Kiwiboy

Hello All,
Is there anyone from this site that has had experience of retiring to Barbados/St Lucia and the hoops one must jump through to achieve long stay permission?? EU/Uk nationals, pensioned off, and would purchase own home etc. Any help warmly welcomed

pgtips

Hi Kiwiboy,

With regards to St Lucia the process goes like this.

Firstly owning a property on the island goes a long way to establishing you as a resident but before you are able to own a property you must obtain an alien land holders licence. Generally takes from 3-6 months to obtain and it is one licence per property. After this licence has been granted to you, you can then legally own the property.

When you first go to St Lucia, your passport will normally be stamped with 6 weeks. To stay longer, you have to go to the local immigration on the island and extend your stay.

After interviewing you and once you are a property owner, you will be given an extension to your stay varying from 6 months to 2 years. After each extension to your stay has expired you have to go to the local immigration office to extend this period again.

After 4 years of living on the island you can apply for residencey status which entitles you to stay on the island without any further restictions on time, and after a further two years you can apply for citizenship if you want.

This is the basic outline.
1 Find property
2 Alien land holders license
3 Extend stay
4 Extend stay after initial period expires
5 After 4 years living on island apply for residency.
6 After 6 years living on island you can apply for citizenship (check if doing this will affect your EU rights).

Hope this helps

Kiwiboy

Thanks for the comprehensive info. It does help a lot. Much obliged!

Kiwiboy

Any comments re Barbados please??

username 34

virtually the same as with all these islands .... you'll be on a visitors visa even though you own a property from between 3-5 years depending on country, then apply for residency, then citizenship. But - some countries do not have the extension of dual nationality so gaining their citizenship and passport would mean forfeiting your UK passport.

Kiwiboy

Thanks for this too. We are heading back to BBD and StL. in a couple of weeks to check out a few more options so all the feedback helps enormously. Thanks again