Since the 1980s, when the pint-sized Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis introduced citizenship by investment, the world’s wealthiest people have become equal opportunity patriots.
Each year, they spend millions upon millions of dollars collecting citizenships for clout in countries with so-called “golden visa” programs — like Portugal, Malta, New Zealand, Turkey and Dominica. Forget the bragging rights of having dual citizenship; it’s no longer unusual for a globetrotting 1 percenter to carry four to eight visas that lubricate the jet-setting process, experts say.
“It’s no different than choosing a car,” said Dominic Jones, head of Greener Pastures New Zealand, which markets $2.8 million Kiwi residency to wealthy investors as a safe and stable “Plan B” should life elsewhere go off the rails. “You could choose a Toyota for certain reasons or a Mercedes for other reasons. Each country has a different attraction.”
Maybe you don’t like the tax regime in your country of birth. No problem, if you’re rich enough to shop around countries for the best deal.
To capitalize on these prosperous multi-allegiance pledgers, in February President Trump floated the idea of scrapping America’s long-running, complex and controversial EB-5 residency program — which requires investment and job creation in an approved business — for a $5 million “gold card.”
“We’re going to be selling a gold card. You’ve got a green card, this is a gold card,” Trump said at a press conference for the no-strings-attached residency program. “It’s going to be a route to citizenship and wealthy people will be coming into our country and buying this card.”
But surprisingly — or, perhaps, not surprising at all — the greatest demand for residency abroad now comes from Americans themselves, according to Murat Coskun, managing partner of Get Golden Visa.
In 2024, his company published a survey of Americans who bought citizenships and residencies around the world. It found that 46% of them cited social and political unrest in the US as a motivating factor.
“Americans are increasingly prioritizing stability and securing their future over short-term gains,” the company’s white paper, titled “The Great American Exodus,” states.
In other words: War, turbulent politics and divisive cultural conflicts have billionaires, demi-billionaires and even the merely rich planning for the worst.
“Fortunately for me and people in this business, Americans are super motivated right now,” said Marco Permunian, founder of Italian Citizenship Assistance, which helps Americans buy Italian residency for $250,000 to $2 million. “Anytime something happens, we see a surge in the number of inquiries. For example, killings, shootings, the George Floyd situation, the ruling on abortion, elections — all of these things. I wouldn’t even say that it’s one side of the political spectrum … It’s just the general, overall situation of instability that pushes people.”
Those gray clouds, born out of populism and the trend toward “de-globalization,” are at least in part responsible for the “prepper” mindset that has become so ubiquitous amongst the ruling elite. They already build panic rooms in their East End mansions and buy doomsday bunkers in New Zealand, but a bug-out bag full of passports and a private jet full of fuel are what gets you there. (Although that’s largely colloquial: Most counties do not issue physical passports to golden-visa holders.)
“Wealthy individuals look at it as a hedge against geopolitical risk — a diversification play,” said Basil Mohr Elzeki, managing partner for North America at Henley & Partners, a British investment migration consultancy. “They want to have multiple places where they can live and operate their businesses.”
For decades, America was the bunker of choice for business titans from the developing or war-torn areas.
Since 1990, the US has offered the EB-5 as an investment residency program which, for roughly a $1 million investment (into, say, an approved real estate development) and a soupçon of federal vetting, gets you a green card.
It’s proven controversial, allegedly attracting fraudsters and money-launderers and other no-goodniks from abroad, but remains popular especially with Asians and Latin Americans looking to escape volatile or left-leaning regimes back home, according to Hector Diaz of Miami-based Your Immigration Attorney. But now, he says, many flush Latin Americans are taking “a wait and see position.”
“Right now, I think that people are kind of scared to come into the United States because of the vibes that we’re putting out there to the rest of the world as far as immigration,” he said.
To attract them back, Trump’s “gold card” would replace EB-5 with something far simpler — give your money to the Treasury, get a green card. It would also be one of the most expensive golden visa programs in the world.
For example, one of the most popular visa programs, Portugal, costs a mere $500,000 Euros (around $542K) and gives access to the 29 countries of the Schengen Zone — the ultimate hedge.
“If they replace EB-5, they’ll be focusing on the 0.5% of the wealthy, rather than the top 5%,” said Elzeki.
The gold card faces another hurdle, too: US residency and citizenship comes with onerous tax implications. Unlike most countries, American citizens living outside the US must pay taxes on income earned abroad. It’s a policy that has kept many nabobs from signing up for US citizenship, while driving others to renounce theirs (hello, Boris Johnson).
Said Coskun: “If gold card holders wouldn’t have to pay US taxes on their income earned outside of the US, that is a huge draw for high-net-worth individuals who have international businesses or wealth.”
Even billionaires dreaming of the end of the world as we know it are price-sensitive dealmakers, and they’re happy to let nations race to the bottom to collect their cash.
“The most popular programs” — which can cost as little as a couple hundred thousand — “are Portugal, Greece and Malta in Europe, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, and Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean,” Coskun said. “They are popular because of their value propositions.”
