Jamaica is preparing legislation that would grant residency to foreign investors who bring capital into the country. Nobody outside the government knows the price.
The government is vetting draft amendments to two immigration statutes for submission to its legislation committee, according to the Jamaica Observer. That disclosure appears in its most recent annual report on Form 18-K, the filing sovereign borrowers submit to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to the Observer’s account of the filing, the proposals cover a program for investors “who do not present a national security threat to Jamaica.” Neither a minimum investment nor a job-creation target appears in the wording.
Those amendments target the Immigration Restriction (Commonwealth Citizens) Act and the Aliens Act. Both sit inside a wider package covering anti-terrorism measures and technology use at the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA).
Vetting does not equal tabling. Filings from 2023 through 2025 placed the same bills at a Cabinet-preparation stage, according to the Jamaica Observer. The latest wording marks the first change of status in three years.
Jamaica has never run a residence by investment (RBI) program, and it has never run a citizenship by investment (CBI) program either.
More than a decade of drafts
Jampro, Jamaica’s investment promotion agency, recorded the proposal in its 2013/14 annual report as an immigration category for foreign investors committing a predefined amount of capital. That report said Jampro and PICA had agreed the program was feasible.
Audley Shaw, then the industry, investment, and commerce minister, told Parliament in May 2021 that Cabinet had approved the proposal. Consultation would settle the conditions for granting permanent residency rather than citizenship.
Cabinet approved the National Investment Policy on July 18, 2022. The policy called for a strategic economic residence program built on specified criteria, with PICA and Jampro responsible for delivery.
It targeted the first quarter of fiscal year 2022/23, which ran from April to June 2022. That deadline had therefore expired before Cabinet signed the policy.
Shullette Cox, now Jampro’s president and then its vice-president, said in November 2022 that the program would rest on “firm, foreign direct investments that are underpinned by job creation.” Former state minister Norman Dunn suggested in June 2022 that it could serve second- and third-generation Jamaicans abroad, according to the Jamaica Observer.
Dan Brotman, vice-president of business development at Apex Capital Partners said that “over the years there have been lots of rumored proposals about both Jamaican RBI and CBI, but none have come to fruition.”
What Jamaica offers today
Five permanent residence categories appear on PICA’s list: employment, retirement, marriage to a Jamaican, dependency, and previous holders of unconditional landing status. None of them involves investment.
Applicants sit for an interview with the agency’s Investigation and Surveillance Unit. PICA also demands originals of every document, including police certificates and evidence of assets held in Jamaica or overseas. Processing runs three to six months.
Citizenship takes far longer. Naturalization requires that an applicant be at least 18 and of good character. He must also have lived in Jamaica for five years in aggregate, including the 12 months immediately before applying.
Four Jamaican-born sponsors must back the file, and the applicant must publish notice of his intention twice in a daily newspaper, at least a week apart. PICA prepares compliant applications for the minister within 24 months and charges JMD$50,000 (approximately US$316).
Calls to create a CBI program have come from the private sector rather than the government, including from Jamaica Sotheby’s at its 2021 launch in Kingston.
Where it would sit in the region
Caribbean RBI clusters in the British Overseas Territories. Bermuda’s Economic Investment Residential Certificate requires a combined US$2.5 million across real estate, government bonds, registered charities, or a Bermudian business, and opens a five-year path to permanent residency.
Sovereign states in the region have generally chosen citizenship instead. One exception lies next door: the Dominican Republic grants permanent residency at US$200,000 under Law 285-04 and its implementing regulation.
Brotman said the disclosure carries too little detail to assess, though at face value he does not see the proposal as “particularly attractive.” Residency, he noted, “including permanent residency, is never truly permanent.”
Governments can revoke a permit and rewrite the renewal rules, he said, and a permit does not carry “the full economic, consular and political rights that citizenship does.” On that reasoning he is “generally not a fan of golden visa programs,” and would point an investor toward one of the five Caribbean CBI programs instead.
He also raised a route that already exists. Jamaica’s Caribbean Community (Free Movement of Skilled Persons) Act allows nationals of member states to work without a permit once they hold a skills certificate. Approved categories include university graduates holding at least a bachelor’s degree.
All five Caribbean CBI states belong to CARICOM, which in principle puts that route within reach of a graduate who acquires one of those citizenships. The certificate confers the right to work rather than permanent residence, and Jamaica has committed to wider CARICOM free movement without announcing a timeline.
The legislative process
Jamaican bills come out of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, drafted on instructions from whichever ministry wants them. That draft returns to the instructing ministry, which circulates it to the Attorney General’s Chambers, the Legal Reform Department, and any ministry the bill touches.
Comments come back and the text gets revised. Nothing reaches the Legislation Committee, a subcommittee of Cabinet, without the Attorney General’s approval, and that committee is where the filing places these bills.
It either returns a bill for amendment or recommends it onward. Cabinet approval is what clears a bill for tabling in Parliament.
In the House of Representatives, the Clerk reads the short title at first reading and no debate follows. Members argue the principle at second reading, vote, then take the bill clause by clause in committee before a third reading.
The Senate runs the same sequence. Any amendment it makes returns to the House, and on a bill of this kind the upper chamber can hold up passage for as long as seven months.
Agreement between the Houses leaves only the Governor-General’s assent, after which the Act appears in the Gazette. Even assent would not tell an investor what to pay.
Thresholds, eligible asset classes, holding periods, physical presence, and the treatment of dependents are the sort of detail that lands in regulations rather than in a parent Act. None of it exists yet in published form.
The near-term test is narrower than any of that. Either the Legislation Committee receives the bills and clears them for Cabinet, or next year’s filing repeats what the last three have said.
