The Welcomed Immigrants

The global rich are now buying a new form of economic security: passport.  

Wealthy investors from around the world are increasingly shopping for visas or citizenship in other countries, hoping for a personal hedge against their own volatile governments or economies. A vast majority are new millionaires and billionaires from emerging-market countries, especially China, Russia and nations in the Middle East. Often, they’re shopping for passports or entree into Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia.

Experts estimate that these “economic citizens” are spending $2 billion a year on second or third passports and visas. Demand is so strong that governments around the world have started an arms race of sorts for V.I.P. visas, offering ever-faster residencies and passports for ever-higher prices. Over the past year, Australia, Canada, Britain and several other European countries have raised the prices or investment requirements of their so-called golden visas and created a new fast lane for citizenship.

In January, Malta started selling citizenship for a fee of 650,000 euros (more than $800,000) with no residency requirements. In the first six months, more than 200 investors signed up, earning the government $200 million. Because Malta is a European Union member, citizenship also gives holders the ability to travel and settle within the European Union’s 28 countries.

 Australia recently announced plans for a Premium Investor visa, nicknamed the platinum visa. That nation already has a golden visa, called the Significant Investor visa, which offers permanent residency after four years in exchange for an investment of 5 million Australian dollars ($4.15 million). More than 436 visas have been granted under the program, bringing in more than 2 billion Australian dollars in investments. The new program will give faster residency (in just 12 months) in return for 15 million Australian dollars in investments.

In Britain, an investor visa program gives residency for 2 million pounds ($3.14 million); applicants are eligible for “indefinite leave to remain” after five years. But the government recently added fast-track programs for people who invest £5 million (requiring a wait of only three years) and £10 million (a wait of two years). Half of the visas go to Russians and Chinese.

In the United States, the investor-visa program called EB-5 has been so popular that it has hit its cap of 10,000 visas this year, for the first time since 1990. The program awards visas to foreigners willing to invest at least $500,000 in approved projects. An investor who can show that a project creates or preserves at least 10 jobs can get a green card and eventual citizenship. More than 80 percent of the applications are from Chinese investors.

“Wealthy people in fragile countries want to have a second option in a more stable country,” said Christian H. Kalin, group chairman of Henley & Partners, a citizenship advisory firm based in London. “The wealthy already diversify their assets for protection. Now they want to make sure their residency is diversified as well. Why not have a portfolio of passports, too?” 

Some say they have the potential to offer safe harbor to people who made their fortune through corruption or illegal activities. But one thing is for sure, those who really do require a safe haven and refuge, those who are fleeing war, hunger and economic hardships, do not receive the same welcome. And those xenophobics who decry immigration because it is “changing the face of the nation” ignore that large parts of the country has become unaffordable for locals to live in because of those oligarchs buying up the property.