The T&T Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2025, known as the “Grand­par­ents Cit­i­zen­ship Law,” was passed by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Sep­tem­ber 12, 2025. It was sub­se­quent­ly passed by the Sen­ate on Sep­tem­ber 18, 2025, en­abling for­eign-born in­di­vid­u­als with a grand­par­ent who is or was a cit­i­zen, to ac­quire cit­i­zen­ship. We were in­formed that the Act was as­sent­ed to by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo in No­vem­ber 2025.

​How­ev­er, over the last two months, a stum­bling block has emerged, ob­struct­ing the pro­cess­ing of req­ui­site pass­ports, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young foot­ballers de­sirous of rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try.

​Over the next few months, T&T faces a se­ries of ma­jor World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion match­es, rang­ing from the se­nior women’s team to the Un­der-20 and U-17 boys’ and girls’ teams. With this in mind, from De­cem­ber 2025 in­to Jan­u­ary 2026, foot­ball au­thor­i­ties have sought to en­cour­age tal­ent­ed play­ers el­i­gi­ble through the new Grand­par­ents Law to make them­selves avail­able for tri­als and tests so that T&T can com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

It must be em­pha­sised that T&T was among on­ly four or five coun­tries in the world that, un­til last year, had yet to en­act this leg­is­la­tion. A cur­so­ry ex­am­i­na­tion of the Cu­ra­cao foot­ball team, which qual­i­fied di­rect­ly for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup with play­ers born in the Nether­lands and like­wise Suri­name, which is on the verge of qual­i­fi­ca­tion with a sim­i­lar con­struct of Nether­land play­ers, sig­ni­fies the cur­rent path­way of world foot­ball.

​When these young, ex­cit­ed play­ers ar­rived in T&T dur­ing De­cem­ber, some from qual­i­ty youth pro­grammes at Eng­lish Pre­mier League, Ger­man leagues and oth­er ma­jor foot­balling na­tions, no one ex­pect­ed the hur­dles placed in front of them. Some of these young play­ers are so tal­ent­ed that they ar­rived with agents, sug­gest­ing a high lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and pur­pose.

Sad­ly, it now ap­pears that all of that ex­cite­ment and op­ti­mism have been di­min­ished by what is be­ing re­port­ed as in­ces­sant ques­tion­ing and ap­par­ent­ly a ma­jor over­reach on doc­u­men­ta­tion com­pared to oth­er coun­tries. This has ap­par­ent­ly caused a ma­jor back­lash and per­haps even em­bar­rass­ment to this coun­try.

​My un­der­stand­ing is that the Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, Philip Watts, and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Roger Alexan­der, have re­port­ed­ly both done their part; it is now left to oth­ers to com­plete the task.

​And here is where the process has ap­par­ent­ly fall­en apart. There are sug­gest­ed de­lays and a de­rail­ment of the ob­jec­tive to have these prospec­tive play­ers be­come el­i­gi­ble for se­lec­tion. The Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment and its staff are be­ing called to ac­count for this tur­moil and pos­si­ble dis­as­ter.

​Ques­tions are be­ing asked of those in au­thor­i­ty at all lev­els of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment to in­ves­ti­gate and de­ter­mine whether per­sons are in­ten­tion­al­ly or not in­ter­fer­ing with the process.

Or if it is, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) that has been delin­quent in its com­mu­ni­ca­tions with prospec­tive play­ers and their par­ents/guardians/agents?

The TTFA has stat­ed they have done their part as far as they are con­cerned but it ap­pears the Im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ment has gone silent.

​There­fore, in the best in­ter­est of T&T, we need the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer, Roseann St Hill-Bil­louin, to ad­dress the mat­ter ur­gent­ly for every­one in­volved, in­clud­ing her staff, for both trans­paren­cy and ac­cu­ra­cy to be at the fore­front of all im­mi­gra­tion mat­ters.

​There is one view that some at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment have no care or love for sports and are there­fore not in­vest­ed in the out­come, a view I refuse to be­lieve is true. There is al­so a re­port of a sit­u­a­tion where it is stat­ed that an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer pur­port­ed­ly com­ment­ed: “Why all yuh bring­ing these peo­ple to get pass­ports now… in a few years they go be ap­ply­ing for HDC hous­es here…” If in­deed that sort of cal­lous state­ment was per­pe­trat­ed by an im­mi­gra­tion em­ploy­ee, Mrs St Hill-Bil­louin not on­ly needs to get in­volved but may need to en­gage in staff train­ing as well.

​At the mo­ment, T&T is in dan­ger of los­ing at least three to four mul­ti-tal­ent­ed play­ers due to what is be­ing seen as per­ceived un­just ac­tions from our Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment.

​We need an im­me­di­ate fix. Even if it is too late for the play­ers men­tioned above, there will hope­ful­ly be oth­ers com­ing for­ward.

Un­less, of course, the word gets around that T&T is an ob­struc­tion­ist coun­try, then no one will come. That sort of fall­out is not what you want to spread in not on­ly foot­ball, but all sports and walks of life. We need quick, de­ci­sive ac­tion and a re­sponse from the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer.

​This is about the fu­ture of sports, sport­ing gen­er­a­tions, and T&T’s roadmap on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene.