Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Bill 2025 will not on­ly be invit­ing ath­letes “back home” to be­come cit­i­zens, but al­so doc­tors, en­gi­neers, en­tre­pre­neurs, and aca­d­e­mics—tack­ling Trinidad and To­ba­go’s “brain drain”, says Sport Min­is­ter Phillip Watts.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion PNM MP Colm Im­bert ar­gues that the bill will not as­sist ath­letes par­tic­i­pat­ing in FI­FA and Olympic events and has ques­tioned whether the leg­is­la­tion is ac­tu­al­ly in­tend­ed to fa­cil­i­tate “vot­er padding” by the UNC Gov­ern­ment.

Im­bert raised his con­cerns af­ter Watts pi­lot­ed the bill in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day. The bill was passed with 27 UNC Gov­ern­ment votes, while the PNM vot­ed against it.

Watts said the bill tar­gets na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, sport­ing ex­cel­lence, and re­gion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness to en­sure T&T is not left be­hind its Caribbean neigh­bours.

“This is about un­lock­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions in di­as­po­ra in­vest­ment, strength­en­ing our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty across gen­er­a­tions. This isn’t a gift to for­eign­ers or im­port­ing tal­ent. It’s recog­ni­tion of fam­i­ly—un­lock­ing our own tal­ent,” Watts said.

He added that in 2024, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion ap­proached the min­istry to re­vis­it the is­sue of cit­i­zen­ship for third-gen­er­a­tion ath­letes, high­light­ing a crit­i­cal need.

“There are high-per­for­mance foot­ballers of Trin­bag­on­ian grand­parent­age who are el­i­gi­ble to play for oth­er na­tions but are, in fact, de­sirous of wear­ing the red, white, and black and rep­re­sent­ing the land of their grand­par­ents on the world stage,” Watts said.

The TTFA’s re­quest was dri­ven by T&T’s cam­paign to qual­i­fy for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup, now in its fi­nal stages. Watts not­ed that FI­FA, World Ath­let­ics, the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil, and World Rug­by al­so re­quire cit­i­zen­ship doc­u­men­ta­tion or pass­port ev­i­dence.

The “grand­par­ent” rule on which the bill is based al­lows for cit­i­zen­ship through a di­rect lin­eal tie from a grand­par­ent to a grand­child, even if the par­ent in the mid­dle gen­er­a­tion did not for­mal­ly claim T&T cit­i­zen­ship. Watts said the bill of­fers cit­i­zen­ship to high-per­for­mance and elite for­eign-born ath­letes with lin­eal ties to a Trin­bag­on­ian grand­par­ent.

“This al­lows us to im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress the TTFA’s re­quest, strength­en our foot­ball team, and ex­pand the tal­ent pool across all sport­ing dis­ci­plines,” he added.

Ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty screen­ing pro­ce­dures, de­vel­oped in con­sul­ta­tion with the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, will ap­ply. Watts de­nied that the bill di­lutes cit­i­zen­ship or dis­ad­van­tages lo­cal ath­letes. He em­pha­sised that the min­istry would not re­place “grass­roots in­vest­ment” but would con­tin­ue scout­ing tal­ent na­tion­al­ly.

In the sec­ond phase of the plan, Watts said, “We know the ben­e­fits of this pol­i­cy ex­tend far be­yond sports, boost­ing the econ­o­my, di­ver­si­fy­ing our work­force, and en­rich­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­ture. Af­ter care­ful re­view, we’ll ex­tend third-gen­er­a­tion cit­i­zen­ship to oth­er el­i­gi­ble for­eign-born in­di­vid­u­als with valu­able skills, in­vest­ment, or ex­per­tise for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He added that by invit­ing not on­ly ath­letes but al­so doc­tors, en­gi­neers, en­tre­pre­neurs, and aca­d­e­mics back, “we’ll tack­le brain drain and re­ju­ve­nate sec­tors crit­i­cal to na­tion­al progress”. Watts al­so not­ed that the bill could in­crease the cur­rent US$100 mil­lion re­mit­tance lev­el to T&T via the half-mil­lion-strong US and UK di­as­po­ra.

No FI­FA or Olympic ac­cess with bill–Im­bert

Im­bert, ac­cus­ing Watts of pro­vid­ing mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion, said the bill would not ad­dress the sports is­sues cit­ed. FI­FA and the Olympics man­date that play­ers have a re­al and di­rect con­nec­tion to a coun­try through one bi­o­log­i­cal par­ent (or grand­par­ent) born there. He not­ed the bill re­moves the lat­ter re­quire­ment.

“I’d like to know why—what are you up to? Why is it that you’ll now al­low some­body born in Cana­da to par­ents not born in Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­come a T&T cit­i­zen? No oth­er coun­try does that! The Gov­ern­ment has to come clean! Is this vot­er padding?” Im­bert added. He ques­tioned why a new cat­e­go­ry of cit­i­zens is be­ing cre­at­ed that is al­most un­known else­where in the world. “Even in In­dia, to be­come a cit­i­zen, your par­ents or grand­par­ents must be born there,” he said. Im­bert al­so ques­tioned why cit­i­zen­ship is be­ing ex­tend­ed to peo­ple with no con­nec­tion to T&T, who have nev­er been here, and were born out­side the coun­try.

He cit­ed ex­am­ples of coun­tries such as Italy, which tight­ened cit­i­zen­ship laws to curb abuse by peo­ple seek­ing to over­come trav­el re­stric­tions. Im­bert not­ed that the T&T pass­port is high­ly valu­able, as hold­ers do not re­quire visas to en­ter Schen­gen or oth­er Eu­ro­pean Union states. He warned that the bill would al­low some­one born out­side of T&T to par­ents al­so born abroad to ob­tain a T&T pass­port and all as­so­ci­at­ed ben­e­fits.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed Im­bert’s claims, em­pha­sis­ing that cit­i­zen­ship by de­scent in­volves an ap­pli­ca­tion and vet­ting process.

“Peo­ple will not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fy. The vet­ting process will be strict­ly ad­hered to,” she stat­ed.