Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (Cit­i­zen­ship) Bill, 2025, was passed in the Sen­ate ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing by a slim mar­gin af­ter hours of heat­ed de­bate. Once pro­claimed in­to law, it will al­low peo­ple to ac­quire T&T cit­i­zen­ship through their grand­par­ents.

The fi­nal vote stood at 16 in favour, 13 against and one ab­sten­tion. The lone In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor to back the bill was tem­po­rary Sen­a­tor Wes­ley Gib­bings, while In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish ab­stained. The Op­po­si­tion gave no sup­port and most In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it. The leg­is­la­tion was ap­proved in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, un­der Sec­tion 17(3) of the Con­sti­tu­tion and Sec­tion 5 of the Cit­i­zen­ship Act, on­ly sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion de­scen­dants— chil­dren of cit­i­zens born abroad —were el­i­gi­ble for cit­i­zen­ship by de­scent. The bill in­tro­duces two ma­jor changes:

• It al­lows cit­i­zen­ship by de­scent through a grand­par­ent who was a cit­i­zen at the time of the ap­pli­cant’s birth.

• It re­moves the re­stric­tion that cit­i­zen­ship by de­scent could on­ly be ac­quired through a par­ent who was not a cit­i­zen by de­scent them­selves.

Un­der the new law, a per­son can be­come a cit­i­zen even if their par­ent or grand­par­ent was a cit­i­zen by de­scent. For ex­am­ple: John was born in Trinidad. His son, Michael, was born abroad and be­came a cit­i­zen by de­scent. Michael then had a child, Sarah, born out­side of Trinidad. Un­der the old law, Sarah could not be a cit­i­zen be­cause her fa­ther’s cit­i­zen­ship was by de­scent. Un­der the new law, Sarah will now qual­i­fy for cit­i­zen­ship.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials say the leg­isla­tive change is aimed at strength­en­ing ties with the T&T di­as­po­ra and has been tout­ed as a way to widen the pool of ath­letes avail­able for na­tion­al sport­ing teams.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne ques­tioned whether the change would achieve the Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed sport­ing goals, point­ing to FI­FA’s el­i­gi­bil­i­ty rules for in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. He not­ed that un­der FI­FA reg­u­la­tions, a play­er must ei­ther be born in the coun­try, have a bi­o­log­i­cal par­ent born there, or have a grand­moth­er or grand­fa­ther born there.

“That clear­ly does not fall with­in the pur­suit of the Gov­ern­ment in this mat­ter,” Browne said.

In his wind­ing-up speech, how­ev­er, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, David Nakhid, ar­gued that FI­FA will ac­cept the na­tion­al­i­ty once a pass­port is is­sued.

“How­ev­er you look at it, once you hold that pass­port and you come to FI­FA and say, ‘I want to play for Trinidad and To­ba­go,’ FI­FA doesn’t go in­to any back­ground check whether you got it from your grand­moth­er or your grand­fa­ther,” Nakhid said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi pressed the point at the com­mit­tee stage, ask­ing whether cit­i­zens by de­scent at the grand­par­ent lev­el would meet FI­FA’s cu­mu­la­tive re­quire­ments un­der Ar­ti­cle 9. Nakhid replied that the is­sue fell out­side the in­tent of the bill.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie of­fered par­tial sup­port, say­ing the bill “on the whole meets the re­quire­ments of FI­FA for third-gen­er­a­tion play­ers,” but stopped short of con­firm­ing that spe­cif­ic claus­es achieve that re­sult.

The Op­po­si­tion has al­so raised con­cerns that the amend­ments could open the door to vot­er padding. Je­re­mie sought to al­lay those fears, point­ing out that cit­i­zens liv­ing over­seas can­not vote in gen­er­al elec­tions un­less they are reg­is­tered in a con­stituen­cy.

“There’s no way that you can vote in Wash­ing­ton,” he said. “Where will you go to cast that bal­lot? At the high com­mis­sion? They lock you up.”

The bill now awaits procla­ma­tion in­to law.