A New Way for the Wealthy to Shop for Citizenships | Hacker News Reader

A New Way for the Wealthy to Shop for Citizenships

newyorker.com

61 pointslebek53 comments

> The U.S. ranks twenty-eighth on the Q.N.I., behind nearly every E.U. country. Kalin told me that the U.S.’s rank is partly due to its restrictive immigration policy, and partly because “there are so many weapons, and a high incarceration rate.”

Why does the fact that there are "so many weapons, and a high incarceration rate" make the US a bad place to live for millionaires?

There is a lot of subjectivity here. If you want to live in America, then an American citizenship is the most important one to have. However, if you want to live abroad, an American citizenship is terrible because you still have to pay income tax no matter where in the world you are.

(I do like measuring travel freedom though!)

There are people these days that have a fear of traveling outside of major US metropolitan areas because of issues like this.

They are feeding into that fear that a traveler would have.

Now that is complete irrational. The major metropolitan areas are far less safe. And in fact, the more gun control, the less safe.

Idk, my wife has no fear of getting shot in China, because there's no guns at all. Also the murder rate is like 5x lower.

> my wife has no fear of getting shot in China

As long as she doesn't say anything nice about democracy or anything.

Have we really forgotten the Tiananmen Square Massacre so quickly?

Sure I should preface that - she has no fear of getting shot by random citizens.

The 6/4 issue is a separate thing. In fact many in her generation are unaware that it happened. First time I made a reference, she wouldn't believe me for like a week.

But still, the salient point is that there exist governments with no gun control and minimal gun murders, high gun control and minimal gun murders, as well as low gun control and low murders, and low gun control and high murders. I think any statement of causality needs some massive citation there...

> The major metropolitan areas are far less safe

That mostly depends on who you are and what you're doing.

I've felt scared in cities more often than I've felt scared in rural areas, but the most objectively dangerous situations I've ever been in have all occurred in rural and suburban areas.

E.g., it's far easier for someone unfamiliar with an area to avoid "the bad part of town" in urban areas than in rural areas. And suburbs are way more tricky than rural areas in this respect.

> And in fact, the more gun control, the less safe

Anyone claiming -- explicitly or otherwise -- that there's a clear-cut causal relationship here is disingenuous, completely new to the US gun control debate, or blinded by prior belief.

Anyone claiming -- explicitly or otherwise -- that there's a clear-cut causal relationship here is disingenuous, completely new to the US gun control debate, or blinded by prior belief.

No, I think that the causation might be reversed -- dangerous urban communities might feel the need for gun control, while rural communities that may be supported by hunting do not.

The relative danger of rural vs urban areas is irrelevant. My point is that the amount of weapons and the incarceration rate should have no bearing on their rankings. A better reason would be: "statistically you are more likely to be killed and/or unfairly imprisoned due to corruption" which is not what he said.

> Anyone claiming -- explicitly or otherwise -- that there's a clear-cut causal relationship here is disingenuous, completely new to the US gun control debate, or blinded by prior belief.

Correct, there is no correlation between gun control and safety. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/gun-control-myth...

But in defense of the guy in the article, he did not mention "gun control" but rather the amount of guns in total -- which may actually have a positive correlation with homicide rates: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an... this, of course, is most likely due the fact that people will try harder to get guns if they live in a more dangerous area

> the most objectively dangerous situations I've ever been in have all occurred in rural and suburban areas

This documentary about Johannesburg opened my eyes. It's really bad. People are trying to organize while Police can't cope with the situation. I'm giving such a remote comparison for reference. It is good to know how bad it can be. I have never seen such bad conditions except maybe in a favela in Rio.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xycnjl_law-and-disorder-in-...

>The major metropolitan areas are far less safe.

That's not actually true, statistically. There are more crimes because there are more people. If you look at violent crimes per capita, urban areas as a whole are safer.

On the other hand I'm not sure what value those statistics have for individuals. When you're in a city the neighborhood you're in matters a whole lot, especially if you're not from that city. Where I grew up there are some neighborhoods that are pretty close to being crime free, and there are others I won't go for fear of my safety.

This is false. Per capita, violent crime (especially homicide) rates are higher in urban than suburban or rural areas. There is a ton of data on this, and it isn't close or even debatable. There are other factors (accident rate) that can make urban areas look safer, but not violent crime.

The FBI reports the 2011 rate of violent crime known to law enforcement within metropolitan areas was 410.3 per 100,000 persons. The rate of violent crime per 100,000 persons in cities outside metropolitan areas was 382.1, and for nonmetropolitan counties it was 186.1.1

The FBI reports metropolitan cities had a murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate known to law enforcement of 4.9 per 100,000 persons in 2011. Cities outside metropolitan areas had a murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate of 4.4 per 100,000 persons while non-metropolitan counties had a rate of 3.1 per 100,000 persons.

http://victimsofcrime.org/docs/default-source/ncvrw2014/urba...

http://science.time.com/2013/07/23/in-town-versus-country-it...

You made a claim about violent crime and then posted a link containing information that doesn't support your stance. Your link lumps crime and accidental injury together. The thread was about violent crime.

I think lots of people were fooled by that link bait article, but even it doesn't say violent crime is lower in urban areas.

Now it’s true that the risk of homicide is greater in big cities than it is in the countryside.

Yeah, apparently I got fooled by it last time around for this conversation.

This "QNI" value that law firm invented seems mostly of interest to wealthy people who want to visit a lot of countries with short visa delays (if any) and little to no red tape at points of entry.

QNI seems minimally useful/relevant to people who live in a country full time and rarely if ever leave that country. For them, other indices and statistics are of greater interest.

Also taxes. Tax rates and laws differ based on citizenships.

> The U.S. ranks twenty-eighth on the Q.N.I., behind nearly every E.U. country.

Ha! It sits right under Romania and Bulgaria. And to think that people of these two countries have long dreamed to emigrate to US (for decades, before joining EU). Now, much less so.

The tired, poor huddled masses from there might have dreamed about emigrating. The multi-millionaires who can afford to buy the passport are scoffing at the thought - they have properties in Biarritz and Nice and Holland Park if life in Sofia becomes too dreary, and going through FATCA and US income tax compliance sounds like a right chore...

The US likely also rates low because, unless you are also a resident of the US, it opens you up to a lot of tax compliance nightmares, re: FATCA. See https://medium.com/@RachelHeller/https-medium-com-rachelhell...

> If you want to live in America, then an American citizenship is the most important one to have.

A green card is all you need; the only real difference is that you don't have free speech rights -- though your speech rights are still stronger than in Europe, which is otherwise a much better place to live.

I live and work in the bay area because it's a fabulous and exciting place to work -- best in the world of my experience, but in overall QoL I rank the US_significantly below western Europe and Australia.

No place is perfect!

Firstly, I think this is a fascinating subject that isn't discussed on HN enough. A lot of friends of mine have multiple citizenships, so this is an interesting subject for me personally. I know two people with dual Russian-US nationalities, which they both loudly proclaim to be the best. I also know a number of people with dual European-US citizenships, and a handful of people who have a smaller non-EU country and a US citizenship. I also know some people who only have just one smaller non-EU country's citizenship.

I've personally had the discussion several times about what the best citizenships to hold are. Some people I know are wealthy enough that they could simply afford to purchase additional citizenships; some are undocumented in their country of residence and holding even dual citizenship is only a dream.

I'm personally of the opinion that there are a few "classes" of passports: European, American, Russian, South American, and everyone else. Russian, because it allows you free travel between the former Soviet states; European and American for obvious reasons, and South American because most South American countries permit free travel with citizenship.

Less commonly known passports I have special love for are the Chilean passport and the Dutch passport (which I have). The Dutch passport because it is very difficult to obtain (and requires you to give up all other citizenships unless obtained by birth), and the Chilean one because it is the only passport to allow free travel to all G8 countries.

It's also interesting to watch how the Syrian passport fell from "medium quality", relatively close to high quality, to the fourth worst passport ranked. In the same time, only a few countries fell positions: El Salvador went from high quality to medium quality, and the Congo went from medium to low quality.

For those in the thread asking for a copy of the 2016 report: https://www.henleyglobal.com/files/download/HP/hvri/HP%20Vis...

Doesn't an American passport make you liable to American taxes worldwide? (I guess, if you are rich enough, your accountants can deal with that..)

Yes, unfortunately the US is one of the few countries to do anything like this. Thankfully, you can exclude up to around $90k of earned income per year from taxes, and there are programs in place to give tax credits when you go over this limit and pay double taxes. Of course, you end up paying more, but it's not usually double.

The additional tax paperwork/filing burden and the fact that very few banks overseas will open a bank account for a US citizen (due to FATCA) are still not worth it for a lot of people.

Had no idea about FATCA. Absolutely insane government overstep. To impose such a costly burden on financial institutions worldwide, to make Americans a liability to those host countries, and all for such little gain ... it boggles the mind. And the fact that it's been in place for 6 years - the Obama administration must have started planning it almost as soon as they came to power, and they've had so much time to see the inefficiency of it and the negative effects, and still they haven't made a move to reverse it. Totally nuts.

Planning might have started in the previous administration.

Yes, it does. This is the main reason why I am considering NOT getting my US citizenship in a couple years when time comes.

The main upside I see to American citizenship, if you otherwise have access to a first-world citizenship, is access to the US labour market.

I would think that Canadian and German passport would be quite excellent.

Canadian because it gives you access to free healthcare and the United States, as well as visa free entry to so many countries and the German one gives you all of the EU.

I knew a person with Canadian, Swiss, and New Zealand -- now that's an awesome combination.

I'm more interested in which passport adds the most most visa free travel to a given passport. Maybe Russia would be best given a US passport, since Canada/USA/Germany are sure to have a great deal of overlap. You can take the set difference of the passport you have and all of the candidate passports. Whichever candidate yields the set with the highest cardinality is the passport to pursue.

Canadian passport does not give you free healthcare; it is completely unconnected with citizenship.

Health care, like most thing, is the responsibility of the provincial governments. You have to be a resident of a province for a period of time, usually 6 months, to get free healthcare in that province. Provinces do cover out of province travel and some limited international travel though usually not the US -- but that all varies by province.

If you are a non-resident Canadian citizen, you will not be covered and have to pay full even if you are treated in Canada. For example, if you move to the Bay area for work, go home at christmas and break your leg, you will be out of pocket the total costs.

However, if you a resident non-citizen (i.e., PR, TFW, Student), you will be covered after your residency is established.

It's 3 months for Quebec and 153 days for Ontario http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/programs/ohip/

What happens to you if you move and then get in a terrible accident? Does your former province cover you during this in-between residency establishment phase? Do you need to move back to your old province (or be moved back) before the waiting period expires? Or are you completely SOL?

I'm not sure, I think that in the specific case of an inter-province move you're still covered by the older province

Or you get a separate private insurance if you're coming into Canada to stay

I suspect that even without any coverage you're not SOL because of things like the mandatory insurance that vehicles must have

Okay, I figured there must be some provision for movers but was unwilling to assume - so the old province would cover me if I had some incident in the new province (car accident, heart attack, mega food poisoning, whatever)...

Precisely.

Either you are a resident who pays taxes and gets health care coverage or you are non-resident with no tax obligations and no health care coverage. There's no free lunch.

Doesn't Germany require you to give up other citizenships when you become a German citizen?

That used to be the case for most nationalities, but rules have been relaxed. For example you can keep any EU nationality when you're becoming a German.

More specifically, you are allowed to keep your previous citizenship if any of the following apply:

1) Your previous citizenship is in an EU member state or in Switzerland.

2) Your previous citizenship is in a country which has no process for renouncing citizenship, or where renouncing citizenship is illegal or otherwise dangerous or unnecessarily difficult (there is a published list of countries where that is the case, and having citizenship of one of those automatically removes the renunciation requirement for that country's citizenship)

3) You make a case to the government that renouncing your previous citizenship is an undue hardship, with costs, risks, or impact on your life that are beyond reasonable (these are decided on a case by case basis)

Incidentally, I'm intimately familiar with the naturalization process. If my knowledge can help anyone else, I'm happy to do so. Email/IRC contact in my profile.

> I have special love for are the Chilean passport and the Dutch passport (which I have) [...] The Dutch passport because it is very difficult to obtain (and requires you to give up all other citizenships unless obtained by birth)

Ok, but, aside from being hard to get what other benefits would it have say over a German or other European one?

None. I have two EU nationalities and apart from this way having the same nationalities my children have, there is no advantage.

That's not entirely true, at least according to this website: https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php

I haven't looked in the specifics of how the rankings come about, but clearly there are difference between EU passports that have some meaning.

As a first guess is because some of the European countries had/have colonies (the Dutch did). That opens the door to various countries, sometimes to tax havens.

Dutch citizens can travel easier through China, Israel, and Mozambique; they also do not need a visa when traveling through significantly more parts of China.

German citizens can travel easier to Mongolia and Vietnam, but can only stay for 15 days there.

I personally think that this makes the Dutch passport stronger, but someone who wanted to spend a short amount of time in Vietnam would disagree. Basically, the only thing making the German passport "the best in the world" over the Dutch one is being able to travel easier to Mongolia and Vietnam, even though they can only stay for 15 days. For practical purposes, I definitely think the Dutch passport is better. To each their own, however.

Is there really a difference in China? The Timatic entries look exactly the same to me:

NL: https://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?Sp... DE: https://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?Sp...

The Chinese transit without visa rules are also not different:

NL: https://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?Sp... DE: https://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?Sp...

Israel is exactly the same if you were born after 1928:

NL: https://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?Sp... DE: https://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?Sp...

I can see no difference in Mozambique (although I have to admit that in this case this is the first time I looked into the requirements):

NL: https://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?Sp... DE: https://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?Sp...

Referenced but not linked by the article: https://www.nationalityindex.com

I feel that it's a much more interesting comparison. Other rankings simply compare the number of countries your passport can enter visa-free, which obviously ignores many factors.

I'm lucky enough to hold three citizenships (no I'm not rich), so I have no trouble entering most countries. I just wish one of them was from the EU... it would make working there much easier.

1. I wish they had published their list

2. The simple metric that might help us understand the value of the list: access to high paying jobs

3. From #2, you can derive other properties as corollaries (freedom to travel, settle Etc)

they did publish it. emptybits posted a link to their index

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11886215

Yeah, passports.io does a better job than this firm. I incorporated in Seychelles, have citizenship in antigua. All thanks to them.

Remember, kids: tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is discouraged.

Where do you usually reside? First of all you've got issues with visas, but also in a lot of countries you automatically become a tax resident after staying there for more than ~180 days per year (as in most EU countries).

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