Descent — generational limit / parent citizen-by-descent only

Route AG-DSC-02 isolates the generational limiter that the Antigua and Barbuda Constitution builds into its descent regime — the rule that stops citizenship by descent from being transmitted indefinitely down a chain of persons all born outside the country. It is the conceptual counterpart to AG-DSC-01 (first-generation descent: a child born abroad to a qualifying Antiguan parent). Whereas AG-DSC-01 describes who acquires citizenship by descent, AG-DSC-02 describes who does not — specifically, the child born abroad whose only Antiguan parent is themselves a citizen acquired solely under the descent limb (s.113(b)). For that child, the automatic at-birth descent rule in Chapter VIII does not engage, because the limb requires the transmitting parent to hold a qualifying class of citizenship that, by deliberate drafting, excludes citizenship held only by descent. The signature analytic value of this route is that the limiter is structural rather than labelled. The Antigua and Barbuda Constitution does not use the familiar Commonwealth phrase "citizen otherwise than by descent." Instead, s.113(b) confers at-birth citizenship on a person born abroad only where a parent is a citizen "by virtue of section 112 of this Constitution or paragraph (a) of this section" — i.e. a citizen at independence (s.112) or a citizen by birth in Antigua and Barbuda (s.113(a)). Section 113(b) itself is conspicuously absent from that qualifying list. A parent who is a citizen only under s.113(b) therefore falls outside the closed class of transmitting statuses, and the cut-off is the necessary consequence of that omission. This route documents the cut-off, the narrow carve-ins that survive it (the s.113(c) government-service limb and the s.112(b) grandparent reach fixed at independence), and the absence of any further statutory cure in the Citizenship Act Cap.22. This route is a true pathway to nationality (it determines, at birth, who is and is not an Antiguan citizen by operation of constitutional law). It is operative today and continuously so since independence. It carries no application fee or processing step of its own at the moment of acquisition: where the rule engages, citizenship vests automatically at birth; where it does not, the person is simply not a citizen by descent and must look to a different route (registration, naturalisation, or, in narrow cases, the grandparent independence cohort) — none of which cures the descent chain.

The controlling text is Constitution Chapter VIII s.113 (verbatim, from.txt`): > "113. Persons who automatically become citizens after commencement of this Constitution — The following persons shall become citizens at the date of their birth on or after 1st November 1981— > (a) every person born in Antigua and Barbuda [subject to diplomatic-immunity and enemy-occupation provisos]; > (b) every person born outside Antigua and Barbuda if at the date of his birth either of his parents is or would have been but for that parent's death, a citizen by virtue of section 112 of this Constitution or paragraph (a) of this section; > (c) every person born outside Antigua and Barbuda if at the date of his birth either of his parents is, or would have been but for that parent's death, a citizen employed in service under the Government or under an authority of the Government that requires him or her to reside outside Antigua and Barbuda for the proper discharge of his or her functions." The limiter is the closed reference list in s.113(b): "a citizen by virtue of section 112.. or paragraph (a) of this section." The qualifying transmitting statuses are exhaustively (i) s.112 — citizen at commencement on 1 November 1981, and (ii) s.113(a) — citizen by birth in Antigua and Barbuda. Citizenship under s.113(b) (by descent) is not within the list. Verification note (primary-text check): the express phrase "otherwise than by descent" does not appear anywhere in the Constitution's citizenship chapter; the cut-off is produced structurally by the omission of s.113(b) from the qualifying list, not by a labelled descent/non-descent distinction. The route is pinned to the statute's actual wording, not to the Commonwealth-model label. The grandparent limb that gives the descent regime a one-generation-beyond-parent reach is s.112(b) (verbatim): > "112... The following persons shall become citizens on 1st November 1981.. (b) every person born outside Antigua if either of his parents or any one of his grandparents was born therein or was registered or naturalized while resident in Antigua." This made automatic citizens, at commencement, of persons abroad whose parent or grandparent had the pre-independence Antigua connection. It is anchored to the independence cohort and to a pre-independence connection; it is not a continuing, forward-operating grandchild-registration entitlement. The interpretation rules are s.118(1) (posthumous parent) and s.118(2) (out-of-wedlock), verbatim: > "118.(1) Any reference in this Chapter to the national status of the father of a person at the time of that person's birth shall, in relation to a person born after the death of his father, be construed as a reference to the national status of the father at the time of the father's death; and where that death occurred before 1st November 1981 the national status that the father would have had if he had died on that day shall be deemed to be his national status at the time of his death: Provided that in the case of a child born out of wedlock references to the mother shall be substituted for such references to the father." > "118.(2) In this Chapter — 'child' includes a child born out of wedlock and not legitimated; 'father', in relation to a child born out of wedlock and not legitimated, includes a person who acknowledges and can show that he is the father of the child or has been found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be the father of the child; 'parent' includes the mother of a child born out of wedlock." The Citizenship Act Cap.22 (Act 17 of 1982) confirms the absence of any further descent cure. Section 3 ("Additional grounds of citizenship, and registration of certain persons as citizens") covers only: foundlings (s.3(1), operating through s.113(a)); discretionary registration of a person who would have qualified under s.112(a) but was not a CUKC on 31 October 1981 (s.3(2)); discretionary Commonwealth-citizen registration on seven-years residence/government-service (s.3(3)); and entitlement registration of an always-stateless person born in Antigua and Barbuda (s.3(5)). None of these is a descendant or grandchild route. Cap.22 s.2(1) supplies the "service of the Government" definition that feeds s.113(c) ("'service of the Government' includes service as an employee of any statutory board which is in receipt of moneys provided from the Consolidated Fund or voted by Parliament").