Day 09: Step #4, Understanding Your Residency Options
Where Might Your Residency Lead To Citizenship?
Dear Student,
Yesterday, you began investigating the foreign residency options on offer in the country(ies) at the top of your favorites list, to understand which might work best for you.
As you continue this thinking, I want to draw your attention to a particular related opportunity. Some residency options can lead to citizenship. This may not be a priority agenda for you, but there are benefits and advantages.
Years ago, when I was just starting out covering this beat, I encountered a headline that has stuck with me:
“Why Would You Want A Second Passport?”
At the time, I wondered myself. Why would anyone need or want a second passport?
Today, I understand.
In 2008, after more than four years of back-and-forth with the Irish immigration authorities, I received my Irish passport in the mail. I was finally, officially, a dual citizen.
My son, Jackson, born while we were living in Waterford, is also Irish. At that time, Ireland offered jus soli, or rights-of-the-soil citizenship. That is, because I happened to be on Irish soil when Jack entered this world, Ireland rewarded him with citizenship.
Over-immigration caused the Irish to rethink their policies. Today, it is still possible to apply for an Irish passport based on your Irish maternal lineage, and it’s still possible to obtain Irish nationality by residing full-time in the country for five years or longer. However, the country no longer offers jus-soli citizenship.
We didn’t move to Ireland so that I could bear a child who would be eligible for Irish citizenship. We didn’t even move to Ireland so that we could earn Irish citizenship ourselves. And we didn’t relocate to Ireland with the definite intention of remaining in the country long enough to qualify for a second passport.
We moved to Ireland to make a home and to build a business. We resided in the country full-time for seven years, expanded not only our business but also our family, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
As an added bonus, we earned Irish citizenship. We didn’t set out after it, for, again, I didn’t appreciate the value of a second passport nearly 20 years ago when we made our initial move overseas.
Today, I do.
Planning a trip to Brazil? Americans need a visa…Irish nationals do not.
Want a bank account in Europe? An EU passport will open the doors of many bankers who otherwise might ignore an American’s knocks.
Thinking you’d like to live or work in the EU? Good luck, my fellow American. No problem, though, dear fellow citizen of the Emerald Isle (or any other EU country).
Interested in traveling in the Middle East? In some countries, your blue passport with the eagle on the cover might seem a liability… but a red one with a harp on front won’t raise anybody’s eyebrows.
A second passport expands horizons and fosters opportunity. It allows you to live, work, and invest more freely. Jackson, for example, thanks to his Irish passport, will be able, if he wants, to attend university in Europe, to get a job in any EU country when he’s older, and to move around the European Union at will.
A passport for an EU member country brings special advantages, but it can also be the hardest to come by these days (with important exceptions, related to genealogy).
You have a number of other good alternatives, as well, in the Americas and the Caribbean.
Information on residency, citizenship, and second passports is easy to come by in this Internet Age. The trouble is, googling “foreign residency” or “second passports,” you don’t know whether you can trust the information you find.
The best (that is, the most reliable and trustworthy) source of information on foreign residency, citizenship, and second passports is our own Passport To Freedom:
The Taxman’s Guide For The American Abroad (Save 50% off the current cost with your exclusive 52 Days Student Coupon Code: 52RES50.)
Created by Lief Simon, with help from his top contacts and resources from around the world, this program is the resource I recommend for all the information you need on the often misunderstood and misrepresented subject of foreign residency and second passports.
Lief understands both the benefits and the ins and outs of establishing residency and of gaining second citizenship (and a second passport) better than anyone else you’ll find.
Lief understands these things not theoretically or from research, but from more than 20 years of real-life, firsthand experience. Lief has lived in seven countries, established residency in two, and acquired second citizenship for himself and his family.
Ireland offers one the best and best-known of these ancestral programs. If you have a parent or grandparent born in Ireland, you are eligible for Irish nationality.
The Republic of Italy offers a similar program, as does Poland. If you are the descendant of Polish citizens who left Poland after the country became an independent state in 1918, you are eligible to claim citizenship as long as there has been no break in Polish citizenship between the emigrant ancestor and you.
Other countries that offer citizenship based on the citizenship of parents or grandparents include Canada, Chile, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Greece, Lithuania, and Luxembourg, among others.
This, then, is one way to acquire a second passport—through genealogy.
The second option is through naturalization (that is, residency leading to citizenship), which is how Lief and I acquired our Irish passports. The Next Step Guide that you received as part of your welcome materials for this program includes a table showing which top havens offer citizenship through residency. Take a look here, starting on page 75.
The third option for acquiring a second passport is by investment (this is referred to as an “economic citizenship”).
Economic citizenship (that is, second-passport-by-investment) programs are currently on offer from St. Kitts and Nevis, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Malta, Vanuatu, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
The program on offer from the two-island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis is straightforward and I’d say the most realistic. You invest in real estate on the island, and you get a second passport.
A St. Kitts passport gives you travel visa-free to more than 100 countries and territories. For reference, a U.S. passport is good for travel to more than 130 countries; a British passport gets you access to almost 140.
A St. Kitts passport doesn’t allow visa-free travel to the United States, for example, but it does mean visa-free entry to the U.K. and Canada.
In other words, in the scheme of things, a St. Kitts passport is a pretty good passport to have. You can read more about this here.
As I explained, we didn’t move to Ireland to acquire second passports, and I don’t recommend that you build your live- or retire-overseas plan around your options for acquiring second citizenship either. However, I do think it’s something worth factoring in to your thinking.
Bottom line, the primary benefit is diversification. With a second passport, you have more options. You have a second home to return to should things take a turn for the worse wherever elsewhere you’re residing. You have an escape hatch of sorts.