Despite growing uncertainty after the European Commission’s latest stance on visa-free travel, Citizenship by Investment (CBI) was notably absent from the agenda of the 51st CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting.
Reporters asked CARICOM Chairman and Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre about the European Commission’s recent ultimatum to Antigua and Barbuda. The Commission told the country to end its Citizenship by Investment Programme by June 2028 or risk losing visa-free access to the Schengen Area, “regardless of how well the programme is managed”.
When asked whether regional leaders had discussed the issue, Pierre replied simply, “CARICOM did not discuss CBI.”
Pushed further, Pierre explained that the issue was not raised because it does not affect every member state. Instead, he said, the five countries operating Citizenship by Investment programmes – Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and St Kitts and Nevis – have been working together to address the identified concerns of the programme.
“We’ve been trying our best to follow best practices. We’ve been trying our best to ensure all the requirements we are asked for; we have met them,” Pierre said.
However, he acknowledged that there is only so much CBI countries can do if another nation decides to change its immigration policies.
“Regardless of what we do, if Europe does not want us to have a CIP programme, that’s what is going to happen. Each country has its own domestic policies,” he said.
Still, Pierre said the region has faced similar challenges in the past and has always managed to move forward.
He compared the current situation to when the Caribbean lost special treatment for its banana and sugar industries. He said that while things may change, the region’s resilience has always stayed strong.
“We’ve been there before. We took all the steps as far as our bananas were concerned, and we still lost [preferential]treatment for our bananas… We’ve gone there before, and we’ve always survived. I’m sure we will continue to survive,” Pierre said.
Utter nonsense! Either way, the CIP is not sustainable, if it is not ended by the relevant governments, it will no longer be viable because it no longer warrants visa free travel to the countries the buyers want, so the passports will not sell. Typical myopic thinking by greedy, selfish politicians not only in Saint Lucia, but those four countries as well. Soon the Saint Lucia passport will be worth travel only within the Caribbean. Saint Lucians should now explore the possibility of obtaining a Barbados passport!
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH..AS I HAVE SAID FROM THE BEGINNING .YOU CANT SELL YOUR SOVENTRY.
FOR GREED ! STOP IT NOW!
We need to let our former colonizers know that we will survive! Why cant they do this the the great usa who we know do not conform to any international law (financial, human rights etc)!! Why?
Saint Lucia’s Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP) has become the gift that keeps on giving. Depending on who you ask, it is either one of the greatest economic success stories in our history or a ticking diplomatic time bomb.
Like most things in Saint Lucia, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
What’s beyond dispute is that there have effectively been two completely different Citizenship by Investment Programmes.
Under the United Workers Party (UWP) administration between 2016 and July 2021, the programme was run on a relatively modest scale. Official figures show fewer than 900 applications were approved during those five years. Based on average family sizes, that’s roughly 2,000 to 3,000 new Saint Lucian citizens. The programme is estimated to have generated between US$120 million and US$180 million in investment.
Then came the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) administration.
The programme didn’t just grow……..it exploded.
Application numbers increased at a pace nobody could have imagined in the early years. By the 2023–2024 financial year, the Citizenship by Investment Unit was receiving more applications in a single year than the programme had attracted during much of its previous history combined. In 2024–2025 alone, the programme generated approximately US$149 million in revenue.
Opposition politicians estimate that more than 14,000 Saint Lucian passports have now been issued under the current administration and that the programme has generated somewhere between US$900 million and US$1.4 billion in investment. Whether one agrees with those estimates or not, nobody seriously disputes that the scale of the programme today bears little resemblance to what existed just a few years ago.
And who have we been selling these passports to?
The answer isn’t wealthy retirees from Britain or Canada looking for a second home in the Caribbean.
Official annual reports consistently show that the overwhelming majority of successful applicants have come from Asia and the Middle East. China has been the largest single source market, followed by countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Egypt and, more recently, Nigeria.
That fact, in itself, isn’t necessarily good or bad. Business is business.
But it does explain why other countries have started paying very close attention.
In March this year, the United Kingdom removed visa-free access for Saint Lucian passport holders.
The British Government didn’t hide behind diplomatic language. It pointed to three principal concerns: a rise in asylum claims by Saint Lucian nationals, broader border management issues and continuing concerns about Saint Lucia’s Citizenship by Investment Programme. Between 2022 and 2025, around 360 Saint Lucians claimed asylum in the UK—a surprisingly high figure for a country of only about 180,000 people.
While acknowledging that reforms were being made, Britain concluded that “the inherent risk of such citizenship-by-investment schemes remains.”
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was even less diplomatic, saying visa-free travel had “created a back door into this country.”
Three months later, Ireland followed suit.
The Irish Government used more measured language, saying it wanted to bring its policy “more closely in line with the approach taken in the United Kingdom” and protect the integrity of the Common Travel Area. Translation? If Britain isn’t comfortable allowing unrestricted access, Ireland probably can’t afford to be either.
Now Europe is turning up the heat.
The European Union has already amended its Visa Suspension Mechanism so that Citizenship by Investment programmes can be taken into account when deciding whether countries should continue enjoying visa-free access to the Schengen Area. More recently, Antigua and Barbuda disclosed that the European Commission had written requesting that Caribbean CBI programmes be wound down by 1 June 2028 or risk losing Schengen visa-free access. Antigua says similar letters were sent to the other OECS CBI countries, including Saint Lucia.
If that happens, we have a serious problem.
Let’s be honest. One of the biggest selling points of a Saint Lucian passport has never been the Pitons, cocoa tea or Friday night fish fry. It has been the ability to travel freely to the United Kingdom and Europe.
Lose that, and the product changes overnight.
Which brings us to a few uncomfortable questions.
Is it really far-fetched to imagine that a foreign government might quietly acquire passports for selected individuals who would otherwise face visa restrictions?
Is it impossible that sophisticated criminal organisations, with resources far greater than many small states, could purchase citizenships for trusted members in order to gain easier access to countries that would otherwise scrutinise them more closely?
Perhaps the answer to both questions is “no”. Perhaps our due diligence systems are so robust that such scenarios could never occur. But if those possibilities are occurring to ordinary Saint Lucians, you can be absolutely certain they have already occurred to intelligence agencies in London, Brussels and elsewhere.
Then there is the money.
A typical CIP application reportedly generates legal and professional fees in the region of US$3,000 to US$5,000 for the lawyers and authorised agents involved. With thousands of applications processed in recent years, one does not need to be a chartered accountant to conclude that some professionals have done very well indeed.
Good luck to them. There is nothing wrong with people earning an honest living.
But here’s the question the average Saint Lucian might reasonably ask.
Those lawyers and agents have earned substantial fees from the programme. The Government has earned hundreds of millions in revenue.
What has the ordinary Saint Lucian gained now that every one of us has lost visa-free access to the United Kingdom and Ireland and may be staring down the possibility of losing visa-free access to Europe as well?
When a Saint Lucian family now has to complete visa applications, pay additional fees, wait weeks for appointments and wonder whether they will even be approved to travel, are they sharing in the rewards that others have received from the programme?
Perhaps they are.
Perhaps the benefits outweigh the inconvenience.
Or perhaps the people paying the price are not the same people who collected the profits.
That is the conversation we should be having.
Because the issue is no longer simply how many passports we have sold.
It is whether, in selling them, we have inadvertently devalued one of the most valuable assets every Saint Lucian already possessed—the strength and reputation of our own passport.
We are truly racing to becoming a sh*thole as a certain Orange man would describe, and the doubling down of it is just scary. Anyone who has the chance, trade yours in for a Barbadian passport.
I told you so. We must train our eyes to see beyond the horizon. There is more to come. Why didn’t Gonzalez join the band wagon ? We like it easy but “easy comes, easy goes”! When all the CIP money is gone, we will still be in debt, and left with a CIP population whom the majority cannot compete with financially. The poor man will be hard pressed to obtain property.
Maybe an alternative “residency by investment” may save the programme. Foreign investors invest and STAY for a reasonable period of time to be eligible to acquire the citizenship. Stay for the naturalisation and, stay for the boost of local economy, employment, and business developments.
Indeed if the programme lost its value of free travel, then it is foreseeable to say foreign investors will consider the cheapest programme to acquire the citizenship and then move to other countries with high passport rankings to achieve their ultimate goals. In this way, only these two types of countries will be significantly benefited. I wish all the best to Saint Lucia.