US billionaires’ demand for ‘golden passport’ schemes rockets by 337% in three years

2022/05/09 Leave a comment

Yet more demand by Americans, with interesting reasons stated by consultants (suggesting a mix of right and left leaning ultra wealthy):

Soaring numbers of wealthy Americans are buying ‘golden passports’ that grant them citizenship to New Zealand, Portugal and other ‘safe’ countries over fears of impending civil war in their home country.

Henley & Partners, a firm that helps the wealthy shop around for citizenship across the globe, said sales to American nationals worth between $50 million and $20 billion have shot up more than 337 percent since 2019, Business Insider reported.

Countries involved – including Portugal, Malta, New Zealand and Austria offer citizenship or visas that lead to citizenship in return for heavy investment in the host national, and a visit of just a few days there each year.

Latitude Residency & Citizenship and Dasein Advisors, two other citizenship firms, said they too have seen more inquiries from American clients over the past three years than in the previous 20 combined.

‘We’ve all lived through the past two and a half years,’ Reaz Jafri told Insider, referencing the pandemic and the civil unrest that followed.

‘It all just reminded us how vulnerable and frail we are, and people who have means are accepting that it will happen again — and they don’t want to be caught off guard.’

Other issues said to have seen the demand for foreign passports spike include the likely end of Roe V Wade, which legalized abortion across the US, Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill – better known as the Don’t Say Gay Bill, as well as fears for the future of America’s democracy following the Black Lives Matter and January 6 riots.

Dominic Volek, head of private clients at Henley & Partners, said clients were worried over the ‘four Cs: COVID-19, climate change, cryptocurrency and conflict.’

Volek told Insider his firm saw an uptick in clients during the Trump administration, and once the pandemic hit, wealthy Americans were hit by the realities of their country’s COVID restrictions.

‘In the very strict lockdowns there was a point where if you only had an American passport, you could not enter Europe,’ Volek said. ‘I think that made a lot of particularly ultra-high net worth individuals realize that they’re potentially a little bit more fragile than they thought.’

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was one of the rich elites seeking a ‘golden passport’ in 2020 as he applied for European citizenship in 2020 through Cyprus’s now defunct program.

Along with fears of another pandemic, worsening storms fueled by climate change and worries over an economic collapse, the billionaires are also afraid of civil unrest from a divided nation that only seems to be getting worse everyday.

In the past three years, America saw nationwide protests over pandemic restrictions, the Black Lives Matter movement, laws restricting abortion which have gained new steam as the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe V. Wade, voting rights and Critical Race Theory in schools.

The country also received a shock on January 6, 2021, when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in a deadly riot to attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

In 2022, Americans continue to be divided over these issues as well as Florida’s so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill and nationwide police reform efforts, where liberal cities that embraced the new laws are experiencing surges in violent crime.

Jafri said the issues plaguing America have caused billionaires to share a single concern, a fear about the future of American society.

Among the most popular countries billionaires are seeking citizenship for is Portugal, which offers a five-year residency permit that allows visa-free travel to 26 countries in the European Union.

Portugal’s program requires a minimum investment of $200,000 in real estate and an average stay of just seven days a year in the country. After the permit expires, individuals can apply for full-time citizenship, which takes an additional three years.

New Zealand, another popular country for ‘golden passports,’ grants permanent residency status to those investing in residential or commercial property, as well as high growth investments and government bonds.

The country’s Investor 1 visa asks for about $6.5 million in investments over three years and requires applicants to stay in the country for 88 days over that timespan.

The Investor 2 visa asks for about $2 million in investments over four years and requires applicants to be 66 or older and to stay in the country for 438 days over four years.

New Zealand golden passport holders include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who’s worth an estimated $5 billion.

Malta offers European citizenship to those who contribute more than $740,000 to the national development fund, more than $860,000 into real estate investment, more than $12,000 to charity, and provide proof of at least 36 months of residency in the country.

The nation also offers an expedited process that only calls for proof of 12 months of residency so long as the applicant contributes more than $925,000 to the national development fund.

Austria provides ‘golden passports’ through investment directly, asking foreign applications to invest more than $12.3 million into a business or make a $3.7 million contribution to the government development fund.

Alternatively, applicants can make a nearly $50,000 contribution to the government fund for residency approval and then apply for full citizenship after 10 years.

Source: US billionaires’ demand for ‘golden passport’ schemes rockets by 337% in three years

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Automatic for the people [immigration focus]

2022/05/06 Leave a comment

Of note. Given volumes and resources, no realistic alternative but care need to eliminate biases (either pro or con):

If there was ever any doubt the federal government would use automation to help it make its administrative decisions, Budget 2022 has put that to rest. In it, Ottawa pledges to change the Citizenship Act to allow for the automated and machine-assisted processing of a growing number of immigration-related applications.

In truth, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has been looking at analytics systems to automate its activities and help it assess immigrant applications for close to a decade. The government also telegraphed its intention back in 2019, when it issued a Directive on Automated Decision-Making (DADM), which aims to build safeguards and transparency around its use.

“[T]he reference to enable automated and machine-assisted processing for citizenship applications is mentioned in the budget to ensure that in the future, IRCC will have the authority to proceed with our ambition to create a more integrated, modernized and centralized working environment.” said Aidan Stickland, spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship minister Sean Fraser, in an emailed reply.

“This would enable us to streamline the application process for citizenship with the introduction of e-applications in order to help speed up application processing globally and reduce backlogs,” Stickland, added. “Details are currently being formalized.”

But to live a life of ambition requires taking risks. So the DADM comes with an algorithmic impact assessment tool. According to Teresa Scassa, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, it creates obligations for any government department or agency that plans to adopt automated decision-making, either in whole or as a system that makes recommendations. It is a risk-based framework to determine the obligation to be placed on the department or agency.

“The citizenship and immigration context is one where what they’re looking at is that external client,” Scassa says. “It does create this governance framework for those types of projects.”

Scassa says that the higher the risk of impact on a person’s rights, or the environment, the more obligations are placed on the department or agency using it, such as requirements for peer review, monitoring outputs to ensure the system remains consistent with the objectives or that it doesn’t demonstrate improper bias.

“It governs things like what kind of notice should be given,” Scassa says. “If it’s very low-risk, it might be a very general notice, like something on a web page. If it’s high risk, it will be a specific notice to the individual that automated decision-making is in use. Depending on where the project is in the risk framework, there is a sliding scale of obligations to ensure that individuals are protected from adverse impacts.”

Scassa suspects that IRCC may use automated decision-making to determine if someone qualifies for citizenship, which can mean different things.

It could be a triage system, for example, drawing information from applications before using AI to determine which applicants clearly qualify for citizenship. “Everything else [would fall] into a different basket where it needs to be reviewed by an officer,” Scassa says.

Such a system would be relatively low-risk as any decisions would be positive for the applicant, while all others go to a human for review, which would speed up overall processing times.

“That may be less problematic than a system that makes all of the decisions, and people have to figure out why they got rejected, and you have to ask how transparent is the algorithm, and what are your rights to have the decision reviewed,” Scassa adds. “There is the question of how it will be designed, and how impactful the AI tool will be on individuals. On the other hand, a triage system like this could have automation bias where files get flagged. Maybe the human reviewing them approaches them with a particular mindset because they haven’t been considered to be automatically accepted. The automation bias may make the human less likely to approve them.”

Scassa notes that the Open Government platform shows an algorithmic impact assessment for a tool developed for spousal analytics, a form of triage tool, which gives a sense of what kinds of tools the department is contemplating.

Scassa also notes that under the Citizenship Act, a provision allows for the delegation of the minister’s powers to any person authorized in writing. She suspects that the proposed legislative change could be to specifically allow some of the decisions to be made on a fully-automated basis.

When it comes to reviewing decisions, the DADM and its risk framework appears to apply administrative law principles, including procedural fairness protections.

Paul Daly, also a law professor at the University of Ottawa, adds that the administrative law principles apply regardless of whether this type of automated decision-making has been authorized in the statute.

“It’s a common concern for officials using sophisticated machine-learning technology to want legal authority,” Daly says. “Really, that’s only one part of the picture. There’s a whole body of legal principles from administrative law, the Charter, and the [DADM] that have to be complied with when you start to actually use the systems,” Daly says.

Lex Gill, a fellow at Citizen Lab, co-authored a report called “Bots at the Gate,” which looks at the human rights impacts of automated decision-making in Canada’s citizenship and immigration system. She acknowledges there are serious backlogs within the immigration system. But she cautions that faster isn’t always better, particularly when the error rates associated with AI disproportionately affect certain groups who are already treated unfairly.

“Sometimes we adopt technologies that will allow us to believe that we are doing something more scientific, methodical or fair, when really what we are doing is reproducing the status quo, but faster and with less transparency,” Gill says. “That is always my concern when we talk about automating these kinds of administrative processes.”

Gill notes there is a spectrum of technologies available for automated and machine-assisted processing, some of which are not problematic, while others are worrying and raise human rights issues. Still, it is hard to know what we may be dealing with without more information from the minister.

“When we talk about using automated or machine-assisted technology to do things like risk scoring, that’s an area where we know that it’s highly discretionary,” Gill says. “There is an entire universe of academic study that demonstrates that those technologies tend to replicate existing forms of bias and discrimination and profiling that already exists within administrative systems.”

Gill says that these systems tend to learn from existing practices. The result tends to exacerbate discriminatory outcomes and makes them more difficult to challenge because there is the additional layer of perceived scientific or technical neutrality layered on top of a system that demonstrated bias.

“When the government is imagining adopting these kinds of technologies, is it imagining doing that in a way that is enhancing transparency, accountability, and reviewability of decisions?” asks Gill. “Efficiency is clearly an important goal, but the rule of law, accountability and control of administrative discretion also require friction—they require a certain degree of scrutiny, the ability to slow things down, the ability to review things, and the ability to understand why and how a decision was made.”

Gill says that unless these new technologies come with oversight, review and transparency mechanisms, she worries that they will take a system that is already discretionary, opaque, and has the ability to change the direction of a person’s life, and render it even more so.

“If you’re going to start adopting these kinds of technologies, you need to do it in a way that maximally protects a person’s Charter rights, and which honours the seriousness of the decisions at stake,” Gill says. “Don’t start with decisions that engage the liberty interests of a person. Start with things like whether or not this student visa application is missing a supporting document.”

Source: Automatic for the people

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Canadian military not ready to waive citizenship requirement

2022/05/04 Leave a comment

Of note. The public service has done so. But whether such a change would result in a measurable increase in diversity is uncertain. It will be interesting to see if the RCMP’s recent removal of the requirement results in any significant improvement to their notoriously poor results.

Will also be interesting to see if any backlash to these changes in terms of the meaningfulness and advantages of citizenship:

Canada’s military is not yet ready to allow permanent residents to join its ranks, even as it struggles to boost recruitment and fix the growing diversity gap in the nation’s armed forces.

In response to a request from New Canadian Media, ahead of the inaugural  Navy Fleet Weekend in Vancouver, numbers provided by the Canadian Armed Forces (CAD) show that three-quarters of its ranks are white men.

Women make up 16.3 per cent of the Canadian military demographic; Indigenous peoples come in at 2.7 per cent while there is less than 12 per cent of visible minorities in the Canadian military make-up.

Canada needs about 100,000 troops to be at full strength, but it is short about 12,000 regular force troops and reservists currently.

Scrapping the citizenship requirement

A little-known immigration pathway called the Foreign Skilled Military Applicant (FSMA) has only seen 15 successful candidates over the last five years. 

“Over the last year alone, the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group (CFRG) interacted with approximately 100 individuals who were interested in joining the military through the FSMA,” military spokesperson Major Brian Kominar told NCM.

“Discussions involving the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) on lifting the citizenship requirement are continuing, though there are no changes to announce at this time,” he said.

The CBC reported in 2018, in line with the government of Canada’s objective of raising the number of forces personnel, there are discussions to review the possibility of foreign nationals’ recruitment beyond skills applicants.

Lifting the forces’ citizenship requirement would be a sharp departure from Canada’s traditional recruitment practices and could open the doors to applications from thousands of permanent residents, the CBC reported.

Other countries — the U.S. among them — allow non-citizens to serve, with certain restrictions on the positions and ranks they can hold.

In 2016, the RCMP scrapped its citizenship requirement, allowing permanent residents who have lived in Canada for more than 10 years to apply. The goal was, in part, to boost diversity in the ranks.

“We invite any associations, agencies, or organizations that work with new Canadians to contact the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group and find out what resources and tools are available to improve awareness of the over 100 full-time and part-time occupations available in the Canadian Armed Forces,” said Major Kominar.

“Non-Canadian citizen applicants must meet IRCC guidelines and requirements before proceeding through the CAF recruiting system,” he added.

Representing the country it serves

A report from the Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination in Canada’s Defence Teamacknowledged the need for increased new immigrant participation in the armed forces.

“The proportion of people belonging to visible minorities in the labour force who were born in Canada is expected to increase from 20 per cent in 2016 to 26 per cent of the labour force by 2036…the increasing ethnocultural diversity of the labour force is expected to continue,” the report noted.

Earlier this month, Chief of the defence staff Gen. Wayne Eyre told the Ottawa Defence Conferencethat the CAF needs to “win the battle for talent” both in the recruitment and retention of new military members.

“If we don’t keep pace with the changing demographics, the changing face of Canada, we are going to be irrelevant,” he told the conference.

Among those taking the message to new immigrants to seek careers in the CAF is Manjot Pandher who moved to B.C. from India in 2010 and joined the Canadian Navy seven years later.

“It has provided me with great opportunities to travel while I was at school and learn new skills which will help me in my civilian career, later in life,” said Pandher, who is now a Navy Sailor 2nd Class.

“The military is a big family which welcomes everyone and being part of this family, you feel connected to Canada as a whole,” Pandher told NCM, adding that he will be at the Canadian Navy Fleet weekend.

The upcoming event, from April 29 to May 1, 2022, alongside the Burrard Dry Dock Pier in North Vancouver will feature Her Majesty’s Canadian Ships (HMCS) Vancouver, Winnipeg, Brandon, and Edmonton, plus three Patrol Craft Training Vessels, the Naval Tactical Operation Group, and Fleet Diving Unit (Pacific).

On May 1, marching contingents from the ships will be attending the Battle of the Atlantic Ceremony at Sailor’s Point Memorial in Waterfront Park, North Vancouver, to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Source: Canadian military not ready to waive citizenship requirement

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Canada’s citizenship process is a problematic piece of political theatre. Here’s why I did it anyway

2022/04/05 Leave a comment

A somewhat self-indulgent commentary, given many countries have comparable “political theatre” and contradictions.

But hopefully the government will finally get around to releasing the revised citizenship guide, first promised six years ago, along with related test questions. And we will see if the budget includes the platform commitments to eliminate citizenship fees:

Most imagery surrounding Canadian citizenship ceremonies involves crying immigrants holding flags, being joyfully accepted into this great nation. My experience was a little different; a dishevelled, begrudging presence on a massive Zoom call.

Too often citizenship is given some sort of quasi-spiritual meaning, but for me it was a bureaucratic decision, like renewing a licence plate sticker. I found the whole process deeply troubling, from the questions on the citizenship test that disingenuously framed Canada’s history, to having to swear allegiance to the Queen. I was troubled by just how easy it was for me, as a middle class, white Australian, compared to those from other countries, particularly agricultural workers.

Source: Canada’s citizenship process is a problematic piece of political theatre. Here’s why I did it anyway

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Kluth: Golden Passports, Citizenship and Identity in a Time of War

2022/04/05 Leave a comment

On the intersection of citizenship and identities, never as simple as presented. But citizenship decisions, like all decisions, have consequences:

As a dual citizen who hangs out with polyglots carrying several passports each, I can attest that identity is a complicated thing. It’ll never be captured adequately by lists of checkboxes — from age and sex to race, religion, profession or indeed citizenship. Just glance across Europe right now.

In one corner, Ukrainians are fighting heroically to preserve their distinct national identity against Russia, whose despot denies they have one. Some of the defenders speak Ukrainian as a mother tongue, others Russian or something else. The older ones used to be citizens of another entity, the Soviet Union. But now their allegiance is to Ukraine.

Right next door is the European Union. It’s a confederation that recognizes overlapping and thus ambiguous layers of identity and citizenship, including both a European and a national tier. Moreover, many of its members have in the past been quite relaxed about granting citizenship to outsiders, provided those have money. In return for big investments, these foreigners got “golden passports.”

The EU never liked these schemes, seeing them as mechanisms to dodge taxes or conduct other monkey business. That’s why it has leaned on countries like Bulgaria, Cyprus or Malta to quit the practice. Since the attack on Ukraine, the EU started cracking down harder. It fears that golden EU passports given to Russian oligarchs or Kremlin-cronies — granting them all the rights of other Europeans — could subvert the sanctions passed against them.

Ukraine and the EU are bookends around a variegated subject. People gain multiple citizenships for all sorts of reasons. Some Brits, in the run-up to Brexit, remembered an Irish grandmother to get themselves an EU passport. Many descendants of German Jews or other victims of the Nazis have exercised their right to become German citizens. Immigrants get naturalized in many countries every day.

Other bi-nationals, like me, simply fall between jus solis— Latin for “right of the soil” — and jus sanguinis — the “right of the blood,” creepy as that term sounds nowadays. That means we automatically got one citizenship through our place of birth, and another through our parentage.

Sometimes these twists of fate are boons that give people more options in life. Other times, they are banes, as for so-called “accidental Americans” — those who were born in the U.S. but lost contact with the country as babies or children, and often don’t even speak English. And yet, owing to the peculiar American tax system — which is based on citizenship rather than residence — they face a nightmare of compliance paperwork and are often barred from financial services in their home country.

Even in extreme cases, however, citizenship is rarely as problematic as the lack of it. Millions of people around the world — Palestinians, Rohingya, Kurds and others — are stateless. Their sense of identity is just as strong. But without the right papers, they often live in limbo.

Historically, the idea of citizenship has morphed enough to make the concept seem almost arbitrary. It originated in city states (poleis in Greek, the root of “politics”) such as ancient Athens or Thebes, where it described the rights and duties of rich, non-slave men. But during the Middle Ages, the notion all but disappeared. Identity and standing were instead based on a person’s feudal class — such as peasantry, clergy or aristocracy.

When the idea of citizenship returned in the modern era — especially with the American and French revolutions — it was again based on a covenant between an individual and a state. The former got rights (to vote, for example) but also responsibilities (to pay taxes, say).

Even so, citizenship rarely fits neatly with more slippery notions about identity. If you had an interesting life in the 20th century, you could have held papers issued variously by Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bosnia Herzegovina — and identified all along as Serb, Croat or something else. Latinx Americans, Turkish Germans, Algerian French — ever more identities in the modern world are hyphenated and thus complex.

That’s even true for people with only one citizenship — especially if they’re “army brats” or children of expats. Raised in countries other than the one named on their passport, such “third-culture kids” tend to float between contexts, sometimes feeling unmoored but also showing unusual flexibility and tolerance. Many feel most at home with other cosmopolitans of any nation rather than their own compatriots.

For some people who feel unambiguously rooted in their countries, such fluid identities can be provocations. Populism has been blamed in part on a backlash by so-called “somewheres” against the allegedly footloose “anywheres.”

The multinationals in turn chafe at the taunts of their compatriots who don’t consider them “real” Americans, Germans, Japanese or whatever. They consider these labels attempts at exclusion, and power grabs.

The reality is that identity and allegiance are highly individual and subjective. Take Eileen Gu. She’s an American-born freestyle skier with a Chinese mother, who competed for the U.S. before winning two gold medals and a silver in this year’s Olympics for China, a country that doesn’t even recognize dual citizenship. Is that fair or foul? Neither, I’d say. It’s simply up to her.

Part of freedom is choosing our communities, allegiances and loyalties. And part of tolerance is respecting the choices of others. In the modern world, those decisions are sometimes confusing, other times urgent and clear. Just ask the brave Ukrainians fighting for their country right now.

Source: Golden Passports, Citizenship and Identity in a Time of War

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Antigua and Barbuda maintaining defense of Citizenship by Investment program

2022/04/02 Leave a comment

Unlikely to be successful:

Antigua and Barbuda has stepped up its efforts to stave off efforts by the European Union (EU) to derail the controversial Citizenship by Investment Program (CBI), with Prime Minister Gaston Browne indicating that he has sent a letter to the EU on the issue.

“I have taken the opportunity to write to them, to let them know the impact that they are about to inflict on our CBI programs and the impact on our economies,” said Browne.  Last week Browne called on member countries of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to provide a united front on the issue.

He said the letter will provide evidence that Antigua and Barbuda probably has the most robust due diligence process before citizenship can be granted.

“Citizens from these countries who are trying to access citizenship under the program would have to get clearance from Interpol, a review of their financial background, and a police report from their country of residence,” Browne added.

Under the CBI, foreign investors are afforded citizenship of a country in return for making a significant investment in the socio-economic development of the particular country. Several Caribbean countries have instituted CBI programs.

The United States has moved to decline visas to holders of passports obtained by the CBI, and the European Union has passed a law giving countries three years to phase out the program or face visa requirements for all its passport holders.

The EU Parliament has called for an EU “levy of a meaningful percentage on the investments made – until ‘golden passports’ are phased out, and indefinitely for ‘golden visas’” within the block.

According to its website, “It also asks the Commission to put pressure on countries that benefit from visa-free travel to the EU to follow suit,”

The resolution passed by the parliament with 595 votes to 12, and 74 abstentions, says golden passports should be phased out fully.

Foreign Affairs Minister, E.P Chet Greene has promised that St. John’s will be robust in its defense of the CBI telling reporters while a final decision has not been made as yet by Europe, scraping the CBI will not be an option.

“We won’t preempt losing this fight, we will fight it to the end. We understand the importance of this program to us, we are operating a program that is really above and beyond reproach. Our books can be pulled at any time and our reports are tabled in Parliament,” Greene said.

“We won’t be quick to disband these programs, but rather we will continue to show the virtue, value, and management of these programs, and hope that common sense will prevail,” he added.

Prime Minister Browne said the CBI does not represent any risks to Europe, adding “as far as we are concerned, we are now collateral damage.”

Browne said about 10 per cent of the country’s revenue comes from the CBI while in other countries, their economies are almost absolutely reliant on their own CBI.

“If they are successful in undermining our CBI, it will create problems for the OECS currency union countries. You can imagine the impact on these countries,” Browne added.

Apart from Antigua and Barbuda, the other OECS countries with a CBI program are St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Kitts-Nevis.

Source: Antigua and Barbuda maintaining defense of Citizenship by Investment program

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Some passports are better than others. Here’s a list of the most powerful ones

2022/03/30 Leave a comment

Like so many of these passport or citizenship indexes, this is largely a promotion to attract new clients to a firm, in this case, Nomad Capitalist, whose tagline is “We offer holistic strategies to help successful entrepreneurs and investors legally reduce their tax bill, create a Plan B, and grow their wealth globally.”

Unfortunately, the detailed methodology and full report was not on their website at time of posting. However, one factor that impacted Canada along with Australia and other countries was the degree to which they had relatively stricter COVID travel restrictions:

A new index ranks Luxembourg as the top passport in the world for aspiring global citizens.

The small European country ranked No. 1 out of 199 places in the “Nomad Passport Index 2022” published by the tax and immigration consultancy Nomad Capitalist.

While many passport rankings focus solely on visa-free travel, this index adds taxation, global perception, ability to obtain dual citizenship and personal freedoms into its scoring.

“I don’t think visa-free travel is all that matters,” said CEO Andrew Henderson.

For example, U.S. and Canadian passports are similar in terms of travel strength, he said. However, “if you’re an American, you’re subject to taxes … no matter where you live, and so those two passports should not be ranked next to each other.”

Five factors

Here is the index’s methodology:

Regarding tax policies, 10 points were assigned to places with worldwide taxation (United States) and 50 points for those with no tax (United Arab Emirates). Those that placed other tax restrictions on passport holders scored somewhere in between.

The list

Here’s the top 50 list:

The top 10 rankings remained unchanged from last year, with the half-point difference between No. 1 Luxembourg and No. 2 Sweden coming down to “one extra country visa,” said Henderson.

Taxes are high in both countries, “but if you want to leave, it’s relatively flexible,” he said. Both countries are perceived well globally and rank highly for personal freedom, said Henderson, noting Sweden demonstrated the latter with its hands-off approach to the pandemic.

The complete list can be viewed at Nomad Capitalist’s website.

What changed in the past year?

Nearly 85% of the places in the top 30 list are in Europe.

What’s notable, said Henderson, is that countries like Malta, Iceland and Slovakia — places “that people don’t often talk about” in terms of passport strength — hold their own against powerhouses such as Italy and Germany. They also score above countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia and United States.

Vanuatu slipped from tied for 69th place in 2021 to 85th this year, after the Council of the European Union partially suspended its visa waiver agreement with the island nation earlier this month. The decision was prompted by concerns that Vanuatu’s investor citizenship schemes — which allow people to obtain citizenship in exchange for $130,000 investments in the islands — posed a security threat to the EU, according to the Council’s website.

Citizenship was granted to people on the Interpol database and rejection rates were “extremely low,” according to the website.

A ‘passport portfolio’

It’s not necessarily the case that the higher a country’s passport ranking, the more suitable it is for someone looking to obtain a second or third citizenship there, said Henderson.

People generally build a “passport portfolio” for one of two reasons: to reduce their taxes or to have a back-up residency plan. A Luxembourg citizenship likely won’t serve either of these groups, he said.

But citizenship in Portugal, the Caribbean or Malta may — especially for people in the second group.

The index also demonstrates that some countries’ passports are stronger than people realize.

“There are passports that people don’t realize are actually pretty good,” he said. “Malaysia barely beats out the United States, which is very interesting … Everyone I’ve ever met from Central America doesn’t like their passport … [but] Central American passports are actually pretty good quality.”

Source: Some passports are better than others. Here’s a list of the most powerful ones

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Bulgaria ends controversial ‘golden passports’ scheme

2022/03/28 Leave a comment

EU Parliament having an impact:

Bulgaria has abolished its controversial “golden passports” scheme offering citizenship of the EU member state in return for substantial investment, which had been criticised by Brussels.

The scheme made it possible for foreigners to acquire residency when they invested a minimum of 500,000 euros ($550,000) in Bulgaria, and citizenship when they invested one million euros ($1.1m).

The beneficiaries were primarily from Russia, China and the Middle East.

Bulgaria’s new government, which has made fighting corruption a key priority, had already urged parliament to discontinue the granting of such passports in January.

The decision by Bulgarian MPS on Thursday comes after the awarding of “golden passports” was again condemned by the European Parliament in the light of Western sanctions targetting Russian oligarchs over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, MEPs repeated their call on Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus to scrap both “golden passports” and “golden visas”.

The European Commission has repeatedly called for the abolition of such schemes because they create an incentive for corruption and money laundering.

Full review

As part of the decision, MPs also authorised a full review of all passports granted since the scheme was launched in 2013.

According to the justice ministry, about 100 such passports have been awarded to date.

The previous interim administration had last year flagged concerns about possible irregularities in 47 cases.

Despite the decision, there will still be the option of acquiring a residence permit under the scheme.

Malta has also said it would suspend granting “golden passports” to Russians and Belarusians until further notice following the invasion of Ukraine.

According to the European Parliament, at least 130,000 people obtained a “golden passport” or a “golden visa” in the bloc between 2011 and 2019, generating 21.8 billion euros ($23.9bn) for the countries concerned.

Source: Bulgaria ends controversial ‘golden passports’ scheme

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#COVID-19 Immigration Effects: January 2022 Update

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

This presentation provides the latest operational data on permanent and temporary immigration to Canada, broken down by major programs and countries, along with citizenship and visitor visas.

The government’s focus remains largely on Permanent Residents and “feeder groups” such as international students and other temporary residents.

While minimal progress has been made on reducing backlogs, operational levels have largely recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

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St Vincent Prime Minister reiterates opposition to CBI programs

2022/03/24 Leave a comment

Recent restrictions having an impact along with the realization that these programs attract a lot of vagabonds and criminals and people who want to use their money to escape the extent of scrutiny.”:

Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves has reiterated his government’s position regarding the Citizenship by Investment Program (CBI), saying legislative moves in the United States and European Union recently, show that his administration’s position on the program is correct.

Under the CBI, foreign investors are afforded citizenship of a country in return for making a significant investment in the socio-economic development of the particular country. Several Caribbean countries have instituted CBI programs.

Gonsalves said the United States has moved to decline visas to holders of passports obtained by CBI and the European Union has passed a law giving countries three years to phase out the program or face visa requirements for all its passports holders.

He said there is a bipartisan move in the US Congress, with a Republican and a Democrat introducing a bill “to clamp down on these what they call golden passports, passports, which you get through citizenship by investment, selling the passport, selling the citizenship.”

Prime Minister Gonsalves said the law took “a little bit further” what was being done administratively.

“If you buy your passport, buy your citizenship, the Americans had taken a decision administratively not to give you any visa.”

He said where someone who obtains a passport from Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts-Nevis, or St Lucia through CBI can travel visa-free to the United Kingdom and the EU, “the United States has practically closed the door.”

Gonsalves said Canada has done so to some extent “because Canada even though you have to apply for visas, a few of them who have purchased passports, they got into Canada.”

Gonsalves said some European Union countries including Bulgaria, Malta, and Cyprus also have CBI programs.

“The Russian yacht which had come down here, that Russian came here on a passport from Cyprus. But he was not sanctioned.”

The superyacht “Anna” docked in Kingstown on March 4, with its owner, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, onboard and purchased 40,000 gallons of fuel before setting sail one day later.

Gonsalves said Rybolovlev was not under sanctions as both the US and Europe imposed measures following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He further said a resolution was passed in the European Parliament directing the European Commission to ban “golden passports.

“You can go online on the European Parliament website and find this particular resolution, this text which was adopted and basically what it says that they are given the countries three years, between now and 2025,

“You have one of two choices: you abolish citizenship by investment, you abolish the selling of passports and citizenship by 2025, and they give you three years for you to gradually phase it out. You ain’t supposed to do any new program.”

“All Antiguans, all Grenadians, all Kittians, all St. Lucians, all Dominicans, would lose entry into Europe, and the United Kingdom is planning the same thing. So, if you want to go to France where you can go there now without a visa, you will require a visa,” Gonsalves said.

The EU Parliament has called for an EU “levy of a meaningful percentage on the investments made – until ‘golden passports’ are phased out, and indefinitely for ‘golden visas’” within the block.

“It also asks the Commission to put pressure on third countries that benefit from visa-free travel to the EU to follow suit,” according to the website.

The resolution passed by the parliament with 595 votes to 12 and 74 abstentions says golden passports should be phased out fully.

At least 130,000 people benefitted from CBI/RBI schemes in the EU from 2011 to 2019, generating revenues of over Euro 21.8 billion (One Euro=US$1.29 cents) for the countries concerned.

Gonsalves warned that if Britain, which is not a member of the European Union, “does the same way like the Europeans, it puts everybody into trouble by not having the visa; just like how Canada cut off theirs.

“But additionally, who’s going to buy your passport if you can’t get in any way visa-free?”

Gonsalves recalled that the CBI program had been a major issue in the 2015 and 2020 general elections.

The main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) supports a CBI program for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“And, you know, the position that I take on citizenship by investment… That is the glamorous name for selling citizenship and selling passports. A rose by another name, or, as the case may be, a pit toilet by any other name,” Gonsalves said, adding that he has always maintained that in principle and practice, CBI “is a mistake.”

He said in principle, a country “mustn’t sell our instruments of nationhood.

“Citizenship is the highest office in the land, higher than the prime minister, higher than governor general. It’s not a commodity for sale. And the passport is the outward sign of the inward grace of citizenship and that, too, is not for sale. You have heard me on that mantra, over and over again.”

He said that in practice, CBI is not sustainable.

“And in any case, it is bringing a lot of vagabonds and criminals and people who want to use their money to escape the extent of scrutiny.”

Source: St Vincent Prime Minister reiterates opposition to CBI programs

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