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
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
The UK does not tax worldwide income. In fact, if you hold your money in an offshore account, you can declare yourself a "non-domiciled" UK person. This special category exempts you from all tax on foreign income in exchange for a small fee.
It is not for no reason that every corrupt Russian oligarch and oil baron and African dictator flocks to London.
UK does not tax worldwide income based on UK citizenship, but it does tax worldwide income for all UK domiciled residents, which includes all citizenship-seeking immigrants.
Your trivia on the non-domicile status is interesting, but both the grandparent and myself have already mentioned it, and I specifically said that it's "irrelevant to this analysis".
>>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
I do want to take a moment to point out the ridiculousness of paying half a million dollars or more being one of the easiest ways to get a green card in America.
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?".
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Don't renew at the border, don't change jobs at the border. Renew while in the country where your company lawyers send a small booklet of paperwork. Since there is no personal aspect to it, and everything is definitely in order, it gets approved and it only takes a few weeks. It's a far more objective process. It's what I've done twice so far.
You can theoretically only do the border visa part once.
Also remember to have the documentation when you cross the border, in case some border guard forgot to stamp your passport with your renewal number, which has happened to me.
Their computer systems are so bad (or they are so untrained) that they can't just look it up by passport number. It's supposedly a pretty complicated process on their end at the secondary screening office.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Practically speaking, it's essentially impossible to become a US citizen without permanent residency. If you have permanent residency, then it's just about a foregone conclusion that you can obtain citizenship after you spend enough time living here. In terms of who can become a US citizen without being born one, the question of who is allowed to get a green card is close to being the same question.
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").
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Any child born on US soil is a automatically a US citizen according to the Fourteenth Amendment
I wonder how this interacts with 8 USC 1401(b)? That says:
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the
United States at birth:
...
(b) a person born in the United States to a member of an
Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal tribe: Provided,
That the granting of citizenship under this subsection shall
not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of such
person to tribal or other property;
The 14th says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside". Shouldn't that make the "Provided, [...]" part of 1401(b) not be effective?
I suppose that 1401(b) would still be meaningful in the case where someone is born in the United States to an Indian, Eskimo, etc., but is not considered to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States for some reason. Then the 14th would not grant them citizenship, but 1401(b) would as long as that did not impair their tribal rights.
That raises the question of when someone can be born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
I think you might be reading the "provided" differently than the drafter intended. I think you're parsing "provided" as meaning "so long as" or "only when". I think the drafter intended for it to mean "additionally".
I realize that "provided that" in common speech more often means "so long as" or "only when", but "provided, that" or "provided: that" in statutory text could be read as simply introducing an additional and slightly indepedendent statutory provision. I think the comma is significant here for encouraging this reading.
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.
> 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.
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.
> you may not enjoy consular protection or any other diplomatic representation from the country whose citizenship you bought and paid for ... So be careful how you shop for citizenship
Of course, people should do their homework before purchasing expensive insurance policies that might or might not pay out when the need arises.
If you follow the social contract tradition of Western political philosophy to its logical conclusion, a state is just that: a glorified insurance policy that people feel compelled to buy in order to avoid the various dangers and inconveniences of statelessness. In exchange for regular premiums (taxes), you get assurance that a bunch of dudes with guns and bombs will protect your life, liberty, and property from anyone who dares to harm you. The fact that you also happen to be a shareholder (citizen) of this insurance company is a nice perk, because it means it's at least theoretically possible to make the company's interests align with yours. But that doesn't change the fundamental fact that the state is a glorified insurance company.
It's nice to see that a lot of the baseless romanticism and fanaticism that used to surround statehood during the last couple of centuries are finally fading away in favor of a more rational analysis of costs and benefits. Right now, it's only happening with millionaires who have much to gain and lose. But I wish ordinary people also had the chance to calmly evaluate whether the premiums they're paying are worth the benefits they're getting. The usual act of voting with your hands can become radically more effective with combined with the threat of voting with your feet.
> They are a holdback from the middle ages that allow the tyranny of the sovereign.
Not in a constitutional form of government, where the sovereign (in most cases the majority of the voters, as represented by a congress or parliament and referenda) is restrained to protect the rights of minority groups. Contrast this with anarchism, where the majority can tyrannize over minorities which have no recourse.
> is restrained to protect the rights of minority groups.
yes restrained somewhat. But there still are many minorities in the US whose rights are not protected.
> Contrast this with anarchism, where the majority can tyrannize over minorities which have no recourse.
I think you have it in reverse. In most constitutional democracies, the majorities can legally tyrannize over minorities with the minorities having no recourse at all. Unless your argument is that the US hasn't been a constitutional government for most of its history.
Anarchy is about eliminating the monopoly of violence that governments use to obtain obedience from minorities.
>> Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to be exploited--or even to remain idle and go hungry when it is not in the interest of the bosses to exploit them. We are therefore enemies of the State which is the coercive violent organization of society.
> In most constitutional democracies, the majorities can legally tyrannize over minorities with the minorities having no recourse at all.
That's simply not true. Minority rights are growing, not just in theory but in practice, in constitutional democracies all over the world.
> Anarchy is about eliminating the monopoly of violence that governments use to obtain obedience from minorities.
That's nice in theory, but you can't run a country on theory.
I don't accept that as the definition of anarchism, any more than I accept "The Best Person On Earth" as the definition of my next-door neighbor. In theory, it would be nice if my neighbor were the best person on Earth, but I doubt very much it's true, and I don't intend to act as if that person were utterly without flaw by removing the locks on my door.
that you say "minority rights are growing" means that you accept that minority rights are short of where they should be.
People don't choose anarchy because they want violence. They choose it because they don't like violence. Those that choose violence want to obtain the "archy"/power for themselves. Sure there are violent power hungry people that claim to be anarchists but that is not the core. They are like the Gay bashing gay people.
If you are not an anarchist, you don't get to decide who is anarchist and what an anarchist believes. That there are some violent anarchists does not mean that all anarchists are violent. It's much better to take people at their word and observe their actions, rather than to impose your own morality on them.
Kind of like telling gays that they are violent rapists and unfit to have families and marriages. As this democracy used to portray them and continues to do so.
> that you say "minority rights are growing" means that you accept that minority rights are short of where they should be.
Everything's short of where it should be. That's reality. Tearing down this system and replacing it with another won't change that.
> People don't choose anarchy because they want violence. They choose it because they don't like violence.
Supposedly. Ideally. That's another case of having a nice theory, which may or may not reflect reality.
> Those that choose violence want to obtain the "archy"/power for themselves.
OK, and how do anarchists stop them without choosing violence?
> Sure there are violent power hungry people that claim to be anarchists but that is not the core.
No True Scotsman. Not very persuasive.
> If you are not an anarchist, you don't get to decide who is anarchist and what an anarchist believes.
And anarchists don't get to decide who I consider an anarchist and what I believe. It goes both ways.
> It's much better to take people at their word and observe their actions
I observe their actions. The G8 Summit in Seattle was very enlightening.
> Kind of like telling gays that they are violent rapists and unfit to have families and marriages. As this democracy used to portray them and continues to do so.
Do you consider all of north-america uniting under one federal government as non-absurd?
how about north and south america?
how about all the rest of the world?
How about if you didn't have borders and didn't need to spend money on militaries to defend those borders, like California doesn't spend much money on the military to defend its border against oregon?
> Do you consider all of north-america uniting under one federal government as non-absurd?
It would be difficult to govern any entity that large effectively.
> how about north and south america?
Ditto, only worse.
> how about all the rest of the world?
Worse still.
> How about if you didn't have borders and didn't need to spend money on militaries to defend those borders, like California doesn't spend much money on the military to defend its border against oregon?
India allows black Americans under normal visa procedures (pay $150 for a 10 year tourist). They allow a large number of African students to study in their universities, with a normal student visa. What, specifically, are you referring to here?
Oh, thank god. As long as I only fear a 10 year sentence by the legal authorities and death by the local religious groups, it's all good. I'm just as likely to emigrate to India.
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.
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