMI published with the note that it had not verified the figures with the government, cites section 27A of the Citizenship Act, “nothing in this Act shall affect the right of the President to cause any person to be registered as a citizen of Sierra Leone”.
The same document quotes the Chief Immigration Officer, Dr. Moses Tiffa Baio, that this framework “remains the operative legal basis for all current grants of citizenship” until Parliament amends the Act.
That update prices a “Normal Dependant”, including a child under 18, at US$10,000, with no newborn line and no deadline, and describes a pending regulation that would create “a presumption of Negro-African descent for qualified applicants”. The Immigration Department’s own site publishes no program page.
Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Antigua price the child by the calendar
Dominica’s constitution gives an investor’s child no automatic claim, IMI found in August, so the program’s own rule is the whole answer, and it changed in late 2025. Statutory Rules and Orders No. 46 of 2025, gazetted on “27th November, 2025”, deleted the words “not more than five years after the main applicant obtained citizenship” from the post-citizenship additions rule.
Dominica now accepts any child under eighteen born to or adopted by the main applicant, on no deadline, for “two thousand United States dollars for processing” and “five hundred United States dollars” for the certificate of naturalisation under the principal regulations. Due diligence reaches “each dependant sixteen years of age or older”, so a newborn escapes it.
The Unit’s FAQ puts it plainly. A main applicant “may apply to add a minor child (either biological or adopted) as a post-citizenship addition to his application without any time restriction”.
Saint Kitts and Nevis prices the same child two ways. The Citizenship by Investment Unit charges US$7,500 “for the addition of each dependant child of the main applicant under three years of age and born after the date the Certificate of Registration is issued to the main applicant”, and a child born while the application is open “may be added to the application for a fee of US$10,000”.
The unit adds “the standard fees for processing, due diligence, bank due diligence, Certificate of Registration and passport” to either figure, and a dependant who was eligible at the time and left off the original application “cannot apply for citizenship by the post-citizenship addition route and fees”.
Antigua and Barbuda prices by age alone, and its schedule of fees lists a “Dependent child aged 0-5” at US$10,000 and a “Dependent child aged 6-17” at US$25,000, names no deadline, and extends the same two figures to “A future child of a dependent child”.
The jump lands on the sixth birthday and no clock starts at the parent’s grant.
What to check before the child arrives
Find which of the two groups the country is in.
In the ten, the work is registration, and three of them attach a clock to it: Turkey’s consulate within sixty days of the birth, São Tomé’s US$500 line until the first birthday, and Saint Lucia’s US$5,000 line until the same day. In Nauru the program has a form and a fee for the child, and in Vanuatu the fee is unpublished, so get it in writing.
In Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Sierra Leone, the price depends on the day the child arrives. Ask the agent in writing, before the money moves, which clock applies and what the fee is.
Saint Kitts and Nevis charges a different price on either side of the grant, Antigua’s price rises on the sixth birthday, and Dominica’s deadline disappeared in November without a press release.
Then check the answer against the government’s own published schedule. Two of the 14 make that harder than it should be.
Egypt’s citizenship page now returns a page-not-found notice, and Sierra Leone’s Immigration Department publishes none.
Where the timing is yours to choose, a birth on the island settles it in Grenada, whose constitution gives citizenship at birth to “Every person born in Grenada on or after 7th February, 1974”. The same choice changes nothing in Sierra Leone, where the ancestry test applies to a birth in Freetown as much as to one abroad.
