The Turks and Caicos Islands government has proposed replacing its investment routes to permanent residence with a renewable 25-year Long Term Residence Permit. Under the Immigration Bill 2026, holders of the new permit would be expressly ineligible for permanent residence.
Deputy Premier and Minister of Immigration and Border Services Jamell Robinson outlined the permit while presenting the Bill to Parliament, according to the Turks and Caicos Sun. Those arrangements, he told lawmakers, “would regulate residence and employment rights without themselves conferring Turks and Caicos Islander status.” That status, the territory’s local equivalent of citizenship, is distinct from British nationality.
A further provision would allow the government to revoke a permit if its holder fails to maintain the qualifying investment in line with prescribed requirements. Existing Permanent Residence Certificates (PRCs) would survive the overhaul through transitional provisions.
The Bill’s explanatory memorandum leaves eligibility conditions and investment thresholds to regulations, and the government has not yet specified the new figures. Lower thresholds would apply, however, on Grand Turk, Salt Cay, South Caicos, Middle Caicos, and North Caicos. Robinson presented the differentiation as “supporting a wider distribution of economic activity.”
Casting the overhaul as a defense of local interests, Robinson told Parliament that Turks and Caicos Islanders find themselves “outnumbered, outpriced, outinvested and outbanked” in their own country. Wealthy overseas investors and residents, he argued, are helping drive up demand for land, housing, and services, according to a separate Sun report.
Proposed immigration amendments published in 2023 already envisaged a renewable 25-year residence category to replace the investment routes to PRC, according to Turks & Caicos Weekly News. The government released a draft of the Bill for public consultation in January, taking written submissions until January 23.
Current routes
Investors currently obtain a PRC through one of four investment routes in the territory’s Immigration Regulations. Homes on Grand Turk, Salt Cay, South Caicos, Middle Caicos, or North Caicos qualify at US$300,000, against US$1 million on the other islands, including Providenciales.
Business investors need US$750,000 on those five islands or US$1.5 million elsewhere, and at least 60% of the firm’s employees must be non-work permit holders. Contributors to a designated public-sector project qualify at US$1 million.
The fourth route requires US$1 million in any home or business and dispenses with the Governor’s certificate of undertaking, a form of pre-approval the other three rely on. Through that certificate, the Governor commits in advance to grant the PRC once the investor completes the qualifying investment.
Fees run to US$25,000 for the PRC application, on top of a US$1,500 undertaking fee and a US$150 submission fee. Investor PRCs carry no right to work, except within the holder’s own enterprise on the business-based routes.
Naturalization route
Permanent residence, as the territory’s citizenship department defines it, means the right to reside “without restrictions on the length of time he or she can remain in the islands.” Department guidance tells PRC holders they may qualify to apply for naturalization twelve months after receiving the certificate.
That language tracks the British Nationality Act 1981, which governs British Overseas Territories citizenship (BOTC). Applicants must show five years’ residence in the territory, with limited absences, and must not have faced any restriction on their permitted stay during the final twelve months.
A fixed-term permit, even one running 25 years, restricts the period of stay on its face. The Act’s waiver power does not reach a restriction still in force on the date of application. Holders would appear shut out of naturalization, however long they stay.
David Lesperance, managing partner of Lesperance & Associates, reaches the same conclusion. With investors cut off from “residence without time restriction,” Turks and Caicos “becomes the first British Overseas Territory to close the door for applicants to eventually become British Overseas Territory Citizens and eventually British nationals,” he told IMI.
By seeking to keep foreigners from ever acquiring local “Belonger” status, the territory would make itself “an unattractive destination” next to other British Overseas Territories, Lesperance argued. Belonger, the older term for Islander status, was something “few wanted,” he added.
In May, Robinson told the Sun that “citizenship in these Turks and Caicos Islands is not for sale,” adding that “there is no citizenship by investment in this Bill.” Turks and Caicos has no citizenship by investment program; the investor route to nationality runs indirectly, through permanent residence and naturalization.
Twenty-year track
Other long-term residents would follow a separate path through a new ten-year Residence and Employment Rights Certificate (RERC). Robinson said the government would assess applicants on criteria including good character, financial independence, knowledge of the islands, and, where applicable, English proficiency.
Unlike the investor permit, the RERC would feed into permanent residence, though slowly. Eligibility for a PRC would require ten years of legal residence, followed by another ten holding the certificate, Robinson told the Sun earlier this month. “The change is from being eligible for PRC after 10 years to now moving to 20 years,” he said.
In the same interview, Robinson said applicants already within twelve months of the current ten-year threshold could still use the existing route.
Cayman precedent
Another British Overseas Territory, the Cayman Islands, has issued renewable 25-year residency certificates to investors of independent means for years. Unlike the Turks and Caicos proposal, Cayman keeps a separate investment route to permanent residence, priced at CI$2 million (US$2.4 million) in developed real estate.
Under the Bill as described, Turks and Caicos would offer investors no investment-based route to permanent residence at any price.
