Belizean nationality law is regulated by 1981 Constitution of Belize, as amended; the Belizean Nationality Act, as revised; and various British Nationality laws. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a national of Belize. Belizean nationality is typically obtained either by descent or registration. Descent relies on the principles of jus soli, i.e. by birth in Belize; or under the rules of jus sanguinis, i.e. by birth abroad to parents with Belizean nationality; whereas registration applies to obtaining nationality after birth. There is currently no program in Belize for citizenship by investment, as the previous program lapsed in 2002. Nationality establishes one's international identity as a member of a sovereign nation. Though it is not synonymous with citizenship, rights granted under domestic law for domestic purposes, the United Kingdom, and thus the Commonwealth of Nations, has traditionally used the words interchangeably.
Acquiring Belizean nationality
Belizeans acquire nationality by descent or registration. Belize does not allow persons born aboard government aircraft or ships, or aircraft or ships registered in Belize, to be considered as Belizean nationals.
By descent
Persons who were a "Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies" under the 1948 British Nationality Act and who were registered or naturalized in Belize as a British subject prior to that Act going in to force or under the terms of the Act are citizens on 21 September 1981; Persons born outside Belize prior to independence who had one parent or grandparent who became, or would have become except for death, nationals of Belize at independence; Women who were married to a citizen of Belize or a person who became, or would have become except for death, a citizen of Belize on Independence Day; Persons born in Belize, as long as their parents are not nationals of a country at war with Belize or possess diplomatic immunity; Persons born abroad after 21 September 1981 to at least one Belizean parent; or Foundlings.
By registration
Persons who acquire nationality by registration include, applicants who are spouses of Belizeans and those who are eligible to be naturalised. In general, applicants for registration must be adult persons of legal capacity, who are of good character. Applicants petition the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Immigration though the Chief Immigration Officer, who considers the risk the person may pose for public morality and safety, such as criminal acts or activities in or outside the country which might upset legal or public order; by an undischarged bankruptcy proceeding; or with an insufficient means of self-sustainability. Upon approval, applicants must take an Oath of Allegiance. Belize does not permit international adoptions.
Spousal applicants are granted at the discretion of the Minister and applicants must confirm one year of residency. Non-spousal applicants are required to have resided in Belize for at least five years.
Loss of nationality
Nationals may voluntarily renounce their affiliation with Belize, if the declarant is a legal adult of full capacity. Denaturalisation may occur if a person obtained nationality through fraud, false representation, or concealment; acts of treason or disloyalty; certain criminal offences; and in the case of nationality by registration, residence abroad for a period of more than five consecutive years, unless they are in government service, abroad for health, enrolled abroad in an educational institution, lives with a Belizean spouse who is a national by descent, or other reasons accepted by the Minister.
Dual nationality
Dual nationality is permitted in Belize, by virtue of Section 27 of the Constitution, as amended in 2017.
Commonwealth citizenship
Belizeans are also Commonwealth citizens as well.
History
Spanish period (1502–1798)
The Bay of Honduras was reported in Spanish records in 1502 and by virtue of a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1492, the territory fell into the lands of the Spanish Empire. The Bay Settlement was established by shipwrecked English sailors in 1638 and the British were granted free trading rights by Spain to the area in 1667 by virtue of the Treaty of Madrid. In Britain, allegiance, in which subjects pledged to support a monarch, was the precursor to the modern concept of nationality. The crown recognized from 1350 that all persons born within the territories of the British Empire were subjects. Those born outside the realm — except children of those serving in an official post abroad, children of the monarch, and children born on a British sailing vessel — were considered by common law to be foreigners. Marriage did not affect the status of a subject of the realm. The first British settlers in Belizean territory were stateless buccaneers, who transitioned into logging, supplying hardwood for European markets. As such, they had no centralized government and relied on buccaneer codes for regulating their scattered settlements. Atypically for the Caribbean, Belize did not develop as a plantation society, yet it was similarly a monoeconomy. Slaves, who were first reported there in 1724, worked in the logging industry, primarily as timber cutters, but also as boat builders, domestics, porters, and warehouse laborers. Unlike other colonial powers with slave societies in the Caribbean, the British did not have a single slave code. Each British colony was allowed to establish its own rules about the slave trade, and though the Bay Settlement did not create its own code, it adopted the Jamaican code.
Though technically Belize was within Spanish territory, from 1744 a British Order in Council instructed that the settlement was to form a council to be supervised by a Governor with laws compatible to English law. There was still no centralized government, but English common law thereafter became the foundation to which customary practices of the Baymen were incorporated. Terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris recognized Spanish sovereignty over the Belize Settlements but granted British loggers the right to live and work in the territory. In 1765 Admiral William Burnaby, commander-in-chief of the Jamaican Station sailed to the settlement because of threats of conflict with Spain. He established the first constitution, known as Burnaby's Code which allowed participation of all free inhabitants of Belize, or those settlers of the Bay of Honduras, in the governance structure, known as the public meeting. The code was an amalgamation of Royal Navy law and customary practices in existence in the settlement and was signed by the inhabitants, which included two women. Another conflict between England and Spain erupted in 1779 and ended with the Spanish crown allowing again, per the 1783 Treaty of Versailles, for the British colony to remain in Spanish territory. Hostilities between Britain and Spain emerged again in 1785, culminating in the 1786 Treaty of London. Spain agreed to extended the logging boundaries of the Bay Settlement, granted rights to mahogany extraction and fishing, and permitted occupancy on St. George's Caye and other islands, in exchange for the British evacuating their shore colony along the Mosquito Coast. Burnaby's Code was abolished in 1789 and then reinstated in 1791 when attempts to create a new governance structure failed.
British period (1798–1981)
The last attempt to remove the British settlement from Spanish territory occurred in 1798, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council noted in Attorney-General for British Honduras v. Bristowe (1880) that from that date Spain had abandoned its claim to the territory and the lands passed into the realm of the British Crown. Other than common law, there was no standard statutory law which applied for subjects throughout the realm, meaning different jurisdictions created their own legislation for local conditions, which often conflicted with the laws in other jurisdictions in the British Empire. Nationality laws passed by the British Parliament were extended only to the Kingdom of Great Britain, and later the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1807, the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act, barring the Atlantic slave trade in the empire. From 1808, free men, both white and coloured, who had sufficient means were allowed to participate in public meetings in the Bay Settlement, but the residency requirement for whites was one year, compared to five years for freedmen. Though British legal opinion was that free people of color were neither aliens nor British subjects, the Solicitor General in London deferred to the Baymen to determine their status based upon local law. By the late 18th century, the cultural model included in descending power, whites, free coloured Creoles, free blacks, and slaves. Married women were subjugated to the authority of their husbands under coverture, and the law was structured to maintain social hierarchies by regulating familial matters like, who could marry, legitimacy, and inheritance.
In 1811, the Baymen established a Charter of Justice, which based its civil code on the customs of the colony. The 1833 Emancipation Act which ended slavery went into effect in 1834. Under its terms, slaves were converted into apprentices and remained bound to their former owners for four years if they had worked in the home and for six years if they had been field labourers. In the Bay Settlement, the apprenticeship period ended in 1838. Though free, there was never a British plan to give former slaves a voice in Parliament, leaving them as British subjects in a highly stratified system of rights. Denied political and economic rights, former slaves were not entitled to formal recognition as nationals by other nations. In 1840, the British Superintendent declared that English law extended over the Belize Settlement and that customary laws which were not in-line with English codes were revoked. In 1854 a new constitution was drawn up in London using the form of a British West Indian Colony, but without formal recognition of the settlement as a colony. It was submitted to the inhabitants of the Belize Settlement for approval. Those who were able to vote on it included British-born subjects or subjects born in the Bay Settlement. In 1862, the Settlement of Belize became an official British colony, under the administration of the Governor of Jamaica, and was renamed British Honduras. Conflict with the Maya and a need for greater security, caused the local assembly to dissolve in 1870 and give up self-governance in favor of the Crown. In 1871, the status was changed to Crown colony and a new constitution was drafted. The following year, the Crown Lands Ordinance was passed confining the Maya to reservations and barring them from land ownership.