A proposed Bahamas permanent residency change would let the immigration minister hand a residence certificate to people he turns down for citizenship, in exchange for a $500 fee. That’s cheaper than an annual Bahamian work permit. It’s also the part drawing the most fire.
The $500 mechanism tucked into a budget debate
The Bahamas Nationality (Amendment) Bill, 2026 would insert a new section 7A into the Bahamas Nationality Act. The text is short. If the minister refuses a citizenship application filed under section 7, he could instead grant that applicant a certificate of permanent residence for $500, on whatever conditions he sets.
The bill sets commencement for July 1, 2026, if Parliament passes it. The government tabled it during the budget debate for 2026-2027. Bahamian dollars are pegged one to one with the US dollar, so $500 reads the same in both.
Who does section 7 actually reach?
Section 7 is narrow. It covers people not entitled to Bahamian citizenship at birth: women married to Bahamian citizens, people born in The Bahamas to non-Bahamian parents and people born outside The Bahamas to Bahamian women married to non-Bahamian men.
Those categories sit at the center of a decades-old fight over citizenship equality. Voters rejected referendums in 2002 and 2016 that would have let Bahamian women pass citizenship to children born abroad to non-Bahamian husbands on the same terms as men. People born in the country to non-Bahamian parents get only a 12-month window to apply after turning 18, a limit tied to long-running concerns about statelessness.
A key gate sits in the design. A foreigner can’t simply pay $500 and walk in. The route opens only to someone who already qualified to apply under section 7, meaning a person with existing birth or marriage ties to The Bahamas whose claim was refused.
Where Americans fit in
The State Department estimates about 30,000 American residents in The Bahamas, a country of roughly 400,000 people. Most of them didn’t arrive through section 7. They hold economic permanent residence tied to property, a route the bill leaves alone.
The Americans this amendment could touch form a smaller pool: US citizens who married Bahamians and were refused citizenship, or US-born children of Bahamian mothers who missed the application window or failed on other grounds.
For them, the bill would turn a citizenship refusal into a residence certificate instead of a closed door.
The investor route the bill doesn’t change
Most American residents use the economic permanent residence pathway, which runs through the Immigration Act, not the Nationality Act. The minimum qualifying investment rose to $1 million on Jan. 1, 2025, up from $750,000, and the qualifying property or bond must be held for at least 10 years. The status carries no income tax, no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax. Bimini sits about 50 miles off the Florida coast.
Buyers below the $1 million line use a separate document, the homeowner’s card, which renews annually for $250 and allows stays of up to a year without conferring permanent status. The Bahamas runs no citizenship-by-investment program, so Bahamas permanent residency is the ceiling for most foreign nationals regardless of how much they spend.
None of that moves under the new bill. A $1 million buyer and a refused section 7 applicant reach residency through separate doors.
The opposition’s objection
Free National Movement MP Andre Rollins, the party’s shadow minister on immigration, said the government is trying to bury the change inside the budget debate and called it a “dangerous loophole for exploitation.” He argued that residency priced below a work permit carries consequences the House hasn’t examined.
Rollins said Opposition Leader Michael Pintard had asked the government to refer citizenship and residency questions to a select committee. The government hasn’t done so.
What this does and doesn’t change for Americans abroad
For the bulk of Americans abroad in The Bahamas, the bill changes nothing. The investor route stays put. The opening it creates runs only to refused section 7 applicants, and even then the certificate is discretionary, granted “subject to such terms and conditions as the minister thinks fit.”
The measure isn’t law. It commences July 1, 2026, only if Parliament passes it first.
