All right. In joining us now is Christopher Willis, and Chris is a
managing partner of Latitude Caribbean and a managing director of Latitude Consultancy. He has
been involved in immigration industry since nineteen ninety five. He's got a long list
of credentials an organization that has been in and I'm not going to go through
all of that because i want to get to what is happening right now.
A lot of people are very concerned about what's happening in our government here in
America, in the European Union and other things. There's recently, the EU
has just started cracking down on people who are trying to leave. We've also
had if you've followed, I haven't really covered it, but you've got one
guy that was nicknamed Bitcoin Jesus who used bitcoin to relocate to Europe. He
was just arrested in Spain and is going to be extradited to the United States
because the IRS is after him, saying that he transferred he didn't report all
of his bitcoin holdings and things like that. So I want to talk about
this. Is it something that is only for the rich? What do people
have to do if they want to do this, why would they go to
particular places and how this stuff works. So joining us now is a Chris
Willis, thank you for joining us, Sir Hi David, thanks for having
me on. Yeah, And I mean it's a very interesting trend right now
in the US, you know, with Americans looking at getting a second residence
or citizenship because typically this wasn't on their radar, but you know, there's
been a confluence of events, you know, over the last few years that
sort of led people to start looking at this as a viable option. And
you know, it's important to note that it doesn't necessarily mean you have to
leave the US, but it's more having the option to leave should you be
said, be dissatisfied with the direction that the country's going. Obviously it's getting,
you know, closer and closer to the election, and people, no
matter where you sit, you know, have very strong opinions of how they'd
like to see the direction of the US and if it doesn't go your way,
then you know, half the country is going to be unhappy. So
they're looking at a different alternatives. And you've seen this because of maybe because
of taxes or stuff like that. But you know, after what happened in
twenty twenty. A lot of people are looking at this and saying, and
I have listeners and in Africa that said, hey, everybody here was fine
with this pandemic stuff. Nobody was freaking out about it. It was the
Europeans who were freaking out and the Americans who are freaking out about it.
After they left, everything was fine. Well, you raise a good point.
I mean, the pandemic was really the kicker to a lot of this
because you'll remember when there was the travel band, right, so it didn't
matter who you were. If you only had a US passport, you know,
your wings were clipped and you were grounded. And so a lot of
you know, particular of the family office, did we lose them? They
freeze up here. You've got to figure out, Okay, we're back,
we're back. I froze up for a moment. We lost that last bit.
What you said, you said if you only got one passport? What
was it you said after that? So the with the pandemic is people were
grounded. You know, they didn't matter if you were. If you only
had a US passport, then you weren't able to travel. And so when
we're speaking to a lot of family offices. You know, the feedback they're
getting from their family principles is, you know, you've got to fix this
gap. You know, we were exposed here and we don't want this to
be a problem again in the future if there was a similar situation. Yeah.
Yeah, And it is also important, I think in many cases to
have what i'd call residential ambiguity. They tend to work with you differently if
you're actually a citizen, then if you've got a different citizenship somewhere. I
remember when I was in high school, I went with some friends to Europe
and it was like a music organization. We were touring, but we had
a day off and we decided that we're going to ride bicycles around London.
And the guy who rid the bicycles to us said, well, you're not
allowed to ride these things to the park, but since you're Americans, you
can probably get away with it. So we did, and we had a
very angry bobby who flagged us down. He was ready to give us fines
or cuffs or whatever. We weren't doing anything crazy, I mean, we
weren't trying to run people over. We were very very calm. We're just
calmly and riding through and so then as soon as we started talking to him,
he goes, oh, you're Americans. Okay, well you're not allowed
to do that here. I know you didn't know that, but we'll just
just walk it out of here and you'll be fine. That's the type of
thing where where if you have these other residencies that can kind of give you
a little bit of an out sometimes. I think that's why what I mean
by residential ambiguity. Yeah. Absolutely, but I mean it raise a good
point because I'll go back to the pandemic in the Caribbellan in particular, most
of the islands closed their borders unless you were a citizen, right, So
you know, I give you an example of someone who had a multimillion dollar
pretty in john By Bay and Antigua and thought, you know, I'll go
hang out there during the pandemic, but never took out citizenship. So you
know, he was turned away. He wasn't able to travel and go and
spend time at his home. So it's it's that preparedness. And you know,
to be fair, people didn't expect something of the nature of the pandemic
to kick in, so they didn't really think about it, paricularly as an
American. You can hop on a plane and go anywhere, right, But
suddenly these these challenges put themselves on the front foot and people had to make
some adjustments. Well, now you know, I'm looking at this, this
golden passport. The cost escalates to two hundred thousand dollars on EU cracked down.
What is a golden passport? First of all, so it's you know,
I mean the term golden passport or you know, there's a lot of
media spin on how these are portrayed. But in the Caribbean you have what's
called citizenship by investment, so in exchange for making either a donation to the
government or purchasing a proved real estate, then you can receive citizenship in exchange.
So what's been happening is the European Union has been making some noises about
how they would like to see some enhancements, let's say, to the programs
in the Caribbean, and one of that was increasing the minimum investment level.
So right now it sits at one hundred thousand US. And there's been what's
called a memorandum of agreement which was signed by four of the five Caribbean governments
which agree to raise the floor from one hundred to two hundred thousand, and
that's scheduled to be effective June thirtieth of this year. The sort of one
outstanding countries indicated they will be signing as well, So the expectation is that
the minimum investment level will start at two hundred thousand instead of the current of
one hundred. Wow, they're gun double it. Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah, when I was looking at it this years ago, I remember looking
at some of these Belize had like twenty five thousand back in the nineties and
New Zealand, and you know, you had golden passport, you get to
a lot of different countries. Sometimes they would have other restrictions, but for
the most part, it was just if you could put that much money into
the country. Is this something that only the very rich can do? Though?
Is there anything that people can do that is, you know, to
get citizenship somewhere without a big stash of cash. Yeah. The only other
real way is through descent, and we have a division that specialized in this.
So if you know, if you had ancestral links, then that could
be a pathway. And you know, I remember one client we were speaking
to who was looking at the multi program in Europe, you know, which
cost about a million euro giver take and you know, having discussions with them,
their surname sounded Italian, so we dug a bit deeper found out they
were eligible through descent, so they got their Italian citizenship, which then gave
them full access to the European Union and save a million europe. Right,
So here was over the moon. So it's it's another way that you can
do it. But the programs we focus on, David are typically you know,
for your high net worth, ultra high net worth, for the mass
affluent and such. There are other programs, but typically they'll have a residency
component involved as well. So it's important to distinguish between residency and citizenship.
So the Caribbean programs I spoke about are a direct pathway to citizenship, so
that leads to a passport. Other programs you know, very much like in
the US you have a green card, right, so that type of would
apply in places like Canada, Portugal, Spain, Greece where you know,
you have a permanent residency. But to graduate or upgrade to citizenship you have
to meet certain criteria, which is typically time and daycount. Mm hmmm hm.
So if you can get somewhere and you can afford and sometimes the cost
of living is significantly less. We talk a little bit about that. But
if you can get somewhere and establish residency, you might be able to get
in without the Golden passport based on time that you're there, right, yeah,
correct, I mean, and there's you know, there's a multitude of
programs you know, I mean in Canada for example, where you know,
especially around a US election, many Americans look to sort of take a hop
up north and spend time in Canada. So we sort of Joe Canada's immigration
website crashes usually the day after the election because so many people are looking at
a lot of people. Which way the depending I know, who wins,
half the country is going to want to get out, Yeah, exactly.
So it's it's one of those things that there's many other routes, but people
could qualify, you know, whether it's through setting up a business, whether
it's through a spousal relationship, whether it's through being a skilled worker for example.
But for our focus, it is by investment and or by by descent
or the two areas that we focus on. David I see. Let me
ask you this I mean is that I know a lot of people are wanting
to get out of the United States because of what they've seen with the pandemic
and because of what is happening with politics. But of course the same type
of issues are there in Europe as well. And I guess you know this
Bloomberg piece that's talking about the cost of the Golden passport soaring and the Caribbean
how it's going to double in just a few months. Here they also mentioned
cryptocurrency, and that's one of the things when you have they just recently had
a debate between some goldbugs and some cryptocurrency people. One of the things they
were saying was, you know, that makes it easier for us to exit,
but there also seems to be an attempt to crack down on that as
well. Make an example out of the guy they called bitcoin Jesus. He
had some cryptocurrency that he did not declare. Evidently, that's what the I
R S is alleging, and so they contacted the Spanish government to arrest him
and to extradite him for the I R S over his cryptocurrency holdings. That's
that's kind of a more aggressive aspect of it as well. Talk a little
bit about that, and you know how the issues in terms of if you've
got money to buy a citizenship or if you want to establish residency, the
issues of trying to get your money out of the jurisdiction here. Yeah,
there's two elements to that. I mean, the first one is the due
diligence source of well, source of funds is a key component to all of
these, making sure they understand, you know, how the how you wealth
was generated and that everything was done in a legal manner. What we're seeing
for people who are in the in the crypto space is that you know,
your crypto wallet can be used in terms of source of funds. However,
they still need to demonstrate how they acquired the funds that led to that initial
crypto investment. So it's going to go in that far back just to make
sure it resolved that in the proper ways. But in particular in the Caribbean,
they won't accept crypto directly, so it would still have to be converted
to US banking. And you know, values in the Caribbean are still very
traditional, so they haven't quite advanced to that stage yet, but certainly there
are opportunities for people who have their wealth in the crypto space, and it's
you know, as you rightly say, many more people are looking at this
saying how can we use our crypto funds to manage this? But it's still
evolving. Some countries have certainly said that they want to explore how they can
attract the crypto market and make it as removing barriers if you like, in
terms of making investment. But the key thing here, as I mentioned,
is the due diligence. So anybody who's applying for any of these programs needs
to understand that not only the sources of well source of funds, but you
know, your personal background, what's in the public domain, everything that's advised
on the forms or declared on the forms will be verified as well as final
sort of international checks, you know with Interpol, Europe, poll watch list,
sanctions list on all that good stuff. So it isn't just a question
of here's my money, thank you very much. You don't have to go
through this process of evaluation, right right, And that's what you do.
You help people to go through what I imagine is a real maze of regulations,
a lot of hoops and a lot of vetting and all that kind of
stuff that has to go through, right, Yeah, absolutely. I mean
the first thing is we you know, we have our first consultation where we
have to understand the client, make sure we understand their motivations and their needs,
and then we can suggest which programs might be best suited. And then
we have to dig a little bit deeper into the background to make sure there
won't be anything that would stop them qualifying. Where are you seeing people coming
from mostly and going too in your practice, Well, I mean we're fortunate
that we you know, we've got twenty three offices around the world, so
we're dealing with people with very different profiles. As we spoke about at the
beginning, you know, Americans weren't typically a major source market because you had
these freedoms already. You could get on a plane and go. But if
you were from Nigeria, if you were from Pakistan, if you were from
South Africa, you know, you need a visa to pretty well get anywhere,
right, So the mobility aspect here was key. So suddenly you were
going, let's say from Pakistan, You're saying, if you're going from Pakistan,
and then and then froze up so you can pick up from there.
Yeah, sorry about that. So if I was going so in sitts Ina,
Pakistan for example, can go to thirty nine countries visa free, and
if they invest into the Caribbean, suddenly that jumps to one hundred and fifty
seven, which includes you know, the Shanngan area, the UAE, Singapore,
places like that. So it's it's the mobility. The enhancing of mobility
is key for people from these reasons regions, and so that's a key motivation
for them. But again, if you're you can go to those places anyway.
The key attraction for Americans is looking to enhance their freedoms by having another
option. So it's all about, you know, as many options as you
can, you know, in the sort of a hotile world we're living in,
and it's it's actually becoming a little bit more of a status symbol,
you know from many Americans. You know, it's not the car you drive
or the watch on your wrist, it's you know, what passports in your
pocket, you know, and knowing that you can access different parts of the
world with all this, So it's it's you know, it's it's becoming more
mainstream as you spoke about at the beginning, and I think that's that's a
key thing that as more and more people understand what the benefits are. And
for the wealthy, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars, they'll spend
that on a week's holiday, right. So it's whereas you know, citizenships
for life, and this is something they can pass on to their kids,
you know. So it's again with a lot of the family offices, we
speak to the succession planning and making sure that you know, they've they've got
this ankle covered. You know. It's it's a very straightforward and practical solution.
Let me because you're talking about having visa requirements and things like that and
being able to expand that from moving from one citizenship to another one. The
visa requirements are starting to increase, as I've noticed the United States and even
the EU are starting to add additional visa requirements. Talk a little bit about
that. I think the European Union is going to start having some visa requirements
for Americans, is that right, Yeah, So they're going to have,
like many countries have an electronic travel authority if you like, so that you
still have to you'll essentially be given it, but you have to apply right
to show that you've been pre qualified to come in. So you have that
in Canada, you have that for people going to the US. It's not
an uncommon thing, but it's something that the EU is looking to roll out.
I think they were looking to get it out this year. It's probably
rolling into twenty twenty five now with the European Union introducing this, and I
think the rolling it out is what's causing them a lot of problems right now.
That's why it's going to it's continually getting delayed. But what it obviously
gives them is access to data right, which is being able to track people,
manage people, and to ensure that any party, anybody or bad actors
or undesirables. You know, we're getting or getting picked up at these early
stages. Now, you mentioned passing this on to your children. Talk a
little bit about that in terms of you know, we are familiar with how
you know, we have situations with open borders and immigration and you know how
citizenship is essentially claimed or passed on here. What are the types of situations
that you see in other countries. I mean, is it can you is
there any other country that just lets you go across the border and just kind
of hang out or you know, like we do here, or is everybody
else kind of policing their borders I imagine, right, yeah, I mean
it's getting tighter and tighter. And one of the things why the very very
popular even though it's the most it's it's very expensive, you know, at
about a million euro which is non recoverable. It gives you access to the
European Union and the core all the settlement rights, so even though you're a
citizen of Malta, you could go, you know, live, work,
study, retire in any of the other member states. So that's attractive to
many people, especially an America and who says, well, I want to
like for like you know, so you know, the Caribbean is great,
but it's not necessarily the lifestyle that I want and or having access to resources.
So that's why Europe is always an attractive alternative. But not everybody you
know, has the has the funds to do it. So the Caribbeans a
nice sort of happy, happy medium. It's also geographically much closer familiar to
many people, and you know, which is why it's a very popular option.
Especially because the processing is also much quicker, takes abound six six to
eight months, give or take, whereas Malta is going to take about eighteen
months. And so when somebody gets a citizenship legitimately legally in one of these
countries, they can pass that on to their children generally, I imagine there's
some Yeah, So basically, if you are let's say it was you know,
your nuclear family, mom, dad to kids, you know, the
kids would get it and that's not an issue. In some cases, you
can include a sibling if they're unmarried and have no kids. You can include
your parents or your grandparents. You know. The family unit or the definition
of a family unit can be expanded to allow more people to be included on
one application. So there's each country has its own rules and how they define
independent, but they're trying to be as competitive as possible to include as many
people as they can. So let me ask you about reciprocity. You know
we've been talking about in the legal process. Here is if an American wants
to get on a raft Caribbean or whatever, is there are they is that
a thing that is happening in their country. I mean, we see that
happening in the EU. We see it happening in the US extensively. Is
that anything that's happening in the other direction or do they clamp down on that
extensively. Yeah, it's really not really, I mean, you're right,
you know, people coming into the US. The UK is having a big
issue with that right right now, with people coming over from Mainland and Europe
on boats and then arriving in the United Kingdom. Europe of course has had
that for many years, in particular with people starting their journeys in North Africa
and you know, typically ending up in the southern tip of Italy. So
there's a lot of challenges around that. Again, it's a reinforcement of the
amount of migration that goes on around the world, whether through displaced people or
the wealthy people are moving around, you know. But yeah, in terms
of you know, the profile a person we're speaking to, you know,
they're looking to give themselves as many options should they need them, because not
everybody. You know, someone may have a citizenship in the Caribbean and they
say, yeah, it's great, I'm going to pop down. They maybe
buy a house and hang out, you know a couple of months or a
couple of weeks of the year, especially when it gets cold, let's say
in up North, and then that's good enough for them. But for other
people it's they want to actually move, they want to settle there, they
want to live there, they want to raise their family there. So it
goes back to my earlier point that you know, we need to understand the
client and what the motivations are and then we can see what program is best
suited for them. When somebody wants to establish residency, I mean, how
complicated is that? Do they just need to Is there a legal process that
you help people with with that if they don't get citizenship? Are there still
issues preventing them from buying property or something like that in many of these places,
Yeah, you tend to have. You know, in some countries it's
called an alien landholding tax, or they'll have additional taxes for non citizens if
you're looking to go into buy varies from country to country. Many people understand
the concept of buying real estate, so those programs have been quite popular,
but it's you know, the residency, of course, is there. It's
not for life. You've got to knew it or you've got to upgrade listenship.
That's why a lot of people like listenship programs because it is for life.
Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you another thing too about since we're
we're talking thinking momentarily here about the you know, kind of reciprocity Americans going
to other countries like that, is there anything in these other countries for political
asylum for somebody that is coming from Europe or Canada or the United States or
something. Do any of them have political asylum programs or is that absolutely?
Yeah? I mean all countries, most countries. I mean that you look
at places like Canada, the United States, European countries, the UK will
all, you know, look to take a certain amount of asylum seekers or
refugees there per year. The biggest challenge, of course, is determining are
they genuine right, and so they'll have their own different protocols to establish that.
You know, there was the Safe Third Country agreement between Canada the US
for a while, which has been been adjusted. But you know, they're
making sure that they can understand quickly is this a genuine refugee because part of
the strategy in the past was that they would you know, get on a
plane, flush the passport down, the toilet turn up and say, you
know, the only mm hmmm hm the system for four or five years,
right until they can be adjudicated upon. So that's that's something a lot of
these countries are looking to tidy up. But with the amount of displaced people
and pressures in developing countries, it's becoming you know, quite you know,
quite the issue to be able to manage. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's pretty easy for people in a war torn country to try to make
a case for political even though they don't always get it. I would imagine
it'd be a lot harder for somebody that is, you know, coming from
the United States to try to make a case for a political asylum to go
to you know, one of these other and I would imagine that perhaps it
wouldn't even be considered in most countries that would be politically friendly to the United
States. Is that true? Yeah, I mean, it's the the to
define you know, being a person at risk and therefore eligible for asylum.
It's quite a high bar to hit. And you know the United States,
someone's saying, oh, I'm being politically persecuted for my beliefs. It's again
many people, you know, it's hard to say ready to be hard,
to have that prove them so a bit. Some people will try it on.
Of course they won't, right, And you know, we've seen examples
where people have tried, I think more of a pr stunt than anything else,
you know, to say, you know, I want to be considered.
But you know, it takes away from genuine refugees who have yeah in
other countries. Yeah, we just had a case here I was talking about
earlier where there was a family coming from Germany, homeschooling family, and they
were given asylum about ten years ago because the Germans is going to take away
there were Christians. They want homeschool the kids. Germans are going to take
away their kids. They got asylum here, but because the change in political
regime, the Biden administration decided that they wanted to deport them, so that
became something of an issue. So that's always the case. And I guess
if you get political asylum somewhere, it's always uh subject to the whims of
whatever the current political regime is. I guess it's kind of a shaking right
absolutely, it's you know, and I've I've worked with with people with his
profile in the past, and you know, when you're speaking to a genuine
asylum seeker or a genuine refugee, I mean you understand the difference. You
know, what they've gone through and how they should be afforded protection as opposed
to some people who are just sort of trying it on and hoping for the
best because you know, for people like you and I, it's unimaginable.
Yeah, yeah it is. And so you know, if somebody can afford
to do it, it is certainly going to be going up quite a bit
in just the next few months, are going to be doubling it. So
there's a there's always seems like there's a constantly closing window on all these different
things that are happening everywhere. Even if it is open for you at this
point in time, it may be closing pretty soon. Is there anything else
that you would tell us that we didn't cover about this that I think people
be interesting? I mean, you touch, you touched on a good point.
Because Kinada just you know, closed up their self employed category with a
day's notice. You know, Ireland and the UK have done similar things.
Portugal change their program, So there's there's you're right if you qualify today and
it's something you want to do, you know, don't delay too long because
the goalpost could change, and you know, we're expecting, you know,
potentially changes the government in the United Kingdom, in Canada, and the United
States this year, right, so that could change, you know, the
direction of those three countries and therefore the immigration policies as well. You know,
we're also seeing pressures from the European Union in the Caribbean and in other
jurisdictions, so again that could impact their policy making decisions as it relates to
immigration. And as we've seen in the US, immigration is always a key
political topic when it comes to elections. So my advice to people is,
if you qualified today, you know, get it done. It's in your
back pocket. You know you've got it. You know, better to have
it and not need it than need it and not have it, right,
So get that done tucked away, and then if things change, then at
least you've you've taken care of yourself and your family. Yeah. Yeah,
certainly, we don't see freedom increasing anywhere in the globe and everybody it seems
to be closing everything down. So if you've got any plans, now's the
time to make your preparations. Because it seems like globally everything is shutting down.
Even in the Caribbean, they're shutting stuff down. That's amazing. But
it's very interesting to talk to you about that. And thank you so much
for what you do. Christopher willis again Latitude Caribbean and Latitude Consultancy and tell
us your website here. I'm looking at the website and a Latitude world dot
com. Is that the best place to find you. We're looking for absolutely
latitudeworld dot com. You go into the team, you'll find my details.
Please reach out and be happy to have a conversation to see how we can
help you. That's great, Thank you very much, Chris. Great talking
to you. Very interesting. The David Night Show is a critical thinking super
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