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Passports for sale

67 points by vkb 12y ago

kostyk 12y ago
It's a free market economy.
atemerev 12y ago
Obviously, governments and borders are outdated. I lived in 5 different countries (Russia, Switzerland, Italy, US, Denmark), and I couldn't help but wonder — why, why all this paperwork?
- guelo 12y ago
  To keep out third world people.
  - atemerev 12y ago
    OK then, but why, say, even Canadians need to go through hell if they want to live and work in the US, and vice versa?
    - tokenadult 12y ago
      Is it really hell? How hard is it for a Canadian to live and work in the United States? I know quite a few Canadians who live and work here in the United States. (Indeed, I know people from all over the world here who are living here long-term and who are gainfully employed.) AFTER EDIT: I am sincerely interested, and I think "hell" may be a bit of an exaggeration, so I'm not sure what's objectionable about this question. But let me know if you have an objection, okay?
      - atemerev 12y ago
        One US acquaintance of mine is now waiting 9 months to get her Canadian work visa. I am waiting 8 months to renew my Swiss residence permit (I have to do it every year), despite that I live in Switzerland for 9 years already.
      - ma2rten 12y ago
        It depends on your personal situation and there is great degree of arbitrariness. Canadians can enter the country for 6 months without a visa. This makes it is easy to work illegally for people who are willing to take that risk. There is the TN visa, which is easy to obtain. But it's only for 8 specific professions. I for one worked as a Computer Systems Analyst. A job title I never heard before that. Once you have this visa it's bound to your employment, when you loose your job, you have to leave the country in 10 days. This is a temporary visa and you can not apply for a green card. Then there is H1B. This visa allows you to apply for a green card, but you can only apply for it on one specific date per year, if you can get it depends on a lottery (!), which decides if you can work 6 month later. Also it requires a mountain of paperwork, which however the companies lawyer will normally take care of. From there it takes 2-3 year to get a green card.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Personally I find it really strange that we (the U.S.) aren't working every day towards having an open border with Canada (it doesn't seem to be just Canada that doesn't want it). I guess you'd need limitations on health care and an awareness campaign about it (so that confused people didn't travel in an attempt to save money), but other than that, I think the only stopper is the slightly higher level of paranoia the U.S. shows towards foreign visitors.
    - eloisant 12y ago
      Because Canada and US have very different immigration policies, so they can't make a Schengen between the 2 countries.
    - hackerboos 12y ago
      I wouldn't call the TN visa 'hell'.
      - jarek 12y ago
        It's not exactly EEA level "show up whenever and register at an office" though.
        desdiv 12y ago
        The TN program is easier than that. For the EEA you have to go down to the immigration registration office and, well, register. For the TN program you simply present yourself to the immigration officer when you enter the country (this part is something that even a citizen will have to do), show them your documentation, pay $50, and you're done. You don't even have to fill out a form.
        jarek 12y ago
        Yeah but in EEA you don't have to explain just how you're a Computer Systems Analyst and not a software developer
      - FD3SA 12y ago
        The TN visa is arbitrary and random. You are at the whim of an uneducated border officer, who gets to unanimously decide on whether you get to work in the US or not. Furthermore, its renewal is also at the whims of said officer. You better hope he's in a good mood, or you can say goodbye to GoogFaceMicroZon! Try explaining to them why you have a degree in Electrical Engineering but work as a Data Scientist. My friend tried, and it would be funny if it didn't almost cost him his job. He literally got in due to a shred of mercy caused by his girlfriend's tears at the possibility of a refused visa. The USA sometimes feels like a dystopian nightmare, mainly populated with idiotic yes-men and ruled by Machiavellian bureaucrats. There are a few niche ecosystems that are impressive, but they are by far the minority.
        mahyarm 12y ago
- WiggleYourIndex 12y ago
  Divide and conquer.
- goodJobWalrus 12y ago
  right. freedom to move is a basic human right, and should be recognized as such. My hope is that in a 100 years or so, we will view these times as barbaric, and be shocked at the fact that at some point in history people couldn't move freely, as we are shocked by slavery today.
cleverjake 12y ago
The united states offers investment visas that grant "permanent residence to the individual" to anyone who invests over $1,000,000 in several industries. - http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-through-job/green-card-through-investment http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-through-job/green...
- borski 12y ago
  A green card is different from a passport. You should be able to become a citizen if you live in a place long enough and pledge allegiance. Incentivizing the wealthy to come live in a place is nothing new, but then they still have to go through the same process of pledging allegiance and living here long enough to become citizens.
  - borski 12y ago
    Why the down votes?
    - UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
      I didn't but likely your ridiculous line implying that poor and rich people "still have to go through the same process." That's obviously nonsense. Poor people cannot legally gain entry at all, rich people write a cheque, and then get residence after a few years. If you've ever read some of the, frankly, heartbreaking immigration stories (e.g. families separated for sometimes tens of years). The US seems to have an undisclosed quota in certain parts of the world and a lot of people get rejected for unquantifiable reasons (and then get accepted the second time without changing their status/application). This even seems to occur on family visas which it shouldn't. You just dismissing the entire vias struggle into living within a country for a couple of years and saying a stupid pledge is ignorant and completely out of touch with the reality for millions of poor people (and even many in the "middle class").
      - borski 12y ago
        My parents are (poor) immigrants. It took them 26 years to obtain green cards. I'm very familiar with the struggle. All I meant was that this is a far better situation than being able to straight-up buy Citizenship, say, from Malta.
grimlck 12y ago
You can already get a visa-for-money from most major first world countries, and after a few years, it is easy enough to make the jump towards citizenship. Is it really that big of a jump to get rid of the time component? For example: USA EB5 investor visa: $1,000,000 or $500,000 depending on the area you 'invest' in. One of the easiest ways to get a green card, and from there, citizenship UK Tier 1 investor visa: £1,000,000 in 'investment', which can just be the purchase of government bonds. Apply for indefinate leave to remain (green card equivilant) after 4 years. If you invested £5 million, you only need 3 years. If you invested £10 million, it is down to 2 years. The UK non-domicile tax status can also be very very generous to wealthy expats (unless they are American and thus are taxed on world wide income regardless). Canada Canada used to have such a program (Immigrant Investor visa for $800,000 CAD for people with net worths of at least $!.6 million), but that was terminated recently. I believe the Quebec version is still open though
- hackerboos 12y ago
  PR is slightly different than getting a passport 'right off the bat' and without any residency qualification like the initial law proposed. Malta now requires a years residency before you get your passport: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25959458 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25959458
- desdiv 12y ago
  In USA's case: USD $1 million + tax on the worldwide income of a millionaire for 5 years + spending of a millionaire in the national economy for 5 * 182 days + tax on the worldwide income of a millionaire for as long as he remains a citizen plus 10 years afterwards In UK's case: £1 million + tax on the worldwide income of a millionaire for 6 years + spending of a millionaire in the national economy for 6 * 182 days You mentioned 2,3,4 years for the indefinite leave to remain and the powerful non-domicile tax status, all of which are true but irrelevant to this analysis. Anyone trying to gain citizenship through the investor program must be a tax resident for at least 6 years. In Canada's case: CAD $0.8 million + tax on the worldwide income of a millionaire for 3 years + spending of a millionaire in the national economy for 3 * 182 days In St. Kitts's case: A one time payment of USD $0.25 million
tokenadult 12y ago
There is quite a bit of international law about this, from quite a while back. The article notes, "Then again, it is a country’s sovereign right to decide who to let in and who to keep out—and not all countries consider fairness a priority when it comes to immigration policy," and that is largely true. But countries have obligations to their citizens in how they relate to other countries, and some of those reciprocal obligations have been tested in international law. The Guatemala v. Lichtenstein case (the Nottebohm case)[1] decided by the International Court of Justice, the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice first established under the League of Nations, decided in 1955 that international law can examine the naturalization law of nation-states when citizenship is asserted by a citizen as protection against the actions of another government. The facts in the Nottebohm case were that Mr. Nottebohm had been born in Germany in 1881 and was a German citizen by facts of birth. He lived in Guatemala from 1905 until 1943 without becoming a citizen of Guatemala, traveling to Germany and other places on business from time to time. In October 1939 (just after the beginning of hostilities in Europe in World War II), Nottebohm applied for citizenship in Lichtenstein, which granted him citizenship despite its usual requirement of three years of residence before citizenship. When Nottebohm tried to reenter Guatemala after a period of travel in 1943, Guatemala (which by then had declared war on Germany as part of World War II) did not allow him reentry, but rather interned him as an enemy alien and transferred him to Guatemala's ally, the United States. After the war, the government of Lichtenstein sued the government of Guatemala for not protecting its (Lichtenstein's) citizen. In its defense, Guatemala claimed that it owed no duty to Lichtenstein to protect Nottebohm as a friendly alien, because Nottebohm did not have sufficient genuine connection to Lichtenstein to be treated as a citizen of Lichtenstein. The international court agreed that despite the general rule that countries may decide their own laws of citizenship and immigration, when a person from one country asserts a right of citizenship against the action of another country, the citizenship relationship can be examined by principles of international law. The bottom line for you and for me: if you buy citizenship somewhere, and then travel somewhere else, you may not enjoy consular protection or any other diplomatic representation from the country whose citizenship you bought and paid for. You may be treated as a person with the birth citizenship you started out with (or some other citizenship acquired along the way), rather than the citizenship you chose for yourself, if your connection with your new country is weak and exists on documents more than it exists in fact. So be careful how you shop for citizenship and think ahead before you travel internationally. [1] http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/ICJ/1955/1.html http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/ICJ/1955/1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottebohm_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottebohm_case
techsupporter 12y ago
"What's difficult to argue with is the fact that making it possible for a rich person to buy his or her way out of a country doesn't do much for the billions who are prohibited from leaving theirs, whether it's because of immigration restrictions or just plain poverty. And laws that so explicitly link political membership to financial gain drive home the sad reality that borders exist more for some people than they do for others." And there you have it. "Some people are just better than others" used to be a polite fiction maintained outside of the public eye; acknowledged but not overtly flaunted. Now it's the latest in how societies are restructured and a somewhat-expected consequence of what happens when information and money can be freely moved but people cannot.
schoen 12y ago
I thought I might dislike this article because I support free migration (and probably share some views with the libertarian expatriate who at first seems to be getting set up as the article's bogeyman). But I was impressed that the article didn't really go there; instead, it uses his experience as part of a pretty compelling observation "that borders exist more for some people than they do for others". And that's absolutely right. I've visited 23 countries and never had a hitch, hassle, snafu, or anybody questioning my presence or right to travel there. Whereas I have known people who grew up in the U.S. but lived in fear of deportation because they came here at age 1 instead of age 0. And when I helped a medical student from West Africa with his travel itinerary to the Caribbean (which I think was his only experience with international travel), he ended up getting deported all the way back to his home country for lack of a transit visa for one of his connections -- a visa that there's no chance I would have been asked for, let alone deported over. (He had to buy a whole new itinerary and fly across the Atlantic a third time, figuring out how to avoid connecting through that country.) My coworkers think of Caribbean island nations as a great place to go on honeymoon; the not-actually-the-bogeyman libertarian activist in the article thinks of them as a great place to expatriate; and West African students think of them as "which one won't deport me on my way to school this time?".
- smm2000 12y ago
  I am surprised that student from West Africa was allowed to get on the plane. All airlines check Timatic which has up-to-date visa regulations for all countries. Common sense is to check for visa rules if you are citizen of some backwater country and need visa for pretty much anything.
  - schoen 12y ago
    I think the deportation was actually by transit country A because of his lack of a transit visa for transit country B. Country A didn't initially require a transit visa, but perhaps the airline did discover a potential problem, whereabout country A migration officials seem to have said "oh, well, if you don't have a plan for how to get out of country A promptly, we're sending you back to your home country". His original itinerary involved six countries and four separate airlines across two bookings, so I don't think that's inconsistent with what you said.
cdjk 12y ago
There's a question I've had about the citizenship for "investment" programs. It's frequently framed as an investment, not a sale [1]. That seems to imply that there is a chance of getting your money back. So could one "invest" the required amount and then sell the investment a few years later, keeping the citizenship? Or are the investments things that are not particularly liquid, so you're stuck with it? [1] Although it looks like St. Kitts has a donation option as well.
- UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
  Several country's programs have the visa get renewed every X period (e.g. yearly) and for the renew to go through the investment still has to be in place. So typically you have to invest that amount up until you get either change of status or citizenship. So 2-5 years depending on country and their rules. I will say that many of these programs don't seem to have kept pace with inflation so the US EB-5 (1 mil) for example would be 1.8 mil in 2014 if it had kept pace.
- desdiv 12y ago
  Yes, you can sell your investment at market value as soon as you receive your citizenship. In that sense, there is almost no cost, not even lost opportunity cost, in getting the citizenship, provided that the real estate market of your destination isn't half bad.
rokhayakebe 12y ago
I, for one, support this initiative. If someone wants to become a citizen of my country then by all means I should consider it, and if they meet our requirements I can let them in in exchange for something. "What will you add to my country?" Money, Knowledge, Science, Art, whatever so long as it benefits.
bdesimone 12y ago
Citizenship is already weird. My wife and I both being born in the US, we are tri-citizens and our descendants will also have tri-citizenship in perpetuity. It would have been quad-citizenship if Norway allowed for multiple passports.
- davidw 12y ago
  > our descendants You can't pass on your US citizenship unless you have lived in the US for N years, with N being 5, IIRC.
  - schoen 12y ago
    You could do it by going to the U.S. to give birth, assuming that the other countries of citizenship didn't then deny it to the children as a result.
  - desdiv 12y ago
    Any child born on US soil is a automatically a US citizen according to the Fourteenth Amendment. Even the children of illegal immigrants and tourists automatically gain US citizenship at birth.
    - schoen 12y ago
      I think the parent commenter knew that, but assumed that the original commenter doesn't currently live in the U.S. If that's the case, getting U.S. citizenship for their descendents could require a more difficult and expensive trip to give birth inside the U.S.
      - davidw 12y ago
        Yes, exactly: > our descendants will also have tri-citizenship in perpetuity is probably wrong. If the descendants never reside in the US, they won't be able to pass on the citizenship to their own children unless they traveled to the US just to give birth.
    - 12y ago
icecreampain 12y ago
In Sweden it's really easy to get a Swedish passport: first, when you arrive, you throw your current passport away. The airplane trash is a good place. Then, you say that you are a refugee from Syria. After a few months, at most, of waiting you will automatically get yourself permanent Swedish residence. A brand, spanking-new Swedish passport comes with the residence. After that you're welcome to ask the state to import the rest of your family and relatives, since they are also from Egy^WIra^WLeban^WPales^WSyria and are therefore in need of PUT (permanent Swedish residence).
etherael 12y ago
> Roger Ver, a libertarian who did some jail time for selling explosives online without a license and renounced his U.S. citizenship a week after he became Kittitian (paying with cash, not bitcoin) believes in changing citizenships at will because he finds governments oppressive and borders meaningless. “My personal plan is to undermine governments who try to control people and their lives,” he told me last month over Skype. This dishonest demonising is sad. It was a plea bargain for selling fireworks after the state got angry with him for his hostile viewpoint when he actually tried to participate in the political process rather than circumvent it entirely as he advocates now. Protip for those idealistic people complaining about segments of the population entirely abandoning the political process rather than attempting to engage with it and fix the system; This is exactly how you provoke people into that abandonment. I have come to expect as much from people cheerleading for the state, it's depressing to have my cynical biases validated so firmly. http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/11/12/bitcoin-venture-capitalist-roger-vers-journey-to-anarchism/ http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/11/12/bitcoin-venture-capital... I argued that taxation is theft, the war on drugs is immoral, and that the ATF are “a bunch of jack booted thugs and murderers” in memoriam to the people they slaughtered in Waco, Texas. Unbeknownst to me at the time there were several plain clothed ATF agents in the audience who became very upset with the things I was saying. They began looking into my background in the attempt to find dirt on me. I had already started a successful online business selling various computer components. In addition to computer parts, I, along with dozens of other resellers across the country, including Cabelas, were selling a product called a “Pest Control Report 2000.” It was basically a firecracker used by farmers to scare deer and birds away from their corn fields. While everyone else, including the manufacturer, were simply asked to stop selling them I became the only person in the nation to be prosecuted. The reasoning for the prosecution became crystal clear after a meeting with the US prosecuting attorney and the under cover ATF agents from the debate. In the meeting, my attorney told the prosecutor that selling store bought firecrackers on Ebay isn’t a big deal and that we can pay a fine and do some community service to be done with everything. When the prosecutor agreed that that sounded reasonable one of the ATF agents pounded his hand on the table and shouted “…but you didn’t hear the things that he said!” This summed up very clearly that they were angry about the things that I had said, not the things that I had done.
kyriakos 12y ago
very frustrating issue in Cyprus is that wealthy foreigners get their passport within 1-2 months while non-EU foreigners who have been living in the country for over a decade (my wife included) have to wait for at least 7 more years after applying for citizenship due to the bureaucracy.
- barking 12y ago
  Under EU law your wife has residency rights so what's the problem?
barking 12y ago
Emigration tends to be from poor countries to rich countries. In my experience the poorer people in rich countries tend to be less in favour of immigration than rich people in those countries.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
616c 12y ago
The only thing that bothers me here is that Qatar is toted as an example. Fun fact: all these athlete citizens in Qatar have a special class of citizenship, as in they are made Qatari but experience none of the perks, especially the very nice benefits of a petro-gas welfare state where basically everything from property to utilities to education abroad is subsidized. Oh, and when they stop being useful, the citizenship is stripped. This is common knowledge and leads to interesting situations. More interesting are Palestinian athletes who are not even made citizens. They are not allowed to see their passports. On trips abroad, their handlers carry them and they are only authorized for travel to and from Qatar for any event. Then, they are destroyed/cancelled until the next event. So, please, do not use Qatar as an example.
nateabele 12y ago
> "Investor programs give the lie to the notion that citizenship is sacred, in a civic sense[.]" It's always been a lie. To most governments, their citizens are their cattle.

67 points by vkb 12y ago

It's a free market economy.

Obviously, governments and borders are outdated. I lived in 5 different countries (Russia, Switzerland, Italy, US, Denmark), and I couldn't help but wonder — why, why all this paperwork?

guelo 12y ago
To keep out third world people.
- atemerev 12y ago
  OK then, but why, say, even Canadians need to go through hell if they want to live and work in the US, and vice versa?
  - tokenadult 12y ago
    Is it really hell? How hard is it for a Canadian to live and work in the United States? I know quite a few Canadians who live and work here in the United States. (Indeed, I know people from all over the world here who are living here long-term and who are gainfully employed.) AFTER EDIT: I am sincerely interested, and I think "hell" may be a bit of an exaggeration, so I'm not sure what's objectionable about this question. But let me know if you have an objection, okay?
    - atemerev 12y ago
      One US acquaintance of mine is now waiting 9 months to get her Canadian work visa. I am waiting 8 months to renew my Swiss residence permit (I have to do it every year), despite that I live in Switzerland for 9 years already.
    - ma2rten 12y ago
      It depends on your personal situation and there is great degree of arbitrariness. Canadians can enter the country for 6 months without a visa. This makes it is easy to work illegally for people who are willing to take that risk. There is the TN visa, which is easy to obtain. But it's only for 8 specific professions. I for one worked as a Computer Systems Analyst. A job title I never heard before that. Once you have this visa it's bound to your employment, when you loose your job, you have to leave the country in 10 days. This is a temporary visa and you can not apply for a green card. Then there is H1B. This visa allows you to apply for a green card, but you can only apply for it on one specific date per year, if you can get it depends on a lottery (!), which decides if you can work 6 month later. Also it requires a mountain of paperwork, which however the companies lawyer will normally take care of. From there it takes 2-3 year to get a green card.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Personally I find it really strange that we (the U.S.) aren't working every day towards having an open border with Canada (it doesn't seem to be just Canada that doesn't want it). I guess you'd need limitations on health care and an awareness campaign about it (so that confused people didn't travel in an attempt to save money), but other than that, I think the only stopper is the slightly higher level of paranoia the U.S. shows towards foreign visitors.
  - eloisant 12y ago
    Because Canada and US have very different immigration policies, so they can't make a Schengen between the 2 countries.
  - hackerboos 12y ago
    I wouldn't call the TN visa 'hell'.
    - jarek 12y ago
      It's not exactly EEA level "show up whenever and register at an office" though.
      - desdiv 12y ago
        The TN program is easier than that. For the EEA you have to go down to the immigration registration office and, well, register. For the TN program you simply present yourself to the immigration officer when you enter the country (this part is something that even a citizen will have to do), show them your documentation, pay $50, and you're done. You don't even have to fill out a form.
        jarek 12y ago
        Yeah but in EEA you don't have to explain just how you're a Computer Systems Analyst and not a software developer
    - FD3SA 12y ago
      The TN visa is arbitrary and random. You are at the whim of an uneducated border officer, who gets to unanimously decide on whether you get to work in the US or not. Furthermore, its renewal is also at the whims of said officer. You better hope he's in a good mood, or you can say goodbye to GoogFaceMicroZon! Try explaining to them why you have a degree in Electrical Engineering but work as a Data Scientist. My friend tried, and it would be funny if it didn't almost cost him his job. He literally got in due to a shred of mercy caused by his girlfriend's tears at the possibility of a refused visa. The USA sometimes feels like a dystopian nightmare, mainly populated with idiotic yes-men and ruled by Machiavellian bureaucrats. There are a few niche ecosystems that are impressive, but they are by far the minority.
      - mahyarm 12y ago
WiggleYourIndex 12y ago
Divide and conquer.
goodJobWalrus 12y ago
right. freedom to move is a basic human right, and should be recognized as such. My hope is that in a 100 years or so, we will view these times as barbaric, and be shocked at the fact that at some point in history people couldn't move freely, as we are shocked by slavery today.

cleverjake 12y ago

The united states offers investment visas that grant "permanent residence to the individual" to anyone who invests over $1,000,000 in several industries. - http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-through-job/green-card-through-investment http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-through-job/green...

borski 12y ago
A green card is different from a passport. You should be able to become a citizen if you live in a place long enough and pledge allegiance. Incentivizing the wealthy to come live in a place is nothing new, but then they still have to go through the same process of pledging allegiance and living here long enough to become citizens.
- borski 12y ago
  Why the down votes?
  - UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
    I didn't but likely your ridiculous line implying that poor and rich people "still have to go through the same process." That's obviously nonsense. Poor people cannot legally gain entry at all, rich people write a cheque, and then get residence after a few years. If you've ever read some of the, frankly, heartbreaking immigration stories (e.g. families separated for sometimes tens of years). The US seems to have an undisclosed quota in certain parts of the world and a lot of people get rejected for unquantifiable reasons (and then get accepted the second time without changing their status/application). This even seems to occur on family visas which it shouldn't. You just dismissing the entire vias struggle into living within a country for a couple of years and saying a stupid pledge is ignorant and completely out of touch with the reality for millions of poor people (and even many in the "middle class").
    - borski 12y ago
      My parents are (poor) immigrants. It took them 26 years to obtain green cards. I'm very familiar with the struggle. All I meant was that this is a far better situation than being able to straight-up buy Citizenship, say, from Malta.

grimlck 12y ago

You can already get a visa-for-money from most major first world countries, and after a few years, it is easy enough to make the jump towards citizenship. Is it really that big of a jump to get rid of the time component? For example: USA EB5 investor visa: $1,000,000 or $500,000 depending on the area you 'invest' in. One of the easiest ways to get a green card, and from there, citizenship UK Tier 1 investor visa: £1,000,000 in 'investment', which can just be the purchase of government bonds. Apply for indefinate leave to remain (green card equivilant) after 4 years. If you invested £5 million, you only need 3 years. If you invested £10 million, it is down to 2 years. The UK non-domicile tax status can also be very very generous to wealthy expats (unless they are American and thus are taxed on world wide income regardless). Canada Canada used to have such a program (Immigrant Investor visa for $800,000 CAD for people with net worths of at least $!.6 million), but that was terminated recently. I believe the Quebec version is still open though

hackerboos 12y ago
PR is slightly different than getting a passport 'right off the bat' and without any residency qualification like the initial law proposed. Malta now requires a years residency before you get your passport: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25959458 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25959458
desdiv 12y ago
In USA's case: USD $1 million + tax on the worldwide income of a millionaire for 5 years + spending of a millionaire in the national economy for 5 * 182 days + tax on the worldwide income of a millionaire for as long as he remains a citizen plus 10 years afterwards In UK's case: £1 million + tax on the worldwide income of a millionaire for 6 years + spending of a millionaire in the national economy for 6 * 182 days You mentioned 2,3,4 years for the indefinite leave to remain and the powerful non-domicile tax status, all of which are true but irrelevant to this analysis. Anyone trying to gain citizenship through the investor program must be a tax resident for at least 6 years. In Canada's case: CAD $0.8 million + tax on the worldwide income of a millionaire for 3 years + spending of a millionaire in the national economy for 3 * 182 days In St. Kitts's case: A one time payment of USD $0.25 million

tokenadult 12y ago

There is quite a bit of international law about this, from quite a while back. The article notes, "Then again, it is a country’s sovereign right to decide who to let in and who to keep out—and not all countries consider fairness a priority when it comes to immigration policy," and that is largely true. But countries have obligations to their citizens in how they relate to other countries, and some of those reciprocal obligations have been tested in international law. The Guatemala v. Lichtenstein case (the Nottebohm case)[1] decided by the International Court of Justice, the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice first established under the League of Nations, decided in 1955 that international law can examine the naturalization law of nation-states when citizenship is asserted by a citizen as protection against the actions of another government. The facts in the Nottebohm case were that Mr. Nottebohm had been born in Germany in 1881 and was a German citizen by facts of birth. He lived in Guatemala from 1905 until 1943 without becoming a citizen of Guatemala, traveling to Germany and other places on business from time to time. In October 1939 (just after the beginning of hostilities in Europe in World War II), Nottebohm applied for citizenship in Lichtenstein, which granted him citizenship despite its usual requirement of three years of residence before citizenship. When Nottebohm tried to reenter Guatemala after a period of travel in 1943, Guatemala (which by then had declared war on Germany as part of World War II) did not allow him reentry, but rather interned him as an enemy alien and transferred him to Guatemala's ally, the United States. After the war, the government of Lichtenstein sued the government of Guatemala for not protecting its (Lichtenstein's) citizen. In its defense, Guatemala claimed that it owed no duty to Lichtenstein to protect Nottebohm as a friendly alien, because Nottebohm did not have sufficient genuine connection to Lichtenstein to be treated as a citizen of Lichtenstein. The international court agreed that despite the general rule that countries may decide their own laws of citizenship and immigration, when a person from one country asserts a right of citizenship against the action of another country, the citizenship relationship can be examined by principles of international law. The bottom line for you and for me: if you buy citizenship somewhere, and then travel somewhere else, you may not enjoy consular protection or any other diplomatic representation from the country whose citizenship you bought and paid for. You may be treated as a person with the birth citizenship you started out with (or some other citizenship acquired along the way), rather than the citizenship you chose for yourself, if your connection with your new country is weak and exists on documents more than it exists in fact. So be careful how you shop for citizenship and think ahead before you travel internationally. [1] http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/ICJ/1955/1.html http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/ICJ/1955/1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottebohm_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottebohm_case

techsupporter 12y ago

"What's difficult to argue with is the fact that making it possible for a rich person to buy his or her way out of a country doesn't do much for the billions who are prohibited from leaving theirs, whether it's because of immigration restrictions or just plain poverty. And laws that so explicitly link political membership to financial gain drive home the sad reality that borders exist more for some people than they do for others." And there you have it. "Some people are just better than others" used to be a polite fiction maintained outside of the public eye; acknowledged but not overtly flaunted. Now it's the latest in how societies are restructured and a somewhat-expected consequence of what happens when information and money can be freely moved but people cannot.

schoen 12y ago

I thought I might dislike this article because I support free migration (and probably share some views with the libertarian expatriate who at first seems to be getting set up as the article's bogeyman). But I was impressed that the article didn't really go there; instead, it uses his experience as part of a pretty compelling observation "that borders exist more for some people than they do for others". And that's absolutely right. I've visited 23 countries and never had a hitch, hassle, snafu, or anybody questioning my presence or right to travel there. Whereas I have known people who grew up in the U.S. but lived in fear of deportation because they came here at age 1 instead of age 0. And when I helped a medical student from West Africa with his travel itinerary to the Caribbean (which I think was his only experience with international travel), he ended up getting deported all the way back to his home country for lack of a transit visa for one of his connections -- a visa that there's no chance I would have been asked for, let alone deported over. (He had to buy a whole new itinerary and fly across the Atlantic a third time, figuring out how to avoid connecting through that country.) My coworkers think of Caribbean island nations as a great place to go on honeymoon; the not-actually-the-bogeyman libertarian activist in the article thinks of them as a great place to expatriate; and West African students think of them as "which one won't deport me on my way to school this time?".

smm2000 12y ago
I am surprised that student from West Africa was allowed to get on the plane. All airlines check Timatic which has up-to-date visa regulations for all countries. Common sense is to check for visa rules if you are citizen of some backwater country and need visa for pretty much anything.
- schoen 12y ago
  I think the deportation was actually by transit country A because of his lack of a transit visa for transit country B. Country A didn't initially require a transit visa, but perhaps the airline did discover a potential problem, whereabout country A migration officials seem to have said "oh, well, if you don't have a plan for how to get out of country A promptly, we're sending you back to your home country". His original itinerary involved six countries and four separate airlines across two bookings, so I don't think that's inconsistent with what you said.

cdjk 12y ago

There's a question I've had about the citizenship for "investment" programs. It's frequently framed as an investment, not a sale [1]. That seems to imply that there is a chance of getting your money back. So could one "invest" the required amount and then sell the investment a few years later, keeping the citizenship? Or are the investments things that are not particularly liquid, so you're stuck with it? [1] Although it looks like St. Kitts has a donation option as well.

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
Several country's programs have the visa get renewed every X period (e.g. yearly) and for the renew to go through the investment still has to be in place. So typically you have to invest that amount up until you get either change of status or citizenship. So 2-5 years depending on country and their rules. I will say that many of these programs don't seem to have kept pace with inflation so the US EB-5 (1 mil) for example would be 1.8 mil in 2014 if it had kept pace.
desdiv 12y ago
Yes, you can sell your investment at market value as soon as you receive your citizenship. In that sense, there is almost no cost, not even lost opportunity cost, in getting the citizenship, provided that the real estate market of your destination isn't half bad.

rokhayakebe 12y ago

I, for one, support this initiative. If someone wants to become a citizen of my country then by all means I should consider it, and if they meet our requirements I can let them in in exchange for something. "What will you add to my country?" Money, Knowledge, Science, Art, whatever so long as it benefits.

bdesimone 12y ago

Citizenship is already weird. My wife and I both being born in the US, we are tri-citizens and our descendants will also have tri-citizenship in perpetuity. It would have been quad-citizenship if Norway allowed for multiple passports.

davidw 12y ago
> our descendants You can't pass on your US citizenship unless you have lived in the US for N years, with N being 5, IIRC.
- schoen 12y ago
  You could do it by going to the U.S. to give birth, assuming that the other countries of citizenship didn't then deny it to the children as a result.
- desdiv 12y ago
  Any child born on US soil is a automatically a US citizen according to the Fourteenth Amendment. Even the children of illegal immigrants and tourists automatically gain US citizenship at birth.
  - schoen 12y ago
    I think the parent commenter knew that, but assumed that the original commenter doesn't currently live in the U.S. If that's the case, getting U.S. citizenship for their descendents could require a more difficult and expensive trip to give birth inside the U.S.
    - davidw 12y ago
      Yes, exactly: > our descendants will also have tri-citizenship in perpetuity is probably wrong. If the descendants never reside in the US, they won't be able to pass on the citizenship to their own children unless they traveled to the US just to give birth.
  - 12y ago

icecreampain 12y ago

In Sweden it's really easy to get a Swedish passport: first, when you arrive, you throw your current passport away. The airplane trash is a good place. Then, you say that you are a refugee from Syria. After a few months, at most, of waiting you will automatically get yourself permanent Swedish residence. A brand, spanking-new Swedish passport comes with the residence. After that you're welcome to ask the state to import the rest of your family and relatives, since they are also from Egy^WIra^WLeban^WPales^WSyria and are therefore in need of PUT (permanent Swedish residence).

etherael 12y ago

> Roger Ver, a libertarian who did some jail time for selling explosives online without a license and renounced his U.S. citizenship a week after he became Kittitian (paying with cash, not bitcoin) believes in changing citizenships at will because he finds governments oppressive and borders meaningless. “My personal plan is to undermine governments who try to control people and their lives,” he told me last month over Skype. This dishonest demonising is sad. It was a plea bargain for selling fireworks after the state got angry with him for his hostile viewpoint when he actually tried to participate in the political process rather than circumvent it entirely as he advocates now. Protip for those idealistic people complaining about segments of the population entirely abandoning the political process rather than attempting to engage with it and fix the system; This is exactly how you provoke people into that abandonment. I have come to expect as much from people cheerleading for the state, it's depressing to have my cynical biases validated so firmly. http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/11/12/bitcoin-venture-capitalist-roger-vers-journey-to-anarchism/ http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/11/12/bitcoin-venture-capital... I argued that taxation is theft, the war on drugs is immoral, and that the ATF are “a bunch of jack booted thugs and murderers” in memoriam to the people they slaughtered in Waco, Texas. Unbeknownst to me at the time there were several plain clothed ATF agents in the audience who became very upset with the things I was saying. They began looking into my background in the attempt to find dirt on me. I had already started a successful online business selling various computer components. In addition to computer parts, I, along with dozens of other resellers across the country, including Cabelas, were selling a product called a “Pest Control Report 2000.” It was basically a firecracker used by farmers to scare deer and birds away from their corn fields. While everyone else, including the manufacturer, were simply asked to stop selling them I became the only person in the nation to be prosecuted. The reasoning for the prosecution became crystal clear after a meeting with the US prosecuting attorney and the under cover ATF agents from the debate. In the meeting, my attorney told the prosecutor that selling store bought firecrackers on Ebay isn’t a big deal and that we can pay a fine and do some community service to be done with everything. When the prosecutor agreed that that sounded reasonable one of the ATF agents pounded his hand on the table and shouted “…but you didn’t hear the things that he said!” This summed up very clearly that they were angry about the things that I had said, not the things that I had done.

kyriakos 12y ago

very frustrating issue in Cyprus is that wealthy foreigners get their passport within 1-2 months while non-EU foreigners who have been living in the country for over a decade (my wife included) have to wait for at least 7 more years after applying for citizenship due to the bureaucracy.

barking 12y ago
Under EU law your wife has residency rights so what's the problem?

barking 12y ago

Emigration tends to be from poor countries to rich countries. In my experience the poorer people in rich countries tend to be less in favour of immigration than rich people in those countries.

deleted 12y ago

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616c 12y ago

The only thing that bothers me here is that Qatar is toted as an example. Fun fact: all these athlete citizens in Qatar have a special class of citizenship, as in they are made Qatari but experience none of the perks, especially the very nice benefits of a petro-gas welfare state where basically everything from property to utilities to education abroad is subsidized. Oh, and when they stop being useful, the citizenship is stripped. This is common knowledge and leads to interesting situations. More interesting are Palestinian athletes who are not even made citizens. They are not allowed to see their passports. On trips abroad, their handlers carry them and they are only authorized for travel to and from Qatar for any event. Then, they are destroyed/cancelled until the next event. So, please, do not use Qatar as an example.

nateabele 12y ago

> "Investor programs give the lie to the notion that citizenship is sacred, in a civic sense[.]" It's always been a lie. To most governments, their citizens are their cattle.