Six Overlooked Factors About Second Passports

one of the metrics that i've always found overrated when it comes to evaluating second passports is visa free travel not only because in the last year we've seen the traditional visa-free travel regimes turned on their head but because if a passport gives you access to 135 or 150 or 170 countries chances are you're not going to want to go to most of those countries and it's just window dressing at a certain point so today i'm going to share with you six other things that i believe you should consider when looking at a second passport [Music] hi i'm andrew henderson i'm the author of this best-selling book available on amazon and the founder of nomad capitalist we're a team of over 50 people worldwide and our network of experts helps seven and eight figure entrepreneurs and investors legally go where you're treated best more at nomedcapitalist.com so visa free travel definitely important here at nomad capitalist we spend a lot of time working with westerners including many americans we're looking at as a second passport as either a plan b i'm going to keep it in my back pocket who knows if i may need to leave the u.s who knows if i may even want to be an american in the future and hey i'm used to having a pretty good passport from a travel perspective i'm used to being pretty respected around the world i want to get as close to that as possible now i've put together a three-step plan for recreating the travel privileges of a u.s or other western what we call tra passport you can definitely watch that episode here in the channel but i also think that visa free travel is a little bit overrated in the sense of are you going to go to every country in south america are you going to go to albania or myanmar are you going to miss out if you give up u.s citizenship on having one of the few passports in the world with visa free travel to the central african republic is that really what you're missing what i think you should be more important more focused on including if you're a westerner who perhaps is concerned that you might you know have to for a first time apply for a visa are these six factors number one is if you get a second citizenship is dual citizenship allowed now a lot of the ways that we would help people get a second passport would be through a citizenship by investment program or something like that where dual citizenship is pretty baked in but dual citizenship needs to be understood because there are some countries where okay you can have one passport and then you can have a second there there may be restrictions including if you're naturalizing the country where either your home country or the new country says fine you can have one other passport or okay you can't get any more after this or there may be an issue where you can only keep your passport through a certain treaty and so again you may not be able to get more passports beyond that or there may be a thing where they say you need to renounce but then you don't so there are countries where they say hey dual citizenship not allowed but in practice it is widely allowed but you want to understand what you're getting into and so what you'll see in the more streamlined citizenship programs again look at the caribbean citizenship by investment programs you want to go and get 20 passports they're not going to stand in your way but look at a country like germany for example we've had more germans than ever calling and saying you know i'd like to have some options and the challenging thing is in germany you have to give permission to get a second passport and you've got to plead your case right and so there are other countries where you know you just have to be careful with dual citizenship maybe you already have dual citizenship and you want a third passport i had a gentleman who was both european and canadian said well you know those seem kind of similar to me you know can i go get a third passport that's the kind of thing where you want to keep in mind how is dual citizenship allowed now one of the ways to get second citizenship is by what we call fast-track naturalization where you're doing something really incredible you're putting yourself on the radar maybe you're buying a factory in some european country and turning it around and you're going to get citizenship because a politician looks good based on what you did and some of those countries may not allow dual citizenship but generally speaking that kind of method you are allowed an exception to where you can keep your citizenship so even if a country doesn't have dual there may be opportunities for you getting the passport to have dual it also may cut the other way where if you're becoming naturalized you may have fewer rights than someone who is born there who may have more flexibility to have dual citizenship so you want to consider that again the the streamlined kind of commoditized programs are pretty straightforward in terms of offering dual we've actually seen countries that have citizenship by investment programs that before they launched that program they had to go and change their rules on dual citizenship and basically rewrite the law knowing that nobody wants to give up their existing citizenship to become a citizen of vanuatu instead so that's the first thing i would look at the second thing i would look at is what is the tax situation in that country does the country have citizenship-based taxation does it have some kind of rules or regulations on non-resident citizens or is it perhaps planning to have one of those things so effectively the united states is the only country that taxes its citizens at full rates no matter where they live there are exceptions there are exclusions there are ways that you can greatly mitigate those taxes in many cases by going overseas but i've surmised and i've heard more people surmising this by the way in the legal field and just expats who are reading the local news that more countries may roll out whether something is aggressive is what the u.s does or some kind of weaker backdoor version some kind of taxation of citizens or some kind of regulation or hey we're not going to tax you on your income but there's a wealth tax coming so everyone's got to pay that kind of thing and there's all kinds of different ways they can go about it we're going to have a wealth tax that applies to all your assets at home so if you didn't sell off your properties you're going to pay on that and you can you can keep your money in the stuff that you own where you live so there's a lot of different ways you can go with that and this is where it comes back to what i've said from day one of nomad capitalist what is the culture of the country now i'm not opposed to getting eu citizenships even though i think there's some risk in some of the eu countries to a negative tax situation do i think that portugal or ireland or bulgaria or lithuania are going to be the first to sign up for this kind of program no in fact you've seen countries like hungary push back on a lot of different kinds of tax hikes that the eu in general wants to do and so i think that stuff may be more difficult but you do want to be aware of it because you know we talk about how even if countries don't pass new taxes the fact that politicians on the fringe become more mainstream talking about them is definitely a reason for concern i look at a country like malaysia where you cannot gently become a dual citizen you could not generally obtain that citizenship very easily but when the pandemic was in the midst of things and lots of countries were talking about wealth tax malaysia said we're not bringing back a wealth tax that's the kind of country that you want and so well i wouldn't tell you if you qualify for citizenship by descent or you want to get a golden visa i wouldn't necessarily say don't do that i would want to be aware of what the tax situation is i think especially the english-speaking countries are going to be very difficult canada's australia's new zealand you've seen them being more aggressive um during this last year and change and so i would definitely want to understand what am i getting myself into and by the way in countries like those is there a minimum time commitment that i'm spending in the country to work towards citizenship since countries like new zealand don't have citizenship by investment per se what am i getting myself into in terms of requirements what's my tax resident status how is that work for me in the in the grand scheme of things these are all the things that you want to consider number three would be my ability to live in other countries so while talking about the eu of course you know having an eu citizenship uh allows you the ability to go and live in other eu countries and so that could theoretically be a good thing where uh if you're an eu citizen and there was some kind of you know tax where hey you know if you live in dubai you got to pay something then i think there potentially could be mechanisms where if you wanted to stay within the eu you know go to ireland and uh i'll use the non-dom procedure or i'll go to switzerland in the eea and i'll use the lump sum procedure and so kind of keeping the family may be an option again these are all just ideas you are not a citizen of those other countries but you have a little bit more rights being part of the oecs as well as being part of the larger caricom what you also want to look at on the negative side is let's say you become south korean i've known people who've married a korean they've obtained south korean nationality south korea has a permanent residence investment program you could theoretically become a korean citizen there are certain countries that the korean government does not allow you to live in now you probably want to go to any of those places i'm guessing you wouldn't but there are some restrictions the u.s does the same thing again are you itching to go to cuba or to north korea perhaps not but there are certain places where you may be unwelcome there may be a reputational issue where it may be more difficult to move to certain countries and so there are a lot of hard and soft factors reputationally and otherwise that dictate where can you live where can you travel the reputation of the passport is important now i think this is often overrated again um you know if you're south korean citizen you know are you really looking to move into algeria i think it's one of the countries on the list probably not but some of these soft factors could apply to if you're applying for residents in a certain country they might kind of screw around with your application because they they kind of want to deny you they're not going to come out and say it so that's an issue most of the countries where we would talk about getting a second passport in probably aren't going to fall into that criteria but maybe you're living in a certain country and you're eligible for naturalization that's definitely something that you want to consider what's my ability to live in other countries what's the reputation of my passport and that's something that you want to consider number four is military service again if you become a citizen of st lucia or vanuatu or in a lot of the european countries this is not an issue if you are jewish and you become an israeli citizen then this may be an issue for you or someone in your family turkey has the same thing although it's generally accepted that you can opt out of military service with relative ease if you obtain their citizenship by investment armenia has this requirement between 18 and i believe 27 years old so if you decide to move to armenia or if you claim armenian citizenship by dissent that could potentially be an issue for you or someone in your family so certainly military service requirements by and large have gone down over the years there are a couple of countries that have they have popped back up in what's interesting actually is uh in some countries even if you renounce your citizenship your requirement to theory serve the military does not go away or to be called up through a draft does not go away which is kind of interesting but military service is definitely an issue now on the other hand there are people who join the military look at the french foreign legion for example you can eventually become a french citizen other countries have similar programs but if you're getting a second citizenship i think to me one of the goals is looking at countries where they don't have a military or they've got a very small military and they're not looking to draft people in but you definitely want again if you're living in a place if you're working towards naturalization if you have a claim towards citizenship by descent those are the kind of passports that might have a military requirement singaporean citizenship is practically impossible to come by these days so that one's off the list but do consider military service the fifth consideration is the banking reputation so uh crypto exchanges do take a look at what passport you have sometimes and we've helped people get passports because i'm american or i'm this or i'm that and i'm not welcome in certain crypto investments uh banks are the same way now again is this somewhat overblown i do think so but you have a number of offshore banks that will restrict uh which country citizens can bank so some of the offshore banks in the caribbean simply don't want anyone from eastern europe they also in some cases don't want anyone from the caribbean and so that would apply to citizenship by investment candidates as well now can you live with those banks i think you probably can but i can tell you that you know if you were looking to create a total global network of banks and investments you know you might want a couple different passports to facilitate that because every place you go has a different understanding of what different passports mean you know you take a a passport from a latin american country to somewhere else in latin america you know they're going to more readily understand that same with eastern europe same with asia and so you look at countries like vanuatu for example that just don't have a great reputation you take that to a bank in a prestigious jurisdiction like singapore you know they may let you in or they may really you know take a second look at that obviously the u.s passport is one where a lot of people really turn their nose up at you and so there may be banks where hey we'll take van opt we'll take st lucia we'll take whatever just don't be american but you want to consider you know where are you trying to do business if you're attaining russian citizenship let's say you're married to a russian or you're moving to russia people who've moved there and done business they love russia you know certainly that's going to be kind of at the bottom of the barrel reputationally in terms of opening up bank accounts all around the world and the question there then is and i was having this discussion with a immigration expert in here in europe recently is you know in what future banking or immigration procedures do the due diligence people look at where you're from you know if i use a citizenship from a certain country do they say in some cases yeah but he's really an american and he's the cultural traits of an american and you know the due diligence profile on american um they may or they may not it really depends on the policies and so you want to kind of be aware of that and figure out what you're trying to accomplish the last criteria is travel reputation are you welcome in various countries and i think this often comes down to you as a person that's where i think that you know being from the west having the u.s place of birth having the western place of birth you know speaking good english looking polished looking professional does come in handy i think that you know i have traveled i've talked about the comrades passport i went into hong kong a couple of years ago with the comrose passport i don't use it much these days but i think they kind of looked down looked up and like where's this country are you from this country and they realized uh okay you know this guy doesn't look like a problem whereas you know if you came looking disheveled looking like a mess then you know they might give you more grief so certainly the the the passport that you have is an issue um that said i have friends from mexico colombia parts of central america and i asked them when you travel do you get a lot of issues you know maybe they get a question once in a while but generally they don't have a lot of issues even being from those countries and again i think the fact that is you know they have businesses or you know they are from a certain amount of wealth and so the the image is important so therefore i think the image in some case trumps the the passport itself but definitely um you know for example uh look at georgia where i spent a lot of time if you are from a country that is more friendly with russia nicaragua for example you may get a little bit more scrutiny um and so these are the kind of factors that go into choosing a passport now again i think if you look at citizenship by investment i think if you look at a lot of the streamlined options i think if you look at a lot of the european options you know some of the european options may not entirely fit the tax bill or may not give you the kind of plan b that you want away from the west and all of its madness but a lot of these more streamlined options are going to check these boxes pretty well what happens and i think where these criteria are especially important again is some of the cheaper options do i get a citizenship through my family am i living somewhere i'm just going to claim the citizenship am i married to someone those are the kind of passports the more you know quote unquote normal passports not the ones that are available through investment programs or things like that but the ones that just people obtain through normal naturalization that you want to ask these questions about so those are six issues if there's one that you think i'm missing leave a comment below i want to hear from you so people ask andrew how do i get the most out of nomad capitalist how do i begin my nomad capitalist journey the first thing people do is they start right where you're at they watch youtube they listen to podcasts they read articles at nomadcapitalist.com we've spent years creating thousands of pieces of free content so that you can get the vibe from someone who's actually done this from someone who's actually been in your shoes what they'll do next they'll get a copy of the book you can find it on amazon it costs a few bucks and while it's not going to give you all the secrets it's going to again give you more of the vibe you're going to learn a lot of the things that i've learned you're going to learn some strategies you can employ and you're going to get a lot further in your journey from there if you are the seven or eight figure entrepreneur investor you can go to nomadcapitalist.com you can click become a client we're pretty busy these days but we have availability to help a limited number of people who want to create a holistic plan something i think is so important so if you want to do that go to nomadcalculus.com click become a client learn more about how it works and how we can help you

Channel: Nomad Capitalist

Views: 13,392

Keywords: nomad capitalist, go where you're treated best, visa free travel, second passport, second citizenship, dual citizenship, best passport, best passport in the world, citizenship by investment, caribbean citizenship by investment, citizenship based taxation, tax hikes for 2021, moving overseas, south korea passport, investing in asia, investing in south korea, where to move, where to live, banking, offshore banking, us citizenship, citizenship video, new tax law, cbi programs

Id: K9UfiPXva_s

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021