Comment by mdasen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdasen | Hacker News Reader

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Spain offers an easier pathway to citizenship for citizens of Ibero-American countries (basically Latin America) and that includes Puerto Rico.

The idea is that, if you're an American, you could get PR citizenship status with one year and then Spain would give you citizenship with only two years. You might consider the PR citizenship to not actually be a "citizenship" but merely a residency status (like how you might live in California or Washington).

Though technically, US citizens are also citizens of the state in which they reside. So, it's not really that different than what states do when considering things like in-state tuition at schools. So, yes PR has citizenship just as California and every other state has citizenship. I guess the difference is that PR considers that you don't lose the status of PR citizen when you cease to be a resident (at least if you were born there or a parent was).

Spain is also free to make the laws it wants to access their nationality. They could decide that those born in Florida should have easier access given Florida's historical connection to Spain. France was at least considering allowing anyone born in a place that used to be French territory to get citizenship. I believe Bill Clinton joked that he could move to France and run for President there since Arkansas was part of the Louisiana Purchase from France.

Anyway, it seems that PR citizenship needs US citizenship, but US citizens can gain PR citizenship with one year of residency.

PR citizenship is a thing (ie, a document) that PR will give you after one year, or sooner if you are indeed a Puerto Rican or if you have Puerto Rican parents. But the document will not work in conjunction with the Spain 2-year path to citizenship.

To be clear, the PR document says it's possible (for a mainland American), but Spain does not recognize it unless you're Puerto Rican.

Source: I tried it and went through the process. I'm from mainland US, lived in PR and now live in Spain.

> Spain does not recognize it unless you're Puerto Rican.

So if you parents aren't from PR, or if you do not speak spanish or what?

> Source: I tried it and went through the process. I'm from mainland US, lived in PR and now live in Spain.

Tell me more about it! I'm thinking about moving to PR if there are more Covid restriction due to the new administration (curfew like in Europe)

I'm also considering Spain.

>So if you parents aren't from PR, or if you do not speak spanish or what?

If you are born in Puerto Rico or your parents are Puerto Rican, you can get the PR citizenship document, which has little value, outside of using it to show Spain you're Latin American (after you've reached the 2-yr mark legally living in Spain). So, you'd need to be Puerto Rican in one of the ways described, plus find a way to legally live in Spain for 2 years, then present the document when you apply for citizenship.

>I'm thinking about moving to PR if there are more Covid restriction due to the new administration (curfew like in Europe)

PR's Covid restrictions at the height were just as bad, if not worse, than other places. But that depends on case numbers. Currently the situation is as follows (site):

https://www.discoverpuertorico.com/info/travel-guidelines

>I'm also considering Spain

If you can show enough funds to sustain yourself while in Spain, you can apply for a non-lucrative visa which means you won't be able to take a Spaniard's job but you can still work online for a company abroad. It's essentially a non-work visa. Funds you'll need to show, per year, are at around $27,000 (even if cost of living is way less). Initial visa is one year, renewal is two years, and the second renewal is also two years, which gets you to the five year mark where you can apply for permanent residency. After your first 183 days in Spain, in a calendar year, you are considered a Spanish tax resident, and Spain has rather high taxes. Under the US-Spain double taxation agreement, you'd pay taxes to Spain and then apply for a credit on your US taxes.

Spain is really locked down, internally, so if I were you, I'd wait til late 2021 to consider coming here. It's insane the amount of things I cannot currently do here, and have not been able to do for many months.

Although if you want to be in Europe and wait it out, try Albania. Americans can stay there as tourists, visa-free, for one year (due to the US having helped Kosovo in the 90s, where 90% are ethnic Albanians). It's cheap, beautiful, and has nice people. Check out Dabble and Travel's late 2020 YT videos on Albania. Georgia is another country where you can stay for one year, as an American.

Not trying to attack you, but I'm curious why you want to move to Spain when in this comment you say you really prefer the US way of operating surrounding the pandemic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26215169

Just in case the new administration adds restrictions that make it worse (ex: curfew), I'm considering alternatives.

Spain has curfews in many regions right now. I believe Mexico has no restrictions, why not there?

It's really about being a resident of a state rather than a "citizen."

But it can lead to various edge cases, some of which are being spotlighted at the moment as people move around to get out of cities.

Basically you have this somewhat odd situation where you have free movement within the country and the federal government doesn't actually care where you spend your time. But you essentially need to be a state resident for purposes of things like a driver's license and paying state taxes and some states really want your money if you spend more than a bare minimum of days in the state. So there sort of a disconnect between federal rules and state rules.

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