The Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Bill (2025) has been passed in the Sen­ate by a slim mar­gin. Once pro­claimed in­to law, it will al­low per­sons to ac­quire cit­i­zen­ship through their grand­par­ents.

De­bate on the leg­is­la­tion con­tin­ued un­til short­ly af­ter mid­night. The Bill re­ceived no sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion and very lit­tle from the In­de­pen­dent bench.

In the end, the vote stood at 16 in favour, 13 against and one ab­sten­tion. Tem­po­rary Sen­a­tor Wes­ley Gib­bings was the lone In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor to back the Bill, while In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish chose to ab­stain.

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 makes two key changes. It al­lows for cit­i­zen­ship by de­scent through a grand­par­ent who was a cit­i­zen at the time of the ap­pli­cant's birth. Sec­ond, it re­moves the re­stric­tion that cit­i­zen­ship by de­scent could on­ly be ac­quired through a par­ent who was not a cit­i­zen by de­scent them­selves.

With the new amend­ment, a per­son can be­come a cit­i­zen even if their par­ent or grand­par­ent was a cit­i­zen by de­scent.

In sim­pli­fied terms, John was born in Trinidad. His son, Michael, was born abroad, mak­ing Michael 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, Michael, was a cit­i­zen by de­scent. The new law al­lows Sarah to be­come a cit­i­zen, even though her fa­ther's cit­i­zen­ship was by de­scent.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, the leg­isla­tive change is in­tend­ed to en­gage more with the Trinidad and To­ba­go di­as­po­ra and has been high­light­ed as a way to ex­pand the pool of ath­letes avail­able for na­tion­al sport­ing teams.

How­ev­er, on Wednes­day night, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne ar­gued that ac­cord­ing to FI­FA rules, play­ers who qual­i­fy for cit­i­zen­ship un­der the new pro­vi­sions would still be in­el­i­gi­ble to play com­pet­i­tive foot­ball match­es for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ref­er­enc­ing FI­FA’s el­i­gi­bil­i­ty rules, Browne told the Up­per House, “What are those con­di­tions, Mr. Pres­i­dent? A, he was born on the ter­ri­to­ry of the rel­e­vant as­so­ci­a­tion. In oth­er words, he was born in Trinidad and To­ba­go. That clear­ly does not fall with­in the pur­suit of the gov­ern­ment in this mat­ter. He was born on the ter­ri­to­ry of the rel­e­vant as­so­ci­a­tion. B, his bi­o­log­i­cal moth­er or bi­o­log­i­cal fa­ther was born on the ter­ri­to­ry of the rel­e­vant as­so­ci­a­tion. C, his grand­moth­er or grand­fa­ther was born on the ter­ri­to­ry of the rel­e­vant as­so­ci­a­tion.”

Dr Browne said FI­FA’s rules specif­i­cal­ly state that the grand­par­ent must be born in the coun­try that the play­er is try­ing to rep­re­sent.

In wind­ing up the de­bate, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs David Nakhid said that once a pass­port is is­sued by Trinidad and To­ba­go to a play­er, FI­FA will recog­nise it.

“How do you re­ceive a na­tion­al­i­ty? You re­ceive a pass­port with­out be­ing re­quired to un­der­take any fur­ther ad­min­is­tra­tive re­quire­ments. B, ac­quired a na­tion­al­i­ty by un­der­tak­ing a nat­u­ral­i­sa­tion process. So in all ways, how­ev­er you look at it, once you hold that pass­port and you come to FI­FA and say, well, I want to play for Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Trinidad and To­ba­go grant you that pass­port, FI­FA doesn't go in­to any back­ground check whether you got it from your grand­moth­er or your grand­fa­ther, you got it from here.”

The ques­tion about the law be­ing in har­mo­ny with FI­FA’s el­i­gi­bil­i­ty was raised again at the Com­mit­tee Stage of the Bill by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi.

“Is the Ho­n­ourable Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary say­ing for the record that cit­i­zens by de­scent at the grand­par­ent lev­el will in fact qual­i­fy un­der the cu­mu­la­tive re­quire­ments, let me stress that, cu­mu­la­tive re­quire­ments of FI­FA's Ar­ti­cle 9?”

Nakhid replied, “Mr. Pres­i­dent, that is not a mat­ter for this bill. That is some­thing that is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from the in­tent of this bill.”

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al sup­port­ed him, say­ing, “My col­league is say­ing that the bill on the whole meets the re­quire­ments of FI­FA for third gen­er­a­tion play­ers. I would not like to be tied to say­ing on the record that claus­es 4c and d achieve that re­sult. I say that the bill in 4 and 5 cu­mu­la­tive­ly would achieve that re­sult.”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader had pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed con­cern that the amend­ments could open the door to vot­er padding.

How­ev­er, Je­re­mie sought to ad­dress that be­fore the bill went to a vote.

“You can't vote by just be­ing a cit­i­zen in the Unit­ed States. A Trinidad cit­i­zen in the Unit­ed States. It's be­cause you're not in a con­stituen­cy if you're in Wash­ing­ton. We have con­stituen­cy vot­ing. And there's no way that you can vote in Wash­ing­ton. And where will you go to cast that bal­lot? At the high com­mis­sion? They lock you up.”