The IMF had a report out yesterday on the sale of citizenship. This is the current state of play on this issue:
As the IMF say:
The wealthy, especially in emerging market economies, see buying citizenship or residency rights as a means of greater global mobility (visa free travel in many countries), tax planning, and family security.
As is noted, inward investment is the usual price to pay. But, and it is a very big but, housing can meet the criteria in some cases making the whole thing pretty nominal.
What is sad to see is that so many large states, the UK included, are willing to sell sovereignty in this way. This was so recently an issue in the referendum vote. What the IMF makes clear is that the concern about migration in the UK and many other states is deeply prejudiced.
Not all are equal when it comes to choosing a home, let alone a place that might provide the protection a person needs, and that to me seems like a straightforward affront to human rights.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
In the case of latvia, you need to pass a latvian language test – not one of the easiest languages to master.
Millions have left Latvia, so not many want to get in. Usual sequence of events:
1) ECB steps in
2) Place is plundered to hell
3) Internal devaluation as part of ‘conditionallity’.
4) Mass emigration
5) Government claims deficit is reduced due to no-one being there anymore.
Another superb triumph for the EU -but of course, they’ll protect workers’ rights as well!
Replay the Laughing Policeman etc….
Mass emigration = unemployment problem solved.
Let’s look a bit closer. The ECB is not controlled by the European council or Parliament. The ECB is dominated by neo-liberal economists from the big EU states Germany and the UK. The economic policies have their origin in the Chicago schools although promoted by people in Europe, not least among those who want us out of the EU.
What needs to change is the policies and that will require European states to co-operate to control the feral financial interests and mutlinationals.
The UK is not on ECB as far as I know
It is a Euro function
And for completeness, I can have Estonian e-citizenship (no right of residence, but an Estonian national identity card which will allow me to incorporate companies, bank there, etc) for the price of two visits to the embassy in London.
Scary
How much does this Estonian passport cost ? No right of residence makes no sense. For example you can buy a Maltese passport but you have to be resident there ( although that is form rather than substance ). And of course in the Carib you can buy a passport quite easily. Surely the question is or should be why would you want a second passport – I can’t think of a reason.
I’ve read science-fiction stories all my life and a re-current theme is a future dominated by a cohort of super-rich with the rest of us mere mortals struggling to survive.
Ditto, PSR, and so it has come to pass. I thought the portrayal of that divide in Elysium (the film) good, though might take issue with others aspects of the film.
Done earlier by Fritz Lang in ‘Metropolis.’
Explored also in District 9 (same director as Elysium) -world dominated by ‘Mult-National-United.’
Many, who should have known much better, once described Marx’s analysis in “Capital” as being part of that genre. Interesting how things turn out…
Easy money to be made from any EU state looking at the 14-15 million remain voters and thinking they could sell them an EU passport. If I was finance minister of somewhere like Cyprus I would be thinking that it a great chance to basically entirely wipe out public sector debt. Charge say 1000 euros to any British person wanting an EU passport and you could make a serious dent in your stock of debt quite quickly.
See the Graun yesterday,’Race and real estate…’ about Vancouver where the $800,000 citizenship ‘initiative’ you highlight above has contributed to a 30% (!) increase in property prices in the last year with the average price of a family home now $1.4 million, and one with a ‘waterfront view’ nudging $15 million.