
Passports for sale - vkb
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/passports-for-sale
======
grimlck
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

~~~
desdiv
In USA's case:

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

In St. Kitts's case:

A one time payment of USD $0.25 million

~~~
elastine
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.

~~~
desdiv
>The UK does not tax worldwide income.

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".

------
schoen
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?".

~~~
smm2000
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.

~~~
schoen
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.

------
atemerev
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?

~~~
guelo
To keep out third world people.

~~~
atemerev
OK then, but why, say, even Canadians need to go through hell if they want to
live and work in the US, and vice versa?

~~~
tokenadult
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?

~~~
ma2rten
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.

------
techsupporter
"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.

------
cleverjake
The united states offers investment visas that grant "permanent residence to
the individual" to anyone who invests over $1,000,000 in several industries. -
[http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-through-
job/green...](http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-through-job/green-
card-through-investment)

~~~
borski
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.

~~~
borski
Why the down votes?

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
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").

~~~
borski
My parents are (poor) immigrants. It took them 26 years to obtain green cards.
I'm very familiar with the struggle.

All I meant was that this is a far better situation than being able to
straight-up buy Citizenship, say, from Malta.

------
616c
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.

So, please, do not use Qatar as an example.

------
rokhayakebe
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.

------
etherael
> _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.

[http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/11/12/bitcoin-venture-
capital...](http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/11/12/bitcoin-venture-capitalist-
roger-vers-journey-to-anarchism/)

 _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._

------
cdjk
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.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
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.

------
bdesimone
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.

~~~
davidw
> our descendants

You can't pass on your US citizenship unless you have lived in the US for N
years, with N being 5, IIRC.

~~~
desdiv
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.

~~~
tzs
> 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.

~~~
schoen
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.

~~~
tzs
Ahh...that sounds right, and looking at how provided is used elsewhere in 1401
it fits.

------
nateabele
> _" Investor programs give the lie to the notion that citizenship is sacred,
> in a civic sense[.]"_

It's always been a lie. To most governments, their citizens are their cattle.

------
tokenadult
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.

[1]
[http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/ICJ/1955/1.html](http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/ICJ/1955/1.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottebohm_case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottebohm_case)

~~~
kashkhan
> it is a country’s sovereign right to decide who to let in and who to keep
> out

would you accept it if a country kept out black people or people who are gay?

~~~
cbd1984
> would you accept it if a country kept out black people or people who are
> gay?

The world accepts the existence of North Korea. What do you think?

~~~
kashkhan
We have many evil countries because we can't do anything about it, but we
don't say that it is the sovereign right of those countries to exist.

Sovereign rights are not sacred. They are a holdback from the middle ages that
allow the tyranny of the sovereign.

~~~
cbd1984
> Sovereign rights are not sacred.

Granted.

> 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.

~~~
kashkhan
> 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.

>> \- Errico Malatesta

~~~
cbd1984
> 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.

~~~
kashkhan
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.

~~~
cbd1984
> 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.

Wrong.

------
barking
Emigration tends to be from poor countries to rich countries.

In my experience the poorer people in rich countries tend to be less in favour
of immigration than rich people in those countries.

------
kyriakos
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.

~~~
barking
Under EU law your wife has residency rights so what's the problem?

------
kostyk
It's a free market economy.

