Where the Super-Rich Go to Buy Their Second Passport
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Thankfully there is a lot of freedom of movement if you're lucky enough to have a "good" passport, but recently we've seen the trend reverse a bit due to the refugee-scare. Hopefully one day everything will be open for anybody.
But just hypothetically, if I want to grab a bike, ride to some isolated forest in France, build a cabin and live the hermit life, I can not to that. I'd be forcefully removed and placed back into my designated space. And force really is the only thing that gives basis to the claim of land. Seems kinda weird. Animals don't care and just move where ever they want to.
I think we have that but in one direction only: if a highly educated resident of a wealthy country wants to move somewhere else it will usually be easy. The farther we move from that spot, the harder it goes: it might require ungodly amounts of administrative work, enough bribing money, or demonstrably unique skills.
I agree with you that it brings up a lot of things to consider.
A very very high fraction of animals are territorial and will fight to the death over land claims. You can see this in your back yard if you have squirrels or bird nests.
>But just hypothetically, if I want to grab a bike, ride to some isolated forest in France, build a cabin and live the hermit life, I can not to that.
This is actually a result of fairness on the part of the French government - you are a "nice person" and presumably would not ruin the environment for anybody else if you did that, but if it were legal to show up and make houses in French forests it would only be a matter of time before unscrupulous individuals began to show up and clear-cut the forest, overtaxing it and turning it into an unregulated slum city. Indeed if everyone were nice there would be no need for laws or governments at all.
We are just slowly working toward more homogeneous soceties among which freedom of movement can be allowed - but currently, if we eliminate all borders tomorrow, it would be quite chaotic. What we first need to address are the struggles that make millions of people want to leave their home country, so they can be happy there, and there is no mass exodus from anywhere.
Turns out there are two sorts of Freedom - the good one (mine) Freedom and the bad one (others/your) Freedom. I will rage and fight for the good freedom, while demanding for someone else having his good freedom and parts of mine good freedom to limit your good freedom.
That same force is what protects you from random people deciding to just take your property.
Imagine those boundaries as the lines a government says "This is as far as I can enforce certain rules".
Now, maybe it should be a little more easy to cross, but you also have the problems of rules of different areas being incompatible. Some things allowed in one country are not allowed in another. Certain standards practiced by one country aren't practiced by another. Etc. You also have ecological concerns and what not. Invasive species can devastate local wildlife.
True, animals do move where they want to, but they are limited by what they can naturally reach. Humans have the ability to go just about anywhere and transport anything with them.
Now, it's been watered down by the well-intentioned Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship in their state of residence to citizens of the U.S. (the amendment's laudable goal was to prevent the former slave states from denying citizenship to their black residents), but it certainly doesn't have to be that way. I'd very much support an amendment which states that one is a citizen of one's state of birth in the same way that one is a citizen of the United States by birth, and that any citizen of the United States may be naturalised into another state voluntarily and under the laws of that state, such laws being subject to Congressional override.
That would enable each state to ensure that its citizens are actually citizens (i.e., with a knowledge of & hopefully respect for its history & traditions), while preventing states from refusing citizenship to a class of citizens and giving the federal government the authority to correct unjust state regulations.
Nations could technically operate the same way, but only as part of a larger collective. There would need to be some agreed upon rules, some governing body to oversee enforcement of those rules, etc. Certain things would need to be agreed upon. What could each nation have autonomy on, what would they need to give up, what would they need to start doing, etc.
The hypothetical you describe, of free-moving people and nations, was the reality for most of human history. This was the era of marauding bands, violent nomadic tribes which pillaged, burned, murdered and raped, not to mention famine and other constant disruptions to daily life. On your way to the French forest you would be murdered by a highwayman.
It would certainly be ideal if all nations of the world were available to choose from for all people in a sort of geopolitical marketplace, but that would of course require all nations of the world to have identical values which allowed for the sort of cultural and racial mixing which would surely follow, and I think you'd struggle to find any country that's 100% OK with that.
You do realize that long before Europe was 'civilized' other peoples had nations and exchanged diplomats?
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0959229010840618...
If we were conversing in the 19th century one could excuse this sort of willful Euro-centric ignorance, but it is now well into the 21st century and information is freely available. I guess one can file this under the 'When Rome Ruled the Known World' category. Hint: What stopped that expansionist power from moving East towards Euphrates and firmly lodged to the periphery of Mediterranean?]
I'm probably more to the left as far as national borders are concerned compared to the average, but i don't see how your premise works. The French never signed a contract with you about living in a french forest (and i assume by your mention of a contract that you don't believe all ownership is theft), so why should you have the right to be there.
But not some places. There is the rather awful condition of being stateless for some people, such as many people living in northern Thailand. For example, four of those boys who were trapped in the cave in Thailand. Many people like that were born and lived their whole life in Thailand but are not citizens of any country. So they cannot get an ID card, open a bank account, have an official residence, get married, etc, etc.
They have the problem of fundamentally how do you back up the laws without force against other states who can.
Also, once you go stateless and then decide you can't do things that you want to do, you probably can't go back.
Of course you could also ask about the example of a forest that was "unowned" (although these days to find land without a property claim you would have to go into space). But personally I'm inclined to treat unowned property the same as publicly owned (by the entire world). Everyone has an equal claim to it. Therefore, again, you would have to find some price at which the government was willing to sell it to you.
My understanding is that passports are really only about 100 years old, coming into existence (or being required, anyway) during the Great War.
> But just hypothetically, if I want to grab a bike, ride to some isolated forest in France, build a cabin and live the hermit life, I can not to that. I'd be forcefully removed and placed back into my designated space.
It's actually kind of the opposite: it's not that nowhere else will accept you; rather, it's that your country must accept you. It's kinda like family, one definition of which is that your family are those who, if you show up at their door, they have to take you in.
What doesn't make sense to me is dual (or treble) citizenship. My country is my country; I could renounce my citizenship and swear allegiance to another, but it doesn't make sense to be to be a citizen of two different countries. How can one bear equal allegiance to two?
For most people, it's just something they're burdened with at birth.
To the contrary: you never signed a contract, but you still got a free education, roads and libraries and schools, etc. growing up in your own country.
You're as free to live a hermit life in France as you were a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand years ago. And somebody else is also free to attack and imprison you for it (more recently French law enforcement, longer ago various peoples/tribes).
But you have this amazing things called rights in your own country, such as due process of law, where the police will protect property rights and the fact that you live in your home. That's not archaic, that's amazing.
Someone asked, in what I can only assume was complete seriousness, why they couldn’t just walk into someone’s domicile when they left. Wow!
Yet it's not France that stop you from going away, it's the other countries that stop you from going there...
Why France refuse someone that doesn't cost them a penny for their education, roads and libraries and schools while they were growing up?
I'm Canadian, more specifically, from Quebec. I've met PLENTY of french people that had to go back to their countries because their visa expired. They didn't cost us anything, they gave plenty in taxes, more than many people I know, yet they have to go.
The funny thing is though that in the 19th century some of my ancestors left Eastern Europe looking for a better place. They found it but today that route is closed.
Edit: Add some data from these countries
Countries from the Article:
-Austria 186
-Cyprus 171
-Malta 182
-Turkey 111
-Vanuatu 129
-Grenada 141
-St. Kitts and Nevis 151
-Saint Lucia 142
-Dominica 136
-Antigua and Barbuda 149
For reference:
-United Kingdom 186
-United States of America 186
There does not appear to be a correlation between access and price. Though the most access is the most expensive.
I was wondering about what access it buys you. This is sort of why it is being purchased.
https://multinational.io/best_passport/
For example if you're looking to add as many visa free countries as you can to your American passport your best choice would be Ivory Coast (+12 countries): https://multinational.io/best_passport/the%20United%20States
Interestingly from this list Dominica is the best country to dollar investment at $20k / country. Though Turkey and Grenada actually get you 6. They are more per country. Would be interesting to do a full analysis of all the combos.
Though it looks like their sources are different than my link since the numbers don't line up. Total count of the US is 163 vs 186 from other site.
The data is stored on the front end in a bunch of arrays, if you want to play around with it directly.
> Though it looks like their sources are different than my link since the numbers don't line up.
Most probably different definitions of visa-free (it's not all clear-cut) and "Dependent, disputed, or restricted territories" counted in one but not the other.
A lot of passports will underscore access to the US, EU, Canada etc.
There is also a different level of access. For instance, a Canadian passport will also get you a work holiday in Ireland or Australia. Will any of these do something similar?
I hold dual citizenship and I move a lot more easily through many borders than my single citizenship wife does by picking the appropriate passport for that particular entry. No, I didn't buy it.
Cuba if you add Antigua and Barbuda
So it'd be 189.
It requires you to be accepted through an application (no criminal / health problems) and to 800k loan interest-free to the government for 5 years. You also need business experience and at least 1,6m$ in legally-acquired assets.
Maybe Australia also have other criteria ? I think countries on that list don't ask many questions...
Pretty bad "article" overall. It could've offered so much more information :(
They offer _residency_ visas, not citizenship. Once you are a permanent resident, you can apply for citizenship once you fulfill the residency requirements (3 years over the last 5 in the case of Canada), but the article is about countries that offer citizenship _outright_.
Normally once you have the PR, you only need to spend the required time here and pay the fees to get the full citizenship. It's pretty straight forward (Friends are in the process)
There are some countries where a residency visa does not allow one to do so no matter how long you spend in the country.
The US is unusual (perhaps unique) in that most rich countries don't ask you to pay taxes on your worldwide income.
So if you have a lot of passive income -- almost the definition of rich -- then you would prefer England or Canada over the US.
Someone might make a comparison of London and Vancouver real estate but there are so many other factors that I am not sure that is useful, but it might be indicative.
One's desire to obtain Citizenship may have a very different set of motivations than one's desire to obtain Residency.
I was just pointing out that the US would not top the list if it did.
I'm reminded of the talk about the tax cuts passed last year. One of the reasons given for cutting the corporate tax rate is double taxation (paying corporate taxes then taxes on dividends). Australia has had a system for years that solves this problem.
The concept is dividend franking. What this means is that if a company pays 30% corporate taxes on $1 and then passes you the remaining $0.70 as a dividend, you're actually getting two things:
- Income of $1
- Credit for $0.30 tax paid
If you're an offshore investor that tax credit gains you nothing. You don't need to file a tax return. You've paid $0.30 in taxes.
If you're resident then if your marginal rate of tax is lower than 30% you'll get a refund on the difference. If it's 30%, no difference. If it's more than 30% you'll pay a little more.
If the US/EU adopted such a system and also applied it in some form to capital gains a lot of these problems would simply go away. By this I mean that some form of withholding taxes are retained from capital gains that you get credit for in your taxes. This is a little trickier than dividends because you have to work out a cost basis but this is a solvable problem.
Then you combine that with:
- Revenue apportionment of profit. If you earn x% of your revenue in country A then country A taxes x% of your profit; and
- Loans taken out in country A for $x when an entity has untaxed profits in country B is the same as repatriating $x.
Then you have a much improved situation (IMHO). It also means things like buying citizenship, at least for tax purposes, largely goes away so who cares?
Also, other than outright citizenship there are a number of so-called golden visa programs that give you a path to citizenship but are often much cheaper.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/citizenship-shouldnt...
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/04/625980910/white-house-launche...
I think the Trump administration is quietly launching a strategy to strip a large number of people of their citizenship.
If you have dark skin you should be particularly worried.
There are surprising ways to get residency and citizenship from all sorts of countries, usually with a commitment of a bit over 5 years.
But you do need some luck and other features. A degree helps a lot, although I don't have one.
I got the US one via the green card lottery, and although that might seem like crazy luck, if you live in certain countries your odds are surprisingly high. I calculated mine where 1 in 10. You just keep on applying.
The EU has pretty amazing visas available if you look carefully (being proficient at the language that Google Translate claims is English is helpful). For instance you can live in several EU countries just by being self-employed. You can then use that to get citizenship over time and live almost anywhere in Europe and even in some Caribbean countries.
Places like Australia (although they're tightening this up) allow you to move there if you're young, English speaking and have the right job or degree (for instance, if you can cook!). Once you're in often there is no requirement to actually work, so you can work on your own project while you pass 4 years to claim citizenship. Then you leave. But you might not want to.
Motivations? Besides flexibility for business purposes and low cost or free high quality health care, I'd say this: the world is becoming a more dangerous place, and being able to escape somewhere safe is comforting.
I'm not really seeking these out they tend just to happen.
Same thing with ISIL funders, ask the person to explain where the wealth comes from and require that the business has to have been audited by the local authorities. It's not perfect, but then at least someone might look into suspicious transactions to known terrorists.
The romantic side of me has considered it once or twice had I the disposable liquid cash for it.
It might also help avoid extradition, if they're into that.Edit: IANAL
Germany has visa-free travel to 176 countries, Sweden 175, many other countries still give you access to more than 170. Yes, a US Passport gets you visa free to 174 but that could change at the drop of a hat with the wrong invasion or military strike.
If you're American and America does something the world sees as shitty, you're suddenly restricted where you can travel and may in fact not want to be travelling on an American passport for very real threat of harassment.
The tax issue doesn’t really apply as residence (rather than citizenship) is the determining factor for the vast majority of people (but not Americans)
1. Which passport gets you access to the most high paying jobs
2. Which passport has the best low cost education
3. Which passport has the best low-cost healthcare
4. Which passport gives you access to cities with dense experiences (I'll let HN assist me with rounding out what that means)
There's more factors here than just money.
Well it would probably work for a short while but if the terrorist matters enough (any terrorist that can come up with 24M probably does) back room politics would happen, said terrorist would wind up being extradited and Austria would get to keep the 24M and whatever they negotiated from the nation the terrorist is being extradited to.
Malta seems to be the odd ball out. I guess they've had their reasons for looking through the fingers.
There is no CAP for "green cards through marriage" so no waiting list, and the residency period to transition to citizenship is shorter (3 years) than the standard (5 years I believe).
People think it's a rubber stamp, but from what I've seen it's an invasive process where they poke around all sorts of aspects of your personal life to ascertain how 'good faith' your marriage is.
My XP is only one data point of course, but the process was not invasive at all. We had to provide some documentation (e.g. statements of shared bank account, utility bills with our names), go through a 30-ish minute interview where we had to explain how we met, how we got engage, etc and that was it. Now, maybe when the USCIS suspects fraud they start digging a little more and it gets painful.
I don't doubt that the experiences vary. But the entire point of my reply was that you can't just buy into citizenship with marriage because they will deny you if they find out you did that, ergo it is not guaranteed.
Just marrying somebody is usually not sufficient though, and there are other requirements (put in place exactly to avoid this practice). For example you may be required to
* Being married for a number of years
* Residing with your spouse in the target country for number of years
After meeting all the requirements you need to request the citizenship to the relevant authority, and the whole process may take quite some time.
An example: if you marry an Italian citizen you may request citizenship after 2 years of marriage (3 if you're not living in Italy), but then it will take usually 3 more years for your request to be processed.
Also keep in mind that some nations don't allow double citizenship, or require special circumstances (I think to remember it is the case for Germany and Holland) so you may have to choose between the two.
Plus at least until recently Turkeys economy was growing steadily so it was an interesting place for doing business.