thank you very much well some people are emboldened by Donald Trump's re-election others want to flee the country and others think that no matter who won or who wins in the future a country that is diametrically opposed and has $36 trillion in debt is still doomed so what are the best passports to escape the United [Music] States but first a brief warning we've been getting a lot of calls here at Nomad capitalist from people saying I just need to get a passport people are in a rush and before you do that you want to plan your Escape properly you might not even need a passport it might be a residence permit that you need to live where you want you might need a couple of passports you might need one now and one later go to nomad. com apply work with our team professionally don't rush do it the right way a lot of people who dislike Trump want to go to Europe for more liberal social policies but many conservatives tell us they want European passports also for the flexibility and to give their children and future Generations more opportunities if you're lucky you can get what's called citizenship by descent in Europe by claiming a passport through your ancestry one of our colleagues recently did this in Spain as the descendant of spartic Jews but you can have family from Ireland Italy Slovakia Lithuania or pretty much most countries in Europe Latin American and Caribbean countries offer citizenship by descent also now the problem with citizenship by descent is the process can literally take years one friend of mine waited 4 years to get his Italian citizenship for himself and his children his dad waited almost 6 years for reasons that my Nomad accomplished R&D colleague explains here citizenship by descent is essentially a citizenship you're entitled to by virtue of the blood by virtue of your blood more specifically by virtue of your ancestry so who is eligible for citizenship by descent it's simple if your ancestor or ancestors came from another country it is possible that you might be able to reclaim the citizenship of your grandparents or great-grandparents and in some rare occasions even the citizenship of your ancestors that came long before your great-grandparents now the key thing to understand here is that this is different from citizenship by investment where you have to commit a large amount of money in the form of a donation or a real estate purchase and it is also different from citizenship by naturalization where you usually have to relocate to a specific country and you have to spend time in that specific country you often have to take a test uh which includes a Civics uh element to it and also a language element to it in the case of citizenship by descent it's as simple quote unquote as to locate the country where your grandparents your great-grandparents if you're lucky where your parents uh came from and then essentially just notifying that uh you are their descendant and that you wish to claim that citizen should back now it sounds pretty easy but the road to actually claim that citizenship might be a tad complicated especi especially if the ancestor that came from another country is uh far removed from you so if it's your parents or your grandparents it is a more manageable scenario than if it is your great-grandparents or potentially beyond that for someone who wants to live in Europe right now either because they don't want to live in the same country as Donald Trump or just because they want to escape what are still high taxes in the United States yes plenty of European countries do have pretty substantial tax incentives for new arrivals but no matter which Camp you're in a yearlong passport wait means you won't be able to move to Europe right away there are a few exceptions that like in Italy where you can file the case in court and then go and spend your time there but most countries don't work that way the easiest second passport to get in Europe if you don't have ancestry or if you don't want to wait is that of Malta a country that a lot of people haven't heard about but offers a lot of power as an under the radar tax friendly country which offers citizenship for your entire family in exchange for a donation Malta is pretty unique in that it's part of the European Union and you may not think that you want to live there but it gives you the same benefits as an Irish or a French or a Spanish passport that you might think is more useful and with the Euro barely worth more than the dollar today the whole process will cost you about $950,000 with all the fees for yourself and a little bit extra for each member of the family you can literally add your spouse you can add your children and with some of these programs you can add even people like your parents so everyone has access to live work study and travel in Europe or the option to do that anytime in the future if you're not ready to actually move now the cool thing about a citizenship by investment program or what Malta calls its me n is you don't have to commit to going and living in the country you don't have to pay taxes there you can choose to keep the passport in your back pocket or once you get it in your hand which in the case of Malta starts with a residence permit and then a passport within about 18 months of application you can actually go and live in Europe how will Malta tax you Malta is not a 0% tax country let's get that out of the way of course you will be taxed at a flat tax rate so what you are required to do is you are required to remit €100,000 to Malta and you are paying 15% tax on that which brings us to an effective rate of1 15,000 anything above the €100,000 that you remit you will still be paying 15% tax it's just that they will require that €100,000 minimum uh remittance in order to treat you as a tax resident being a malti citizen allows you not only to live in tax friendly Malta but in any European country where you'd like now or in the future I think a lot of people don't realize the benefits that just as someone who lives in California can move to Texas someone who is a citizen of Malta can choose to go and live in tax-friendly Switzerland and yes Switzerland isn't part of the European Union but EU citizens do have special rights of settlement there and with Mala your children can get the passport also citizenship can be passed down to Future Generations meaning they can live in Europe also no matter what happens in the world so for someone who has a us or a Canadian passport and is frustrated that hey I can move States but I can't get away from my federal government being a citizen in Europe for all the problems they have means you've got close to 30 different options you're basically 30 exing your optionality in terms of picking places you can go to be safe from whatever threats happen there are other ways to get European citizenship including having it granted by the president for example one African man was granted French citizenship after saving a child in Paris as a thanks for his extraordinary Merit and contributions to the country entrepreneurs can get citizenship like this in other countries for hiring a lot of people or making large Investments but in many EU countries that allow that flexibility to move across Europe those Investments could often go into the tens of millions of Euros the best known program of this nature is in Austria but there are others and they can be expensive Adrian Lima was granted Serbian citizenship while french actor Gerard depardo was granted Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin and we understand that Steven Seagal was granted citizenship in both of course neither Serbia or Russia allows freedom of movement across Europe but both offer a backup plan and both offer another place to live the point being that there are other countries you can do that but that's an expensive way to go and almost always more expensive than Malta one way if you don't have a million or millions of dollars to get access to Europe without actually getting citizenship is through a golden Visa now while Spain is shuttering its program more well-known countries in Europe like Portugal and Greece have golden Visa programs all the way down to lesser known countries like ltia and Luxembourg that Grant residents permits in exchange for investments in Portugal or Greece for example you can invest around half a million euros into something that unlike malta's citizenship program you can actually potentially get back at some point in the future that investment qualifies you for a residence permit but with golden visas unlike most residence permits you don't necessarily have to live in the country again you can keep that residence permit in your back pocket and in the case of port in particular you can keep the clock working towards the time which you can apply for citizenship in about 6 years without actually having to be there now that's not true for all the countries but it gives you the optionality of moving to Europe when you don't like conditions in your country without having to be there if you want to qualify for citizenship on a slower timeline in exchange for not donating a million dollars or more in Portugal spending as little as an average of one week per year can qualify you for citizenship but unlike in Malta you will need to learn some basic language skills Portugal is the most likely to naturalize citizens based on historical president through its golden Visa program while Greece prefers to focus on ethnic Greeks for naturalization meaning it's harder to turn a Greek golden Visa into a passport and Latvia has an incredibly high amount of physical presence needed to qualify meaning you'd have to live there almost all the time to get citizenship as well as learn the language making programs like Greece and lvia less interesting for those not willing to move or not looking to learn a language particularly if your goal is citizenship and not just a lifetime residence permit if your goal was simply to live in Europe though and you can wait to get a second passport a golden Visa offers an interesting hybrid the flexibility to not be there if you don't want to be while offering that pathway to citizenship it's easier than everyone else who's naturalizing time or money are the choices you have when it comes to getting citizenship and if you invest money in these countries they make the pathway easier than someone who example can to just get a job countries like Greece and Italy also offer tax incentives to new arrivals meaning that stereotypically high European taxes don't have to apply to you for periods of up to 15 years plenty of time for you to get your citizenship without having to pay high taxes and because European countries often have tax treaties with other high tax countries it may make tax planning in the country that you're leaving more easy than moving to tax-free countries with a golden Visa unlike with a citizenship my investment program your investment is lower and can generally be recovered the downside is the time to get a passport but you can live in Europe now if you want and people who want to take the extreme step of giving up US citizenship there are other programs that you can use to get citizenship in a year or less in countries that you might not want to live in this is where my warning comes into play sometimes the best path to escape your country is a residence permit for where you want to live ideally one that turns into citizenship and a passport somewhere else that allows you to exit the country you don't want to be associated with anymore that's a more extreme step it's one we talk to our clients about again you can get a nomad. com apply one European country in the news these days that's hard to escape to is the UK for all the talk of Ellen and others moving to the cotswald what Steve Banning calls an invasion London actually has few paths for path investors or business owners to relocate and you can't just live there on a tourist visa that's one thing Americans should understand there are limits to how long you can spend in other countries in much of Europe it's 90 out of 180 days and if you show up in the UK even though you can get a 180-day tourist visa on arrival they're going to want to know what you're doing there and if the answer is I'm coming here to live they're going to send you back so having a legal path to live wherever you want to be is important as to why the UK makes it difficult for nomad capitalists and people with wealth to move to the UK here's what he told me back at Nomad capist live in 2022 if I wanted to come and start a business the UK did cancel uh earlier this year the UK investor visa on the idea that Russians are 18% of it uh and that we don't want Russians coming the in the days before the the Russia Ukraine war what are your thoughts on uh investment and Entrepreneurship immigration and what the UK can do to bring people if they should well I mean generally what the UK has done over the last few years is to encourage Mass immigration of unskilled labor and then they wonder that our productivity rate's going down it's unbelievable and we've discouraged by getting rid of non-dom status by even getting rid of of vat free shopping for those going back to Qatar or wherever it may be we've done everything to discourage High net worth individuals coming into London who might invest some money I mean this under a conservative government I they're not being conservative I people people think oh if I just vote for Trump I just vote if Li trust gets in everything's solved just relax it's not it doesn't work like that actually but I tell you what I mean if we take economics or social issues too we know the left's agenda we know it's command economy we know it's high tax we know it's high regulation we know it's all redistribution we know it's welfare welfare welfare welfare we know all that stuff so look again with brexit we've now got the chance to sort this out you can forget the Europe European Union forget it you know it is not going to be competitive it is not going to work you've got a north south divide on a currency that should never have been introduced yeah the Euro should never have ever gone to the Mediterranean you've got an East West cultural split with Poland Hungary Slovakia Czech Republic having very different social values to Western Europe but not everybody wants to escape to Europe some prefer the warmer Waters of the Caribbean British overseas territories like the Cayman Islands and Turks and caos allow you to buy real estate generally a million or multi-millions of dollars or to Simply form a company and get a residence permit the Bahamas does the same but you'll actually need to live there to get citizenship and a quick side out living in a British overseas territory and going on to get a botc passport like a Cayman Islands passport does give you a pathway to then go and apply for British citizenship once you have that so if you want to live with Ellen in the wals living in the tax-friendly British Caribbean could be a way to do that but you will have to commit spending the vast majority of your year on that island in order to qualify for the citizenship so again that's the difference between a residence permit and a citizenship if you're goal is to move to the Cayman Islands or to the Bahamas you're not going to get a citizenship out of the gate you'll get a residence permit and if you spend enough time there again in the botc is about 9 months per year you can get that passport eventually but people should understand that getting the second passport well I think it's important for everybody may not be what you want in terms of getting access the place that you want to live every Nomad CIT should have a second passport but it doesn't have to be the place that you live for those that do want a passport faster there are five countries in the Caribbean two of which are also tax-free that offer passport in about a year in exchange for a donation unlike buying real estate or forming a company this is money that you can't get back now these islands charge much less for the privilege than Malta because they aren't part of the EU and they don't offer you the chance to live in Switzerland or Spain or France but if you become a citizen of an Eastern Caribbean country you do have access to other Eastern Caribbean countries you can live in as well as a larger Union called the Caribbean community that includes countries like Biz donations for these so-called citizenship buy investment programs in the Caribbean start at about $200,000 that double what I paid to become State Lucian years ago because prices have increased as have the we times what took me five or 6 months to get St Lucian citizenship might take you closer to a year that's thanks to the countries that many people are trying to escape putting pressure on smaller countries that people use to escape to make their lives more difficult there's now an interview requirement to get citizenship there's longer due diligence times to make sure the programs are running properly and again the price doubled so that's the price of not being prepared to escape your country earlier but if you want the protection of a neutral non-interventionist country that you can fall back on in times of chaos scan countries are pretty solid options and they're some of the most affordable ways to get citizenship without having to leave home in four to five cases you literally don't even have to go there but we're also seeing more of our open-minded clients look toward more exotic options realizing the decline of the West means they should seek options outside of the West I've said for years and I said it when Donald Trump got reelected again the headlines are always I want to move to Canada I want to move to the UK I want to move to Australia that's like jumping from the frying pan to another frying pan you want to leave the Paradigm not just the country if you have a western passport something that's different isn't the worst idea to have as a second passport so while a European Union passport gives you access and could be a good second passport what we're seeing more clients say is give me a third passport that offers geopolitical diversification like that in Turkey while some Americans may turn nose up at turkey as a Muslim country or an emerging country you can get citizenship in substantially under one year by simply buying an apartment the Turkish citizenship by investment program is a wonderful option although it has evolved throughout the years it is still very good for people who want to get citizenship through investing in a tangible asset um its strategic location in Asia and Europe makes it a wonderful option not only for people who want to just again again invest but also for people who want to do business there and just have easier access to Turkey due to the uh passport so one of the biggest advantages of the Turkish citizenship by investment is the very very convenient investment so you are investing $400,000 Us in real estate it can be multiple properties it doesn't have to be only one property and the important thing is for these properties to be at least $400,000 us in value so you also need to annotate on the title Deeds that you are maintaining these properties for at least 3 years and then you will be able to sell it so even though the citizenship can be obtained quite quickly usually in about 12 months uh the process uh of maintaining the property needs to continue for uh 3 years there is a very big Advantage if you decide to keep the property for a longer period of time so if you maintain it for 5 years then actually you will not be taxed on the capital G and we've seen an increase in clients who want a strong serious country in some contrast to the small Caribbean islands that offer citizenship by investment but people are saying I want a country that is different and I want a passport that's different than the one I came from and it doesn't hurt in the case of turkey you can actually turn a profit on the passport because after three years you can resell your property to someone as long as they're not using it to get citizenship themselves I bought an apartment in Turkey four years ago and it's done pretty well as I talked about last year so in my case the renovations again some of that may have been wiped away but generally speaking you can keep Pace with the dollar I outpace the dollar because 7.
5 million Turkish L now that's $43,000 and so$ 43,000 on 319 invested I bought in in December of 2020 Renovations were started uh in August 2021 and we finished paying for them uh into 2022 so the money wasn't all put up front but if you just figure as if the money was put up front we figured out it's about a 14% return plus again saved about $6,000 in the last 10 months since the renovations were finished enough to where somebody could go and spend time there so um had Mr H and and um her family there earlier for some stuff they needed had various people from the team and I've used it myself and so I I figured the 6,000 based on you know if a team member if a lower level colag who stay at the place they wouldn't be staying at the St reges down the street they wouldn't be staying at the park High on the street whereas I might have and so I kind of calculated in the different levels so 14% return a year on the extreme end of things Egypt is much less developed than turkey Cairo is an interesting City but not really comparable to Istanbul they also have a similar passport program that requires 100,000 Less in investment into real estate and offers a much lesser passport I would imagine most people will be far better off staying with turkey to start of course the most standard way to become a citizen is the one you've heard for years you see people in your country going to naturalization ceremonies and waving the flag they put the time in on the ground they learn the language they went through a process to become a citizen by naturalization and the reality is there are countries where it's a lot faster and easier than it is where you live for example Argentina and Peru require just two years of legal residence in their country before you can apply for citizenship now you need to learn Spanish but just getting the residence permanent self is substantially easier than getting a green card or moving to Canada generally in Latin American countries if you can show anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 a month in income you don't even need to send that money to the other country you just need to show them you have it in exchange for getting residents once you have that residence permit you can move to the other country spend their prescribed amount of time generally six months is a minimum amount other countries ask for eight or nine months a year and after the number of years prescribed to apply for naturalization you simply apply for your passport there's no donations to make in many cases as in Latin America and even some Western European countries you don't even have to put any money into the country other than show them you have it now of course living in a country for 68 nine or more months per year May subject you to taxes which is where again this is about more than just getting a passport it's about having a holistic plan that addresses helping you get out of the country you no longer feel part of that's where Nomad capitalist comes in European Union countries all require require at least 5 years and sometimes more of hard time on the ground for citizenship and if you're not qualifying through a golden Visa you'll need to spend the majority of your time in that country and again some are tax friendly but not all are you will need to do European taxes if getting citizenship there by naturalization but even far-flung countries like maius and Africa can theoretically naturalize you after 2 years just for buying a villa starting at about $375,000 that could be a perfect place to escape the next World War somewhere far away from Where the Fur is flying so you get to choose when it comes to getting a passport to escape number one do I need a passport to move to the place that I want to move to do I need a residence permit to start do I need a residence permit and a passport somewhere else or just maybe I can get a passport in a different country such as I can get polish citizenship through my ancestry and once I have that I can go and live in the country in Europe that I really want to live in but the bigger question is do I want to pay with my time or do I want to pay with my money do I want to change my life do I want to commit time to a country do I want to invest in becoming part of that country or would I rather just pay for a lot of people that we work with paying gives them back lifestyle freedom and a lot of opportunity cost save there are also plenty of less desirable passport options that may suit specific cases but are dis appealing overall van aat too has a citizenship buy investment program this South Pacific country has an increasingly bad reputation having lost Visa pre travel to countries like the UK and Ireland and all of Europe basically it is a tax-free country and if all you want to do is use a vanatu passport to go and live in vanatu you don't even have to do that vanatu has a residence program but the passport does offer more more permanence Naro in the same neighborhood in the South Pacific has a brand new passport program the most affordable in the citizenship by investment space at just $105,000 but that's not a place you can really go and live it offers a passport to travel on and to get residence permits in if you want to live somewhere else but it's not really the Ultimate Backup Plan and for all the good that president buelli has done for his country in El Salvador their New Freedom passport at a price point of $1 million is not only not fully ready to go but exceedingly expensive for what you get and don't even get me started on the fraud of that Mexican passports that influencers sell this is not a new scam people have been doing it for years but it's not not a legal way to get citizenship if you're giving some guy who knows a guy $50,000 under the table that's just not a good way to get a passport we have recommended getting residence permits in Mexico for years and that is a path that you can use to work towards Mexican citizenship you don't even have to spend the entire naturalization period living there but paying a guy isn't the way to go so here's the bottom line you need a second passport because the country that you might want to escape or are now ready to escape maybe violating what you believe are human rights or impinging on your freedoms chances are they're raising your taxes and even if you think that Trump will lower taxes they're not going to look be lower to zero or anywhere near the levels that dozens of other countries around the world offer you having a second passport gives you a backup plan and if you decide to ever divorce your country while having a second passport allows you to do that instantaneously rather than having to wait the timelines that we're talking about so it's always better to be years too early than day is too late and we've seen clients who tried to get second passports when they wanted to escape but they didn't have enough time but again your second passport doesn't have to be where you actually want to live take Malta for example very few people who pay that $950,000 or so actually go to live in Malta some keep the passport in their back pocket some figure their kids will go to university in Europe as Europeans others use it as a tier travel Document to go pretty much anywhere they want in the world without having to be American and others use it to move to other countries in Europe again you want passports that give you optionality that give you ideally more than one place you can go or that offer something that's different than what you have now onecoin of ours became a maltes citizen and then moved to Switzerland where he paid half the tax under their lump sum program because Europeans get a better deal than Americans and had he remained American or had he used his American passport to move to Switzerland he would have paid double the amount so he paid back his donation to Malta in about four years of tax savings in Switzerland getting a free second passport and everything after that was gravy if escaping your country is new to you here's the advice that I've been giving for years go where you're treated best and go where you're treated best for each part of your life you don't have to live Bank invest and have every constituent part of your life in one country you want to have some compartmentalization the best passport should be the best passport again it may not be the place that you want to live it may not even be your identity use a passport as a strategic tool to escape your country and if you want to get an extra passport in the future and you want to feel more aligned with that a lot of clients they'll get a Caribbean citizenship or they'll get some other second passport through donation and then years later they'll finally collect that citizenship by descent passport they can feel more emotional about but they did what was strategically necessary for them to escape their country again whether that's high taxes whether that's political disagreements whether that's personal safety they did what they had to do don't think that getting a passport somewhere means you need to live there or move all of your money there or even have any connection there a password is a travel Document it offers access to a country or in the case of Europe or the Caribbean a number of countries but it gives you an identity that you can rely on through Wars trade Wars geopolitical events all sorts of chaos all sorts of impositions on your personal freedom your passport and your residence permit can be different it's often worthwhile to consider a more affordable way to get a cheaper second passport and pair it with a residence where you want to actually live we'll have clients for example who will spend $950,000 to get multi citizenship live in Europe travel the world as a European but we have plenty of others who get a far less expensive passport and then pair that with a European golden visa to be able to access Europe year round or an even cheaper residence permit that requires them to live in Europe if that's what they want to do there's so many options if you go to Nomad cop. com apply we work with folks who have liquid net worth of million or more or if you have a high sixf figure income that will qualify as well it's a bespoke service about making sure the puzzle pieces fit right as someone who escaped the United States himself I know what you're going through and I've built the service that I wish existed when I started all this almost 15 years ago go to Nomad count.
