But you know, there's a whole list of options, you know, arranging
from citizenship in the Caribbean to citizenship in the European Union, you know,
through the country of Malta, and which of course gives you settlement rights across
the European Union. So having access to those member states is attractive to some
people. Others just want to have citizenships somewhere. Just in case, you're
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welcome you are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host,
Carrie Letz. It's four ten twenty four, just mentioning that we're a
third of the way through April and we've already been through an eclipse, multiple
earthquakes, civil unrest from coast to shining from sea to Shining Sea, and
you're wondering maybe maybe it's time to get out a dodge. Christopher Willis is
here with us now. Christopher, you are, hey, first of all,
a big fan of SNN FSN and we appreciate that. And hey,
you're an expert on overseas obtaining citizenship and residency overseas or thrilled to have you
eight as an American And where would be the first place I should look to
think about becoming a citizen of hekkery. Great time to be here and thanks
for having me. Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. It's
kind of an open ended question because it does depend on on the you know,
each person's own motivations, the timelines, et cetera. And you don't
necessarily have to leave the US. It's more having an option to leave the
US just in case. You know how with the direction things are going,
certainly as we're built up into November, is a lot of nervousness from a
lot of people and wondering, you know, what one situation is going to
be, you know, in the next six months, nine months, five
years, et cetera. But you know, there's there's a whole list of
options, you know, arranging from citizenship in the Caribbean to citizenship in the
European Union, you know, through the country of Malta and which of course
gives you settlement rights across the European Union. So having access to those member
states is attractive to some people. Others just want to have citizenships somewhere just
in case. And there's also residency programs. You know, Portugal has been
extremely popular with Americans who are looking to have status somewhere where if they wanted
to go and hang out for a little while, they can, but it's
not necessarily getting them citizenship, although they would be on a pathway to citizenship
should they do enough time in the country. Okay, so yeah, so
explain residency versus citizenship because I know many of you out there don't really know
about that. Yeah, it's a great question. So, so residency would
be like having a green cart in the US, So you have permission to
stay essentially and definitely as long as you and you were it on a regular
basis, and if you spend enough time, you can graduate to full citizenship.
So the main difference by being a citizen is you have the right to
vote and you can hold a passport. So for many people is having the
passport or the citizenship that allows them to get a passport, which is sort
of the ultimate prize or the Holy Grail. Now, typically, you know,
for Americans, passport was very strong, passport recognized internationally, not a
big deal. But then you know, when the pandemic hit and at full
swing and there was a travel ban on Americans, it didn't matter who you
were. If you're only on an American passport, you weren't getting on a
plane to go to Europe or to go to Singapore, to go to the
UAE or anything like that. So, you know, Americans had their wings
clited, and we're well and truly grounded, and a lot of people we
speak to were saying, hey, we're exposed here, so we've got to
We've got to fill this gap and get another option just in case something like
this happens again. And so that realizes the exactly we the you know,
woke couple lot of people and said, hey, we need this because traditionally,
you know, these citizenship programs were for people who were coming from countries
that had very poor trava. So you're Nigeria and you're South African, your
Lebanese, you know, you're Pakistani. People like that. They always had
to get visas to go everywhere. So these people. It really was life
changing because they can now just walk on a plane and you know, go
to these places that they was it was challenging for them to go to in
the past. So I guess it goes back to my original point. It
does depend on the needs and the motivations of the people. For Americans now
it's you know, whether you spend it as a non traditional insurance policy or
a plan B. You know, it's it's just something that's now becoming a
necessity, you know, for the wealthy elite. Right, Okay, so
what's the cost involved, Well, it varies. So Caribbean citizenship at the
moment starting at one hundred thousand US if you go down to donation rooms or
there's real estate auctions as well, and if people wanted to say divest out
of the US, they can invest in one of these countries and you know
get that that too for you know, the two for one, get get
an asset, but also use that asset to qualify for economic citizenship. So
some people are looking at it from that angle because there's also a lifestyle element.
Many Americans are familiar with the Caribbean geographically very close, so you know,
they may want to go and have a beach holiday, you know,
when the weather gets cold, if you're up from uplands for example. So
that's the starting point is around one hundred thousand in the US. But I'll
put a little asterisk right there because there was a recent memorandum of agreement signed
by the five countries in the Caribbean that operate a Citizenship by Investment program where
they're looking to increase the minimum from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand US
and that's going to be They've ear marked to June thirtieth of this year as
the effective date for this to happen. So although it's one hundred thousand now,
that could double very quickly. So if people are interested, they should
start looking at this quite quickly because it will get more expensive. Okay,
so how more is all the paperwork to do? Well, the paperwork,
it's if you're a white citizenship is still there. They've got to know about
you, right, So it's the usual stuff of civil documents, you know,
birth certificates, margtificatest et cetera. Police checks, source of wealth,
source of funds is the key part. Just to make sure everything was legally
acquired and a variety of application forms so they can understand you as an applicant.
Because the due diligence is quite thorough, multi tiered, including obviously you
know, apart from public domain SUSH, it's a third party dependent due diligence.
Firms are going to verify the information you provide, and then you're also
got to have you know, you need to pull your a poll, sanctions
list, watch lists, all these international verifications will be done as well,
just to ensure that you're the right type of person. Who's who's coming to
the odds. Yeah, I don't want any sketchy people coming over, right,
No, exactly exactly, And just in the second part of your question,
you know, the cost of the Caribbean is there, but you know,
somewhere like Malta for a single applicants is around about a million euro.
But the difference being you're getting European citizenship in about eighteen months as and you
know you would cheat. I think we can comfortably say that's a higher value
citizenship than that of the Caribbean. And or you could go down the Portugal
route, which would be five hundred thousand euro but it's going to take about
eight years before you'd be able to become a citizen of Portugal. So,
you know, it's like most things of life, you get what you pay
for, right, So if you're looking for European citizenship quickly, you're looking
at the million euro price point. If you're happy to wait half of that,
and if you're happy with the Caribbean as your country and citizenship, then
it's it's one hundred thousand to start with. Okay. So if we look
in Asia, are there any opportunities in Asia? There's not a lot in
certainly in terms of citizenship. There are some residence programs. They tend to
be used more by Asian nationals who are looking to you, you know,
very much like in South America. You know a lot of South Americans want
to go to Uruguay or Paraguay, for example, so they want to sort
of stay within the region or their continent. But for the American we haven't
seen a big uptick of interest from Americans looking to go to Asia. Okay,
what about when we look at Eastern Europe maybe that's not part of the
EU. Are there opportunities there? Yeah, there's a good example would be
in the country of Ontenegro, which is you know, trying to ascend to
become a fully new member state, and they did have a citizenship program,
but they had some pressures from the European Union saying, look, if you
want to ascend, you're going to have to make sure that this program is
done unfinished. So there's we're seeing some interest from some other countries in Eastern
Europe, but nothing has come to light yet, but there could be some
on that of this year. Interesting any other countries EU countries. What about
Moldova or yeah, Moldov we did have a program, but that that sort
of die to death very quickly. Greece is very popular, but again that's
just a residency program that does not have a pathway to citizenship. But Spain
is becoming more and more popular. The Spanish program is actually has lower requirement.
It's you're a Latin American national or your parents Latin national, so anywhere
basically Mexico South. If you have that heritage, you can benefit from a
two year residency instead of ten years before being eligible for full Spanish citizenship.
But they're also going through a few revisions to their program at the moment,
so we may see some changes towards the end of this year as it relates
to qualifying for Spain. There's always a butt with these programs, Christopher,
you know there's always an if for whatever. Yeah, the joys of governments,
you know, change of governments. You know, in Portugal they had
a lot of pressure for affordable housing for the local Portuguese and that's what changed
their program and we're seeing a bit of that in Spain now as well.
So you know, immigration, no matter what country is a political football,
right and so you know that's never going to change. And again depending if
there's a change of government, that can impact their immigration programs as well.
Okay, what are some of the pitfalls when you go start doing this?
Well, I mean it's the benefits certainly have way in any risk here because
you know, in you either don't have to spend once you're a citizen,
that's saying the Caribbean, you don't have to spend any time. So the
passport's in your back pocket, you use it as when if at all.
Some people just like having the peace in line, knowing that it's there.
You know that the adage of it's better to have it and not need it
than need it and not have it. Right if you're looking to shame jurisdiction.
You know, the Americans, you still tax on your citizenship, right,
so if you were a Canadian or a brit there's maybe a tax play
here for you as well, but you know, not as much for the
American client. So it really depends on you know, lifestyle choices, knowing
you can get somewhere should you need it. Now, I'll give you an
example. So you know, during the pandemic again, there was someone who
had a you know, multimillion dollar property on the Caribbean island of Antigua and
Barbuda, and he thought, I'll just go hang out there, but he
never took out citizenship. He just used to keep coming and going as a
visitor. But because the Caribbean island is like many places, close their borders
to non citizens, he couldn't access his property. So it's just again many
many examples why there's more benefits to having this, and you're enhancing your freedom
so right, and this is really what it's all about. It's giving yourself
more options should you need them. And again this is where more and more
people are realizing it is becoming a necessity. I couldn't agree with him more
Hey, people want to find out more about you about how you can help
them. Is there a place you can go Christopher? Yeah, the best
thing is go to our website Latitude World dot com. My details are on
there under the team page information and all the different programs that are available.
And then we can take some time with you to understand you know why you're
looking to do, I understand your deeds, and then we can make some
recommendations of what would be the best fit. All right, excellent, Hey,
really appreciate you coming on. I've got a question for Christopher myself.
Email addresses always kl Atcarrie LUTs dot com. We've got a link to the
show. It's in the for this interview on Financial Survival Network dot com and
you just have to go there loock it and while you're there, sign up
for your free newsletter. Christopher, appreciate you coming on, but a pleasure.
We'll talk to you again soon. Thanks, Gerry, appreciate it.
Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying
times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival
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