ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada – Grenada's government says it is pleased with the progress of the Citizenship by Investment Programme (CBI) and has downplayed suggestions that the United States has made adjustments to its visa requirements for Grenadian citizens.
Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell speaking in a television programme on the first anniversary of his government (CMC Photo)“The CBI program is doing quite well. It has for the first quarter of the year exceeded the budgetary projections quite considerably,” Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said during a television program on Monday night marking the first anniversary of his administration since coming to power in June last year.
Under the CBI program, Grenada provides citizenship to foreign nationals in return for them making a significant contribution to the socio-economic development of the Caribbean island.
Mitchell did not provide financial figures as it related to the performance of the CBI so far this year, but told viewers that Grenada had benefitted from having “quite a back log of applicants in 2021, 2022, partly because Grenada was among the only islands that was …openly admitting processing Russian and Belarusian applicants”.
Many Caribbean countries had imposed a ban on citizens from these countries following Russia’s decision to launch a military invasion of Ukraine last year.
“So naturally there was a bit of a windfall in terms of the number of applicants,” he said, noting that Grenada has never marketed the CBI program.
“The marketing has been done by industry players…who would have discovered that if you are a holder of a Grenadian passport or a citizen of Grenada it entitle you to a visa in the US,” he said, saying the CBI program became appealing to people from China and India where in some instances they would have to wait at least 10 years for a visa.
“It therefore becomes an attractive proposition if you are interested in the E2 visa. But I don’t know that we have data that suggests that large swaths of persons who applied for CBI citizenship or done CBI investments actually want to pursue” the US visa.
Mitchell said that the move by Washington “had nothing to do with Grenada,” saying “if you do the research, this is a small line in a much larger bill passed in Congress”.
He said his research had also shown that Portugal that “has a well-known CBI program and Portugal did not have the benefit of the visa and so the change in the law was really designed to allow persons who have Portuguese citizenship, acquired by a CBI program and reside for three years in Portugal to be able to acquire an E2 visa”.
He said Grenada already had that stipulation in place arising out of an agreement dating back to 1983.
Mitchell said that a person born in Grenada would face no issue in obtaining a E2 visa “because you always lived here.
“It is only if you are a CBI citizen there may be a requirement for a three-year residence in Grenada,” said Mitchell, who is also an attorney.
He told viewers that his administration is constantly evaluating the CBI program particularly where CBI programs are left to drag on for a long period of time without the investors meeting their commitments.
“We have already begun since taking office reviewing the approved projects and we have decertified six of them already. Because if you are approved and you have not started the project and there is no indication that you will be in a position to do so we will not hesitate to decertify the project,” Mitchell added.
