Wealthy Americans buy second passports as a ‘plan B’ for families

Many countries have provided “golden passports” for rich people abroad to receive citizenship – Photo: PORTUGUESE-AMERICAN JOURNAL

Some countries already offer “golden passports”, which allow wealthy foreigners to get citizenship or residency to switch jobs. According to the magazine Forbes“golden passport” programs typically cost between $1.1 million in Malta and $9.5 million in Austria.

Mr. Ezzedeen Soleiman – manager of Latitude Residency & Citizenship (a company that provides special residency and citizenship solutions for successful, wealthy people) – said: “We view these programs as a insurance policy. Several billionaires have approached us and asked where the ideal place to live if there is a climate disaster, a “storm” of political conflict or a global pandemic.”

Former Google Group CEO Eric Schmidt has applied for European citizenship in 2020 using Cyprus’ golden passport program.

US-based company Latitude says requests for a second passport have grown by 300% from 2019 to 2021, and will continue to grow in 2022.

Henley & Partners, one of the world’s largest citizenship brokers, says sales through U.S. citizens getting a second passport grew 327% between 2019 and 2020 and increased another 10 percent in 2019. year 2021.

According to Dominic Volek – head of private clients at Henley & Partners, there are “four C’s” that are pushing US citizens to look for a second passport, including: COVID-19, climate change climate change, cryptocurrency, and conflict.

Mr. Volek told the magazine Insider: “During very strict lockdowns, if you only had an American passport, you couldn’t get into Europe. I think that made a lot of people with extremely high net worth realize the ability to adapt to these conditions. Their volatility is more fragile than they think.”

Dasein Advisors Citizenship and Residency Consultants CEO Reaz Jafri said that over the past three years, he has received more requests to consider investing in a second citizenship from Americans than he did. the previous 20 years combined.

Mr. Jafri’s US clients typically work in technology, real estate or crypto. They are worth between $50 million and $20 billion, and they all have one thing in common: a deep-seated fear of the future of American society. They can range from a tech founder, concerned about the rise in Asian-American hate crimes, to young Web3 entrepreneurs looking to avoid tax increases.

Two of the companies are magazine Insider Interview said Portugal has a 5-year residency permit program, and residents are allowed visa-free travel to 26 countries in the European Union (EU), which is being requested by US investors Most.

Portugal’s “golden visa” requires residents to invest a minimum of more than 200,000 USD and have an average stay of 7 days/year. Once the permit expires, they can take another 3 years to apply for naturalization.

“Portugal will be the next California,” said Mr. Soleiman. Super-rich Americans want to plant roots in Europe as a long-term plan for their children and grandchildren, he added.

However, according to the newspaper’s investigation, Guardian In 2021, many people still do not end up moving to the countries that issued them with golden passports.

“Most of our clients just want to have their golden passports on hand as a ‘plan B’ for self-defense,” said Mr. Volek of Henley & Partners.