Antigua & Barbuda To Slash Citizenship Investment Threshold – Investment Immigration

2017/10/27 Leave a comment

Canadian policies having an impact by reducing the major incentive of visa free travel:

Antigua & Barbuda has seen a dramatic 95 per cent decline in the most popular stream of its citizenship-by-investment program after Canada withdrew visa-free access to passport holders in June 2017.

The Caribbean island will cut the investment threshold for its National Development Fund (NDF) in half – from $200,000 to $100,000 – to try and stimulate interest from high net worth candidates.

A representative of the country’s Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) told the country’s Daily Observer newspaper that access to Canada was previously ‘the country’s most compelling advantage’. Without that access, the Antigua citizenship program is left to compete entirely based on investment threshold.

Opposition lawmakers say slashing the threshold will result in the destruction of the program.

Antigua & Barbuda Investor Citizenship: Investment Requirements

National Development Fund One-time investment of US $200,000 (soon to drop to $100,000)

Real Estate US $400,000 in real estate property in Antigua & Barbuda. In case of joint investment, each applicant must contribute a minimum amount of $400,000. The real estate must be held for a period of at least five years.

Business $1,500,000 in an approved business. In case of a joint investment application, the total investment must be for a sum of not less than $5 million with each applicant contributing at least $400,000.

Antigua & Barbuda initially reacted to Canada’s decision by cutting the fee for its program to $25,000 from $50,000 for a family of four.

However, this clearly did not have the required effect.

Ottawa announced on Monday, June 26, 2017 that all citizens of the Caribbean nation would require a visa as of 5.30am on Tuesday, June 27, 2017.

“After carefully monitoring the integrity of Antigua & Barbuda’s travel documents, the government of Canada has determined that Antigua & Barbuda no longer meets Canada’s criteria for a visa exemption,” a Canadian government statement said.

The statement added that Canada needed to protect “the integrity of our immigration system and ensuring the safety of Canadians”.

The move was likely linked to concerns over the integrity of the Antigua and Barbuda Investor Citizenship Program.

The program is one of the cheapest in the region, and effectively meant people could buy their way to visa-free travel into Canada.

Complete Overhaul

Politicians in Antigua & Barbuda called for a complete overhaul of the program following Canada’s move to impose a visa restriction.

The leader of the Caribbean country’s Democratic National Alliance (DNA) says Canada’s decision was a direct result of outside suspicions on how the CIP is operated.

Historically the programs have been viewed as a way for people to hide money, but many of the countries in the region have taken steps to clean up their acts.

DNA leader Joanne Massiah says Antigua & Barbuda is sacrificing the reputation of the country to try and get as much investment as it can from the CIP.

St Kitts Visa Restriction

Canada made a similar move to impose a visa restriction on travellers from St. Kitts & Nevis in 2014.

According to sources, authorities had evidence of people linked to terrorist organizations and criminal gangs buying St. Kitts passports to enter Canada without immigration screening.

Since then, St. Kitts has overhauled its investor residence program, although Canada is yet to lift the visa requirement.

Source: Antigua & Barbuda To Slash Citizenship Investment Threshold – Investment Immigration

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with Antigua & Barbuda, Canadian visa, citizenship-by-investment, St. Kitts

Australia: Government hit with ‘surge’ of citizenship applications after Dutton’s bill fails in Senate | SBS News

2017/10/25 Leave a comment

Not surprising. Embarrassing climb down by the government of a seriously flawed bill:

The Department of Immigration has received a rush of applications for Australian citizenship this week, after the government failed to pass sweeping reforms that included a tougher English language test.

Department officials said citizenship applications had fallen to a low “plateau” since immigration minister Peter Dutton announced the crackdown in April.

But last week the government missed a deadline to pass the bill through the Senate, sparking a new rush on applications.

The government’s sweeping reforms to citizenship will be redrafted with an easier English language test and eventually reintroduced to the Senate, immigration minister Peter Dutton has confirmed.

“Since the announcement last week there’s been another surge,” Immigration Department official Christine Dacey told Senate Estimates on Monday evening.

The bill would have increased waiting times for permanent residents from one to four years, as well as introducing a new English language exam and a test on “Australian values”.

Ms Dacey said there was another spike when the changes were first announced in April.

“There was a very large spike on or about the 20th of April, and then there was kind of a plateau, which was lower than compared to 12 months ago,” she said.

Last week, Mr Dutton confirmed the government would redraft its citizenship reforms and try again to pass them through the Senate.

The government’s controversial citizenship changes have suffered a major blow in the Senate despite a last-ditch bid by Peter Dutton.

He said the government was willing to accept migrants who pass an English entrance exam at the Band 5 on the international testing standard, rather than Band 6 as previously proposed.

The tougher Band 6 test was a major sticking point in the Senate, including for the crucial Nick Xenophon Team on the crossbench. Band 5 is described as “modest” English user, rather than a “competent” one.

But there is no indication yet that any of the senators who voted against the bill have changed their minds.

More than 118,000 people are waiting for their Australian citizenship applications to be processed by immigration department officials.

Mr Dutton confirmed those waiting for a response to their applications would now be processed under the existing rules.

Source: Government hit with ‘surge’ of citizenship applications after Dutton’s bill fails in Senate | SBS News

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with Australia, Peter Dutton

Commentary: The View from Europe: Citizenship programmes: a race to the bottom? – Caribbean News Now

2017/10/24 Leave a comment

David Jessop on how Caribbean countries are in what appears to be a race to the bottom in citizenship-by-investment programs:

In most Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) nations, citizenship is available at a cost. It can be purchased by almost anyone who can afford it. There is no qualifying period and no residential requirement. All that is needed is a one-off payment into either an agreed form of investment or to a government development fund, plus background checks on the individual concerned.

Depending on the location and scheme chosen, the basic cost is now between US$100,000 and US$400,000 plus fees. Not only does this confer a passport, but it also offers free movement within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and visa free entry to many other countries. At further cost, citizenship can be extended to families and relatives.

The creation of such citizenship by investment (CBI) programmes has been mainly driven by the Caribbean governments’ concerned need to find new ways to raise revenue because of their otherwise limited capacity to compete globally.

St Kitts, Grenada, Dominica, Antigua, and St Lucia have such arrangements, but St Vincent has not. Belize suspended its controversial programme in 2002.

For the most part, such schemes showed early promise.

Slides shown in June this year, by Trevor Alleyne, the IMF Division Chief for the Caribbean, at a conference on global mobility and tax strategies, suggest that taken together, the contribution made to GDP by Caribbean CBI programmes peaked in 2014. Then, for example, St Kitts earned 14% of its GDP from citizenship, enabling it to substantially offset what otherwise would have been negative growth. However, since then its programme earnings has gone into a slow decline.

In a probable reflection of this and the need to stimulate renewed interest, its government recently announced a new route to citizenship at a basic rate of US$150,000, ‘a proportion of which’, it said, would be paid into a hurricane relief fund. The decision appears to make redundant a part of its existing programme, which offers citizenship for a minimum contribution of US$250,000 to the country’s National Development Fund

To be fair, it may also reflect a comment made recently by the governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), Dr Timothy Antoine. Launching the ECCB’s strategic plan earlier this month, he urged OECS governments to consistently set aside a portion of citizenship revenues to use as leverage to attract climate finance under the Paris Climate Accord.

In contrast, in Dominica, and to a much lesser extent in Grenada, the contribution made by citizenship programmes to GDP has been increasing. In Dominica’s case, its National Development Programme earnings before Hurricane Maria struck, had reportedly reached US$50 million per month: sums that were being used to pay down debt, support public works, as well as to provide budgetary support and employment.

In an indirect confirmation of the value of Dominica’s low basic fee of US$100,000, and the fierce competition now existing between OECS nations for citizenship applications, Antigua this month reduced its basic fee for citizenship to the same US$100,000 level.

The least successful CBI programme has been St Lucia’s.

Earlier this year, its government halved the previous cost of citizenship for individuals, also to US$100,000, and adjusted downwards the fee for all other categories, making the country’s programme for a short time the cheapest in the region. It also lifted a self-imposed limit on the number of applications that could be processed annually, and revoked previous requirements relating to an applicant’s net worth on the basis that other countries were offering discounts or incentives.

What is emerging from this apparent race to the bottom are several issues.

Firstly, well thought through, well administered programmes linked to national development programmes, where judiciously applied and with clear outcomes, appear to offer the best avenues for government and countries to reap the greatest rewards.

Second, global and inter-regional competition suggests the emergence of a zero-sum game in which nations may seek to offset a decline in income by further reducing pricing. If this happens, it follows that a higher number of successful applicants will be required if income from citizenship is to sustain or enhance GDP growth.

Thirdly, if governments are unable to significantly grow applicant numbers through price reductions, or through encouraging greater citizenship related investment in real estate or bonds, they may have to turn again to tourism to increase revenue, and to new tax breaks to spur investment.

In short, Caribbean CBI programmes may not have as a bright a revenue earning future as they have had in the past.

While many high net worth people continue to seek second or third citizenships, it appears likely that the numbers of applicants per Caribbean country may decrease as global competition grows, at worst accelerating the sector’s decline.

In theory, OECS nations with CBI programmes could consider some sort of approach involving harmonisation. However, in the real world of multiple unresolved sub-regional ideological, economic and personality differences, it is hard to imagine achieving a consensus that lasts.

Unfortunately, OECS governments have shown little willingness to address questions about the sustainability of their citizenship programmes, or to indicate whether they have fresh ideas about the ways in which they might redesign existing schemes to ensure continuing income without lowering fees any further.

All of which is to say nothing about the sometimes-questionable comments and defensive public relations exercises undertaken by some agents selling CBI programmes, about the questions that remain about the due diligence processes some governments pursue, or the serious international concern that has arisen about the issuance of diplomatic passports.

Almost every nation in the world provides a path to citizenship. Despite this, many citizens and some governments in principle object to the idea that nationality is something that can be sold. In this the Caribbean is no exception.

As long as citizenship programmes exist, questions will also remain about the granting of rights and free movement within CARICOM to those who are not required to reside, make no long-term economic or personal contribution, and who have no historic or cultural affinity to the region.

Source: Commentary: The View from Europe: Citizenship programmes: a race to the bottom? – Caribbean News Now

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with Caribbean, citizenship-by-investment, David Jessop

Norway’s government wants to allow dual citizenship – The Local

2017/10/16 Leave a comment

The last hold-out among the Nordics:

Norway’s government is to pave the way towards allowing dual citizenship in the Scandinavian country, with a proposal to be put to parliament this autumn.

The proposal will give new rights to thousands of people with connections to both Norway and a second country.

“We will notify in the state budget that there will be a hearing on the proposal to allow dual citizenship,” immigration minister Sylvi Listhaug told NRK.

For pro-dual citizenship NGO Norwegians Worldwide, which has long campaigned for a law change in the area, the announcement represents a positive change in the government’s position on Norwegians with an international outlook.

“We are extremely happy that the government wants to change an outdated and unfair law that has huge consequences for Norwegian families worldwide. This is a key issue for us and we are delighted on behalf of all those affected by the law against double citizenship,” Norwegians Worldwide general secretary Hanne K. Aaberg said in a press statement.

Donna Fox, co-founder of lobbying group ‘Ja til dobbelt statsborgerskap’ (Yes to dual citizenship) also welcomed the announcement.

“This announcement is fantastic news. After three years of lobbying for the principle of dual citizenship in Norway, Ja til dobbelt statsborgerskap has succeeded in convincing the government to change its outdated mono-citizenship law. Thousands of Norwegian families with connection to two countries, long term permanent Norwegian residents, and future generations will benefit from the right to vote, live and reside without restriction between their countries of citizenship,” Fox told The Local.

Norway is currently the only Nordic country and one of only a small handful of European nations that does not allow dual citizenship, although exceptions to citizenship rules do provide for it in some cases.

Source: Norway’s government wants to allow dual citizenship – The Local

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with Norway

Brexit vote creates surge in EU citizenship applications | The Guardian

2017/10/14 2 Comments

Although the overall numbers are still relatively low, the increase is notable and to be expected. Good summary of the available data:

At least 17,000 Britons sought the citizenship of another EU member state in the year after the Brexit vote, a Guardian analysis shows.

While comprehensive figures for the previous year are not available, the larger countries surveyed all reported a jump in applications, suggesting a significant overall increase.

Figures collated from requests to London-based EU embassies and interior ministries across the bloc show that EU citizenship applications from UK residents and Britons living in other member states surged in the 12 months after the referendum

Responses received from 20 countries showed the greatest number of applications were for Irish citizenship with almost 9,000 applications from UK residents and Britons living in Ireland in the 12 months from July 2016, the month after the referendum took place.

The Irish embassy in London received 8,017 applications from UK residents between July 2016 and the end of June 2017 compared with just 689 in the full year of 2015. There was also a surge in applications from British residents in Ireland: 894 applications were made in the year from 1 July 2016, compared with just 104 the previous year.

An overall agreement on Britain’s article 50 withdrawal from the EU is far from settled, and the EU chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said on Thursday that sufficient progress had not been made on the issue of citizens’ rights for the estimated 1.2 million Britons living in other EU countries and 3.6 million EU citizens who are residents of the UK.

Dora Kostakopoulou, a professor of EU law and European integration at Warwick University, said the main reasons for the surge in applications was because people wanted security of residence and were seeking to retain EU citizenship rights, including the right to travel and live in the 27 countries that will remain members of the EU after the UK leaves.

“They value European citizenship and therefore they do not wish to lose this status as a result of Brexit,” she said. “So gaining citizenship of (another) member state would guarantee their existing status and their existing rights.”

The Guardian contacted the UK-based embassies and interior ministries of the other member states requesting the number of citizenship applications made by UK residents and Britons living in the respective countries.

In the first eight months of 2017, 2,129 Britons living in France applied for French citizenship, figures from the interior ministry show. This compares with 1,363 applications in the whole of 2016 and just 385 in 2015. These figures exclude those made directly to the French embassy in London.

Just over 1,700 UK residents applied for German citizenship in the 12 months following the Brexit vote, compared with just 63 applications in the full-year 2015. About 90% of these were made under restoration of the basic law for the Federal Republic of Germany which confers citizenship rights on the descendents of people whose citizenship was renounced on political, racial or religious grounds in Nazi Germany.

One of them is London-based Jon Landau, the chief operating officer at tech startup Wazoku. He, his father, uncle and son all applied for citizenship on the grounds that Landau’s grandfather lost his German citizenship in the 1930s.

“As soon as the Brexit vote became clear, I started looking more seriously into the application process. Becoming a German citizen isn’t just about my future, but also about my young son’s opportunities. I want to ensure that he will see himself as a European citizen, with all the possibilities and freedoms of travel, study and work that I’ve enjoyed,” he said.

There was also a large increase in German citizenship applications among Britons living in Germany. The Federal Office for Statistics (Destatis) recorded 2,865 such applications last year, up from 622 in 2015. Figures for 2017 are not yet available.

The Swedish migration authority reported a steep increase in applications by British citizens: 1,965 Britons applied for Swedish citizenship domestically and abroad in the year to the end of June 2017, more than double the previous year.

British applications for Danish citizenship more than doubled to 604 in the same period compared with the previous year.

In Spain, where foreigners can apply for nationality after 10 years’ residence but must renounce their prior citizenship, the numbers seeking citizenship are relatively low: data on the number of people taking Spanish knowledge tests with the Instituto Cervantes shows there were 579 applications in the year after the Brexit vote.

As the test was only made compulsory in October 2015, it is not possible to compare this with the previous year period, but the average number of applications per month shot up from nine to 58 after June 2016.

One of the largest proportionate increases was recorded in Italy where the number of applications rose more than eightfold from 70 in the 12 months to the end of June 2016 to 593.

Applications for Finnish citizenship trebled to 115 applications while the number of applications for Cypriot and Greek citizenship quadrupled to 306 and 45 respectively.

There were about 170 applications in the Netherlands in the 12 months after the vote compared with just 40 in the full year of 2015.

Dawn MacFarlane, who has lived in Holland for the past 19 years and is awaiting a decision on her Dutch citizenship, said: “I actually considered myself a European citizen so I never felt the actual need to change my citizenship to Dutch even though I’ve been here a long time.”

However, she became concerned after the Brexit vote about her entitlements should she become unemployed and she said her feelings about the UK changed after the result.

“I just feel that being part of Europe is a very important part of my identity. For a large part of my life, I felt more European than British. I am Scottish first and I would have been British but the European feeling overpowered the British part.”

The Austrian embassy said it usually received about 10 applications per year, but that rose to 35 in the year following the Brexit referendum. A further 37 applications were received across the country’s nine states compared with just 15 between July 2015 and June 2016.

Other countries reported more modest increases in the number of UK residents seeking citizenship in the 12 months following the vote: the Czech republic recorded 27, up from 11, while Slovakia had 24 applications, up from 15.

No Britons were recorded as having applied for citizenship of Estonia and Slovenia.

The Guardian did not receive responses or got incomplete figures from Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Malta, Poland and Portugal, and a Belgian official said its figures were not centrally collated.

Citizenship applications differ from applications for passports which can only be obtained by existing citizens. Irish passport applications made by UK residentshave soared since Brexit: more than 100,000 Irish passports were issued in the UK in the first six months of 2017, up from 65,000 in 2016.

People born in other countries are automatically Irish citizens if they or either of their parents were born in Ireland (including Northern Ireland) before 2005. However, foreign-born individuals with an Irish grandparent or a parent who, although an Irish citizen, was born outside the country, must apply for inclusion in the foreign births register in order to gain citizenship.

Source: Brexit vote creates surge in EU citizenship applications | Politics | The Guardian

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with BREXIT, EU

Brexit: Dutch nationals living in Britain will be allowed dual citizenship | The Guardian

2017/10/13 Leave a comment

Dutch pragmatism:

The new Dutch government will allow its citizens living in the UK to take up dual citizenship, according to a coalition agreement announced on Tuesday, which pledges to prioritise both its people and EU unity in the Brexit negotiations.

After a record 208 days, agreement was struck between four parties on Tuesday to form a centre-right government led by the liberal prime minister, Mark Rutte.

The blueprint – agreed by Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, the Christian Democrats, the centrist and pro-European Union D66 party and the faith-based Christian Union – spells out plans for tax cuts, lessons in national identity and an experiment with state-sanctioned cannabis plantations over the next four years.

It also pledges to fight for the Dutch fishing industry in the Brexit negotiations, maintain solidarity with the EU in the talks with the UK, and legislate to allow its citizens living in Britain the chance to have dual citizenship.

The document says: “The cabinet will prepare proposals for the modernisation of nationality law. It concerns an extension of the possibility of possession of multiple nationalities for prospective first generation emigrants and immigrants.”

Until now, Dutch nationals who take British citizenship to avoid having to leave the UK after Brexit would have been stripped of their Netherlands passports due to limits on dual nationality.

Even as late as July, Rutte defended the policy, telling reporters that “countering dual nationality remains one of this cabinet’s policies”, in response to a petition with 22,000 signatures calling for a government rethink.

About 100,000 Dutch nationals living in Britain face an uncertain future after March 2019. The UK and EU are yet to reconcile their differences on the citizens’ rights issue.

Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch MEP, said her party, the liberal D66, had pushed for the change to help Dutch citizens in the UK.

She said: “It is a major step forward, but it doesn’t apply immediately. We will have to legislate. But when we do, people who emigrate will have the right to dual nationality, although their children will have to choose their single nationality at some point.

“The document also pledges to maintain EU solidarity in the talks, which may disappoint some in Britain but that is the way it is.”

Source: Brexit: Dutch nationals living in Britain will be allowed dual citizenship | World news | The Guardian

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with Netherlands

Singapore debates dual nationalities, cites overseas Indian citizenship as option | world-news | Hindustan Times

2017/10/10 Leave a comment

Interesting account of Singapore debates:

Singapore has debated the option of dual citizenship for its nationals, with some citing concepts like ‘Overseas Citizenship of India’ given by New Delhi to Indian diaspora as a middle path.

Diplomats and academics have raised pros and cons of allowing Singaporeans to have dual citizenship, according to a report in The Sunday Times on Sunday.

In 2013, the government had responded to parliamentary questions, saying that Singapore being “a small and young nation” is concerned as it could dilute citizens’ commitment to the country.

The issue of whether Singapore should one day consider dual citizenship has been raised from time to time in discussions about the future of Singapore citizenship.

Barry Desker of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, a prominent advocate of dual citizenship, argued that it would help Singaporeans living abroad and foreigners in Singapore who are married to Singaporeans.

Singapore “may be losing good people” when Singaporeans living abroad are forced to give up their citizenship, said Professor Tan Tai Yong of Yale-NUS College in the National University of Singapore.

Associate Professor Eugene Tan of Singapore Management University said that dual citizenship should not have a detrimental impact in terms of people’s sense of belonging to the country.

A strong opponent of dual citizenship, Professor Leo Suryadinata of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute argued that citizenship is about political loyalty and it is doubtful if a person can be loyal to two countries.

“In an age of growing nationalism and the potential break-up of the European Union, global trends appear to be moving away from dual citizenship,” he observed.

Institute of Policy Studies researcher Debbie Soon said if Singapore were to one day be in conflict with another country, dual citizenship would be problematic because of the island state’s conscription system.

“But discussions on dual citizenship do not have to yield a binary yes-or-no answer,” argued Associate Professor Elaine Ho of the National University of Singapore.

There are in-between options that may enhance the links people have to Singapore, she noted.

One is the British example of an ancestry visa, which offers foreigners who can prove ancestral links to Britain an inside track to living and working there. A similar concept is the Overseas Citizenship of India.

According to Prof Tan Tai Yong the honorary citizenship, which Singapore grants to a very select group of foreigners who have made outstanding contributions to the country, is also an example of an in-between option.

Source: Singapore debates dual nationalities, cites overseas Indian citizenship as option | world-news | Hindustan Times

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with Singapore