If you live in Nevis you have at least 3 options to do so legally:
1- Year residency permit renewed each year
6- Month visit
Citizenship
Periodically Nevis adds or changes some requirements or options for longer residency stays, but basically if you want to live here year around, then you need residency or citizenship.
Many people come for 6 months on a regular passport and leave each year; we have a friend who lives in upstate New York May-November and Nevis from late fall to summer. This is a popular choice, especially for retired Americans as you can then use some Medicare offerings, such as Advantage plans and easily maintain residence in the state you live.
We choose to live here year around, which means we need residency or citizenship. We could qualify for Citizenship by Investment because we bought a house that qualified for the real estate option, but the fees are rather substantial. We get a one-year residency permit instead. (If you are interested in the Citizenship by Investment option I recommend you investigate it carefully as there is currently a money laundering case in the US related to it.)
The first time we applied for residency we needed blood tests for sexually transmitted diseases and TB plus all sorts of information about our family members and a passport photo. We had to get the STD test at a doctor’s office but the island health department did the TB screen. Aside from the tests most of the information was the same as we needed for the Alien Landholder License when we bought our home and the very nice lady at the island administration office got a copy of the license and used that.
The passport photo was a little harder. We tried the drugstore first, thinking they would be like Walgreens at home and do that service routinely, but not. Instead a kind fellow shopper walked me down to the photographer’s place so we could get the pictures done that afternoon.
Luckily the renewals don’t require the photos, detailed information or blood tests, just a signature on a simple form and $600 EC (about $240 US) each. Easy Peasy. We apply for ours every year in early November and the administration grants them within a couple weeks. Dave picked them up, paid and now we are all set until it’s time to get our US passports stamped in January.
