Why I Chose St. Lucia for Citizenship by Investment

almost four years ago i made the decision to apply for st lucius citizenship by investment i talked about it at the time and for years now i have been a proud saint lucian many people have asked me why i chose st lucia's program over others in the caribbean and today i'm going to walk you through not only a little bit about the program itself not only about the strategy that went through my mind when making my decision but also about the human element that i think is so important yet so overlooked hi i'm andrew henderson here at nomad capitalist we help seven and eight-figure entrepreneurs and investors who want to legally go where you're treated best you can learn more at nomadcapitalist.com and this is my st lucia passport it doesn't have quite the heft if you're used to a us passport but for me this was one of my passports to freedom 48 pages that allows me to go to a lot of countries around the world that are important to me and so before we talk about why i made the decision personally to choose saint lucia as one of the passports i openly obtained let's talk very briefly about the program itself so st lucia was the one of the more recent entrants into the caribbean citizenship by investment program it is one of the five countries that offers this it is one of the two least expensive countries for single applicants which i'll talk about in a little while and in terms of visa free travel it offers a pretty standard map what i would say for caribbean citizenship programs you can go to all of central america and for the most part the caribbean with the exception of mexico you can go to most of south america with the exclusion of brazil uruguay and paraguay you can go to the uk and ireland owing to its commonwealth status you can go to europe's schengen area as well as the countries like romania and bulgaria which are set to join that area you can go to a good amount of places in southeast asia to south korea where you can't go is the u.s canada australia new zealand you'll need another passport or a visa if you want to go to those countries if you don't have some other passport besides st lucia so relatively standard they are the only country out of five in the caribbean that does not have and has not yet negotiated visa-free travel to russia for example they do not have visa-free travel to serbia for example and so there are some small countries that you are missing out on some of them that all the citizenship by investment programs in the caribbean miss out on and some that st lucia just hasn't been as aggressive in pursuing so that's an overview of the program if you're single it's a 100 000 donation to the country once they approve you through their due diligence process there are of course legal fees due diligence fees passport fees other fees that generally come with this type of program and there have been various specials more recently for families for married couples and so there have been different options depending on how many people in your family you have and so four years ago almost i had just been interviewed by the bbc about this new option from st lucia and about citizenship by investment in general and i sat down and i had a conversation with a couple people about you know whether i should pursue this option for myself because about a year earlier i had started the process of becoming a citizen in dominica back in 2015 2016 dominica pretty much had the market cornered for the most cost-effective citizenship for a single person before st lucia reduced their price shortly thereafter and so i had started the dominica process and the challenge that i had back in 20 early 2016 was i was traveling so frequently uh and i didn't really have anybody to help me because we had just started uh really helping people in earnest with holistic plans uh that i didn't have many people to help me i wanted to make sure that the customers that we had were taken care of first and so i was basically doing it on my own while traveling it was really hard to get some documents and i just eventually gave up on that process so fast forward to early 2017 and i'm having this conversation about st lucia and what someone tells me is they said listen this is your business you're helping people do this and they said at the very least you will gain mastery you will gain an understanding of the process and you will be someone who who lives what he preaches now i've been living overseas for for years i had you know other passports uh i had you know business overseas i was you know eating my own dog food but they said you know why not take it a step further why not have this extra insurance policy and i think for me the decision to add a passport from the caribbean even though i had other second citizenships was you know the idea that with the way things were going in the world and at this time you know donald trump had just come into power in the u.s people weren't entirely sure what's going to happen i have if i said as i've said many times in the past i had concerns about america first i know some of our viewers disagree with me on that and they think that i simply misunderstand it but i saw it for what i think it is and i believe i was proven right if you're an american overseas we're going to punish you in an effort to get you to come back and take advantage of our lower tax rates even though you can pay less overseas and so i just thought to myself you know let me secure my access to a few additional countries that would be difficult to visit if i had to give up my u.s passport that i didn't have at that time with the other passports let me get as many options as possible and i decided to do it because i wanted to benefit our audience i wanted to benefit myself with more options and you know little did i know that a number of months after i made the decision to start the process i would be renouncing my u.s citizenship and i would want all the options that i can get not only for traveling but for you know having passports for bank accounts uh for having passports for any number of reasons and i'm glad that i did that option and i think that what it taught me is even if it's uncomfortable have more options commit to spending the money i was doing certainly well then i'd accumulated money over my years of running different businesses and now nomad capitalists and i thought you know it's a small price to pay and you know if your net worth is x point two million versus x point three million are you really going to notice it at a certain point you know go out and get yourself covered and again in my case you know develop mastery and so as a consumer uh not just a person who who helps people get citizenships while sitting in switzerland for example or sitting in canada i know what it's like and i know the discomfort particularly as someone who has been a cost-conscious entrepreneur for much of my life and had to retrain myself to be much more abundance-minded it's always difficult to say i'm going to go and donate a hundred thousand dollars and pay some fees even if you're me and you get wholesale rates so i understand but i also know i had to push myself through that to make the decision and so that was the human element now why did i choose st lucia in particular because of that cost issue because i didn't i didn't see a substantial difference in the quality of the passports because i figured i would never live there and because i had other citizenships that i feel and felt and still do feel are tax friendly as well i i felt like i didn't need to get a citizenship in a tax-free country i had that already well covered with other parts of my plan other passports at the time were more expensive than they are now you've seen some price wars happen since i made my choice about the time i renounced u.s citizenship you started to see some of the hurricane discounts from like saint kitts i still would have gone with st lucia because i just didn't see the benefit in my particular situation what i would say is for some people spending an extra thirty thousand dollars in antigua to have a tax-free country or spending an extra fifty thousand dollars in saying kids to have a tax-free country is worthwhile in my particular case haven't having already done stuff it wasn't and so it was dominica versus st lucia there was a little bit i won't save a bad taste in my mouth from dominica i think dominica runs a very responsive citizenship by investment program but i kind of like the fact that st lucia was not as good as promoting its program they don't issue as many passports they're not going around and promoting as much and so while that is why they don't still have i would believe visa free travel to russia they haven't been as aggressive i felt like for someone like me who was developing this passport portfolio you know keeping the slightly more under the radar option would be would be better i also just think it's a beautiful country um i also like the idea that it had a little bit better connections such as flights to london whereas dominica while they're building they're working on an international airport as i know now it has not had as good of connections it's harder to get there whereas st lucia was better connected to london to europe in general as well as to the us if that matters to you and so i kind of felt like all those things were uh were helpful i also felt like the passport from st lucia complemented other passports i already had well and so you know this is a question you have to ask yourself if you want visa free travel to russia but you already have some other passport that offers it then suddenly that advantage no longer matters you know in my case i really was gearing up to spend more time in the americas in the next year or so that changed somewhat because i got into a relationship with my now wife and so some of that travel got put on hold but you know brazil for example was one big country that st lucians don't have visa-free access to however i had it on another passport which already had that access and so if my goal was traveling all over the americas without getting visas then i might have spent a little bit more money if that were my only second passport because i would want to retain that access in case i had to leave the u.s which of course again months later i did but since i already had that that covered i felt like what are the gaps i need to fill in and i feel like st lucia filled in those gaps for me and so you might want to look at things a little bit differently so would i make the same decision today if i were to go back and make the decision over uh you know it's hindsight's always 20 20. and so would i be willing to spend an extra 30 or 50 thousand dollars to get a passport with a little bit better visa free travel or with a tax free you know with no income tax policy i i think that if i were to do it again today sure i might spend more money today i also happen to you know to be married uh you know looking at having children potentially and so i might look at you know a country where the the price for adding children the future is less expensive uh since these passports generally don't you know pass down you would need to pay extra later so i might make a different decision today but if i were to go back in in hindsight i think i made the right decision um because i think st lucia has been a good program i think the process was straightforward now what people don't know about these processes is you know you do get a stack of paperwork this thick to deal with you know we generally help people with that back when i was doing it i gave it to my team i was the first case that we we train people on or one of the first cases uh and so they've learned how to handle this paperwork for folks because getting this stack of paperwork is pretty overwhelming and again that's why i gave up on dominica the first time so i think i would make the same decision again but it's only because of you know being in the status that it was then with with being single um seeing that there were only two options there and the more expensive the other passports were much more expensive were i to do it today in my current situation giving the current prices i think it would be much more competitive and so if you're looking at citizenship by investment i think you've got a relatively competitive field to choose from depending on where you need to go visa-free what other passports you have or plan on getting and are willing to wait for visa free travel you know how important is it to you that you have a tax-free country to go to again i felt pretty good that was covered um but if you want you know to get one second passport and you want to protect yourself from from high taxes in the future you know might be worth paying extra for that so those are the factors that i would consider today um given my situation i think i made the right choice as someone who enjoys having lots of options and who enjoys the mastery of this process as the nomad capitalist himself there may be other passports from the caribbean that i may obtain in the future uh more for fun or increasing just other personal lifestyle opportunities but i think for one caribbean option in my situation i made the right choice and those are the reasons why how can nomad capitalists help you four ways number one subscribe to our channel and click the notification bell to make sure you get our new video every day number two get a copy of nomad capitalist the book you'll learn a lot of my personal experiences over a dozen years of studying this stuff as well as exactly some of the strategies that you can use to build your nomad capitalist plan number three if you're not sure where to start but you want to come and learn from my team and i you want to come and mingle with like-minded people learn more about our live conference nomad capitalist live it's coming up soon and number four if you want some help right now because you've got a burning issue you need something solved you want to lower your taxes get a second passport or build the nomad capitalist lifestyle of your dreams go to nomadcapless.com and click on become a client

Channel: Nomad Capitalist

Views: 159,695

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Keywords: nomad capitalist, go where you're treated best, caribbean citizenship by investment, st lucia citizenship by investment, st lucia passport by investment, second passport, second citizenship, dual citizenship, travel around the world, caribbean passport, caribbean citizen by investment, best citizenship by investment program, bbc news, dominica citizenship by investment, citizenship based taxation, renounce us citizenship, st kitts citizenship by investment, moving overseas

Id: ph5JGyGu9Sc

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/overflow_]

Another thing that benefits only a select few and does nothing for the average citizens of the country