Latest / IMI Podcasts / #17: Independent Means Visas Eating Into Golden Visas' Market Share: Andre Bothma on the Mobility Standard

Transcript

#17: Independent Means Visas Eating Into Golden Visas' Market Share: Andre Bothma on the Mobility Standard · IMI Podcasts

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, it's 7 p.m.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: in Dubai, 3 p.m.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: in Lisbon, 11am in St.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Kitts.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to a new episode of the Mobility Standard, the podcast where we dissect current events, trends, and crucial questions related to investment migration.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Christian Nessim, editor of Investment Migration Insider.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And with me in today's episode, I have my co-hosts Ahmad Abbas and Rogelio Cáceres, as well as our guest this week, Mr.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Andrei Batma, the man behind D7Visa.com and an expert on what I call independent means visas.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: We spoke to him about why these types of visas, which require much less of your money but much more of your time, are increasingly eating into the golden visa market share.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why they are gaining popularity only now, even though they've been around for a long time, and why it makes sense for investment migration companies to include them in the program portfolios.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: All of that and a great deal more in today's episode of the Mobility Standard.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to remind you that you can follow all of IMI stories on our website, imidailily.com, on our mobile phone apps, in our free newsletters, as well as on your favorite social media network.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can also follow this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcast platforms.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: With the preambles out of the way, let's get this show on the road.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Andre Botma, very pleased to have you on the Mobility Standard.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're going to start in our customary fashion by having you introducing yourself to our audience.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Andre.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: I am the founder of a website called d7visa.com, which ultimately seeks to educate prospects around their sort of like product choices, most notably in the sort of independent means visa space.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's become a lot more popular and known in the last two years or so.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I basically identified a component of the market that weren't kind of getting served by the sort of golden visa products available.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then subsequently developed that in conjunction with Portuguese immigration specialists both to market it, get the word out about the product, and also then to educate prospective clients about it and ultimately to get them to settle in Europe.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we're definitely going to talk about why independent means visas have become more popular in the last couple of years.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: But just so the audience knows, the focus of today's episode is what I refer to on IMI as independent means visas, which are essentially residence permits that are either temporary or permanent that you can get simply by demonstrating a certain minimum income or net assets with no investments required, right?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know Rohelio likes to call them wealth visas, which is a shorter, catchier term for it.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I use the term independent means visas because you don't necessarily need wealth to qualify.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is to say, some modest regular income usually will suffice.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So Rogelio, we can discuss obviously which term is more accurate or useful.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm I'm curious, Christian.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious, Christian, on this shift that uh IMI Daily has had over the last couple months to uh go beyond just investment migration, which has been your specialty for many years, to to cover what we've covered from the beginning, and that's uh a wider horizontal solution ranging from rentier visas, I think, is the the other term that's been used for this category.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, all the way through investment-based.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Why why the change?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why the the amplification uh of uh of this net of programs that you're covering?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um we extended that.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely correct, as you point out.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've amplified that range of programs that we cover from we started out very narrowly, investment-based migration programs, right?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um then there was a sort of a sea change over the course of the pandemic uh during which people became to a much greater extent open to physically relocating.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually took some inspiration from yourself, Rogelio, and what you're doing at GRCG, which is to say, listen, we just provide mobility solutions.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: They don't necessarily have to be investment-based.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I recognize that this is a broader trend in the market, and so I wanted to um I want people to know that they don't necessarily have to invest, but we still limit the range of visa types that we cover or citizenship types, visa types that we cover.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: We limit it to things that are based on capital one way or another.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so they're not like it's not work visas, it's not student visas, uh, it's not you know um spousal, spousal visas.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's stuff that's based visas that are based, visas that are based around capital one way or another.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And independent means visas are the visas that give you the right of residency in a place in exchange for you demonstrating a certain minimum income or minimum assets, uh, but you don't need to invest.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what are the terms here?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just so people know what we're talking about.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're referred to as, like you said, Roelio, uh rentier visas, rentista in Spanish.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: What my colleague uh the erudite Stefan Taji calls rentier, rentier.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Rentier, rentier, rentier.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: French Canadians call it that, uh, of course, and and in in Spanish uh rentista, but uh really what it is, it's do you have an independent source of income, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's what these countries care about.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going to become a burden on our uh social benefits uh systems or not?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not, if you can demonstrate that you won't become a burden, welcome, welcome here to our country, right?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um now Andre, you wrote in an op-ed for IMI uh a few weeks ago.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: You you referred to independent means visas as an existential threat to golden visas.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to kind of yeah, I want I want you to uh elaborate a little bit about what you mean by that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, substantiate that argument.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Rewind eight or nine years, and I was looking to move to Europe, and there was a dearth of options available to South Africans in particular at that stage.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I went on a rampage researching and talking to people who kind of immigrated, and I could the only thing I could find at the time was the Golden Visa program in Portugal.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: That was the one that was known and being marketed actively.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then subsequently I stumbled on some kind of you know, like hybrid, not informal programs, if we would, you know, for example, in places like uh Slovenia or Hungary or whatever the case is.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: So effectively, there was a very limited range of options, and they were all very pricey.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: So for people who actually wanted to relocate to Europe, the only thing that they could find for years on end was what was being promoted by the biggest RCBI firms in the world, being golden visas.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um so at that point, you know, these kind of like independent means or rentistas or whatever the case is were were not marketed actively and were virtually unknown.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: So in the article, I made the case that it is an existential threat to golden visas.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I would probably want to expand on that statement by saying that if you were to look at the South African market, your your typical golden visa purchaser was someone who is uh you know a baby boomer, so they were in their 60s, they kind of they were approaching the end of their kind of working career, they'd probably established themselves in the business world and they had the means to make you know a 350 or a 500k euro investment, which if you were to convert that to around at 17.7x.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it's quite a substantial amount of uh local currency that you'd need to do something like that.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: But these people, if they were entrepreneurs or business owners, they didn't really have the ability time-wise to go and spend you know substantial amounts of time in Portugal or wherever else in Europe.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: So we would see a uh you know, a typical sales cycle on a golden visa sale could be up to four years or more.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because these people were simply you know like uh kicking the gun down the road and saying, well, we'll we'll we'll make work of that um once we get close enough to retirement age where we'd actually be able to utilize this uh this premium residency product of ours.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: So golden visa sales took a long time.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I sit in a position where I see a whole lot of inbox leads coming in.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: I've been you know obviously very involved in marketing golden visas, second passports, and more recently the D7 type products for going on six years.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's at least from a local demand point of view, the the demand for golden visas has virtually dried up.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the demand for D7 and independent means visas has skyrocketed.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, you're saying you're saying locally in South Africa, demand for golden visas.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Locally in South Africa, but generally too.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think that with the pandemic and people being unable to travel, uh, a lot of people pulled up the handbrake on their purchases on golden visa products.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's obviously a big decision.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Don't want to buy a property site and see in.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, they realized, but you know, because the the the RCVI firms themselves started marketing the D7 as a pivot.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it became a lot more known globally.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the demand for it has been massive.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I I frequently talk to people who have the means to buy golden visas who are more interested in in D7 visas because they don't necessarily need all of the flexibility.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so my impression is that uh there is this trade-off between golden visas and so for good you have golden visas that are essentially you don't have to stay here, you don't have a physical presence requirement, but we want you to make a substantial investment or a donation upfront, and that's the way you contribute economically.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the other hand, and this is the trade-off, you have the uh independent means visas, which are essentially saying uh you don't have to invest anything, but you have to become a tax resident here.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have to stay here most of the year, thereby becoming a tax resident, thereby contributing economically that way.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so obviously like housing and equal.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and also spending all your expendable income for six months per year in Portugal, albeit on eating out, renting a property, even purchasing a property in all in in many circumstances.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's it's it's catering to you know the sort of like the entry level, you know, it's it's a more of a sort of like a GP type product, if you would, whereas then you've got the Rolls Royce on the far end of the spectrum, and sort of the Goldilocks option in between is the highly qualified activity visa, um, which uh you probably would have encountered as well.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's um it's offered by a firm called Empire Startups, with whom Rogelio and I both have dealings.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that kind of gives you the full flexibility with the low minimum stays, um, without having to kind of lock up all that capital for five years or more.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, the HQA is kind of a hybrid between between Golden Visa and uh and D7, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: As far as I understand.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: But my argument uh against Golden Visas is let's take Portugal, for example.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's eight different ways that you can earn residency rights in a path to citizenship that are all less expensive than the Golden Visa, that most are much faster from a processing time perspective, and where you don't have to give your money necessarily to someone that you don't know that you'll never meet, that doesn't have any real uh stake in the ground to return the capital uh when they uh desire to do so.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when you look at the opportunity cost, guys, of uh spending 500,000 euros in uh illiquid investment for seven or eight years, and what you could be doing that in uh any other asset, uh not to mention my favorite asset, Bitcoin, you're really the true cost of a golden visa is hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars more than uh looking at or at least exploring other uh other routes.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And what you see when you Google Golden Visa, at least here in the US, are all the big uh RCBI firms that are not based here in the US but advertise massively for these projects, right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: That they might believe they are are good, but they never disclose, they never offer, they never look at other options that the client could qualify for that don't involve investment.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where global RCG comes through, is really trying to look at the client from uh what they want to do perspective, and then identifying the the best route to get there, not a product uh push, if you will, uh whether it's golden visas or something else.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's really market for brand in the United States.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your solution agnostic, right, in what you guys do.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: You just want to you don't really care about one particular route, it's whatever suits the client.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's obviously the the right thing to do from a client perspective.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the reason it doesn't happen so much is because it's it tends to be lower margin.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it doesn't have to be lower margin, but but typically it is.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a less there's no investment involved, it's a less complicated affair.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um you talk about opportunity cost, uh Rogelio.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And one opportunity cost that you do incur by doing uh an independent means visa versus a golden visa is that you you forego the opportunity to remain in your current country of residency and uh working on your local business there, for example.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that you know one reason why a lot of people I I agree.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's always a trade-off.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I agree with Andre.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: The the pandemic has shifted the perception of what's important in people's lives and remaining in frigid New York City in February maybe is not as important as it used to be.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and when you can do your work remotely anywhere, I think that's also more than even the COVID, the the shock to the system of uh you only live once, uh it's the realization that companies and employees have that you know what I don't really need to go to work uh physically.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: I can do my job uh anywhere, so why can't I do it uh in Portugal?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you make that uh mental leap, the cost savings involved, a better quality of life, uh just the better overall atmosphere.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: They call Portugal the New California for for a reason, huh?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so we're really bullish on that.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think probably that is the main reason why we've seen a rise in interest in independent means visas.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that, you know, in in the past, people were much more hesitant to physically relocate because they were tied geographically to their sources of income.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas now your income and your location are not so inextricably linked as they once were, and inevitably that enables people to relocate, which means they don't need to make that bulk investment.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's a fair assessment, Andre?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: I do believe it is it is it is accurate.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that the the remote working specter has been one of the key drivers to this change of this the seed change, as you you called it earlier.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: The other two kind of significant drivers, and I mean this kind of uh leads me to my next point.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like the for the D7, our top two source markets are the US and the UK.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it you know, I mean, in in broad brush strokes, I get the impression that uh for the UK crowd, it's about um still being able to access Schengen.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and like a lot of them have have holiday properties in either Spain or in Portugal in particular.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: So they want to they want to keep access.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: So for them it's about access.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas with um with the American uh clientele segment, um these are frequently high-earning remote workers with young children.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that makes a lot of sense.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like we're talking uh Portugal is obviously a social democracy with a lot of uh public goods, you know, in terms of affordable or free health care.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and and and a sort of a far more kind of um uh stable political consensus than we have in in the USA currently.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I think a lot of people are doing a sort of reverse uh uh reverse Atlantic migration and saying um we we don't want to run the risk of ending up with a two million Rand medical bill if our child were to get ill.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um and perhaps we're looking we're looking for to settle in a place that is not going to be as polarized as the United States has become.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of one of the reasons uh why Portugal as a destination, like for if we if we forget about what type of visa people are going to Portugal on, uh just in general, one of the reasons Portugal has become a more an increasingly popular destination has been the NHR program, obviously.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now, if you're an American, you say that Americans and British are the top two inquiring nationalities for the D7 visa.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're an American, uh you have to file with the IRS no matter where you live, right?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's one of the drawbacks.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, unless unless you actually give up your your you know, like you're renouncing citizenship.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know, I don't know the the extent to which tax benefits are a point of appeal for Americans going to Portugal.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you, being the only American on the panel, at least as far as I know, uh and having lived here for a long time, the the main reason that people are are moving, it's really a California-Portugal connection.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's all this uh movement of an interest from uh the west coast of the United States to the west coast of of Europe.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they have very things, a lot of things that are similar, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: From the surfing to the wine country, uh, more laid-back attitude to the emphasis on innovation, uh, technology.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're both Bitcoin friendly, if you will.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the California that we think about in the movies.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: California now has shifted uh tremendously to uh over taxed, over-regulated, uh uh woke culture.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of trends are are uh having people say, where can I find a a new California?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Homeless camps, homeless camps, I'm seeing in California.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: You look at what's happened in San Francisco, there's a reason why uh icons like Badaji Swinovasan left, and he called that back in 2013 the ultimate exit from Silicon Valley.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think more and more people are realizing that with what's happening in the States and the opportunities that are elsewhere, Portugal has a golden opportunity, no pun intended, to to capture that that zeitgeist and and really create some type of mobility superhighway, you know?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's move California to Portugal.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're we're focused on later this year.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: But but but how does it work if you're let's say you're moving from California, you're a crypto investor, for example, and you're like, okay, wow, in Portugal, you don't have tax on crypto capital gains or transactions, uh, and you move to Portugal where where that stuff is tax-free, but it's not tax-free in the United States.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how does that work?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have to pay, for example, capital gains tax on crypto sales uh back home, even if you're living in Portugal?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my my general counsel would warn me not to give tax advice on a however having said that the standard disclaimer, uh I won't touch the tax element because that's above my my pay grade.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: But there's more than just the tax element that I think is attracting Americans to look elsewhere.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's about freedom.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's about the the environment here, uh, not only just politically, but uh the general social uh conversation discourse is not as uh as open and free as countries like El Salvador, for example, or Portugal.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And here's here's a confession that I'm probably the only person on the panel that has never been to Portugal.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I'm speaking about something that uh I don't have any experience firsthand.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh dear, oh dear.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard I've heard enough uh enough to to validate that that's the case.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it's more than taxes, I guess, Christian.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh the tax men cometh, right?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: But there's there's more than that uh at stake when when making the decision.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think one one of the uh disadvantages to independent means visas.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: As compared to golden visas, is that they typically require significant physical presence, as we talked about, from the applicant.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess um, like I said, the reason is you know, governments want to be paid one way or another, or they they want you to make a contribution either up front or through becoming a consumer tax resident.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think there there may be some loopholes to this physical presence requirement for independent means visas, especially in the Schengen area.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because let's say uh you become a uh tax resident in Spain, for example, on the non-lucrative, or Greece on the financially independent persons visa.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're in Schengen, you're in Greece, you're supposed to be in Greece 183 days a year, but if you're leaving Greece and go to another Schengen country, and then you go to your home country, which may be United States, for example, there there's probably no record of you leaving Greece in the first place.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So isn't that is that a feasible loophole?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something you guys as advisors even talk about with your clients?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: We get this very frequently uh with D7 visa.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I uh typically advise clients to you know color within the lines, as it were.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um when you look at the sort of profile of person who gets approved for the D7 visa, it's typically a bell curve.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's not someone sitting on the sort of cusp of being able to afford it or prove sufficient means, it's typically someone with multiple um multiples of the minimum requirement, you know, and with substantial kind of like savings to combine that with.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: So uh similarly, yeah, and I mean like some a lot of people would love it to to have a lower minimum stay requirement.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: But and and and you could basically go and spend multiple months living in Spain, for example, because you can just drive yourself there.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's no way for the Portuguese authorities to check on this kind of thing.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um but the more you kind of indulge in that kind of corner cutting, the the higher the probability that you will not be able to renew your visa after two years or your residency permit.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if the objective is to uh you know get on the road towards citizenship through naturalization, you're going to need to learn the language, you're going to need to be able to prove substantial real-world ties with the country and the Portuguese community.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: So if you wanted to just, you know, like I mean, essentially you could start from scratch and reapply for the D7 visa if you didn't uh you know do the minimum time required to renew your permit.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: But if you if you were honestly looking at you know getting the passport, which is one of the big drawcards for the Portuguese income-based visa, it's five years.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas unless you're from a portu from a Spanish colony, you're looking at 10 years in Spain, and in all likelihood eight years or more in Italy, and I mean you need to pay taxes, income taxes in Italy, but you're not allowed to work there on the elective residence visa.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: So it's um ultimately, if you want to get the passport, you need to be willing to do the time, the minimum requirements, um, and and do them sort of continually over that five-year period.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it's if if if if someone is honestly looking for more flexibility, then I'll push them towards a golden visa product or an HQA which offers that and which they can legitimately then spend less time in country with.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh here's a question.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I want to promote on my social media feed uh the this article, this editor's pick.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking through it now, and you have broken down the golden visa in eight ten different ways in terms of average investment per main applicant, per year investments in the golden visa, number of visa issues.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what can we find this type of information for other programs?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is this uh you have a special yes yes?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'll tell you why.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's um so there are two there are two investment migration programs that really stand out globally in terms of the detail and and richness of data that they release.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's the SEF in Portugal.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the it's called the uh Servicio de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras, uh Borders and Immigration Service in English.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um they release on a monthly basis, they release figures that detail exactly um who's been approved, how many people have been approved, so how many main applicants, how many dependents, um, where did they all come from, uh, what did they invest in, what amounts did they invest, and they do this every single month, and it's excellent.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh it's a trade journal editor's uh dream.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's fantastic.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second one, which is even more detailed but not so frequent, is the uh office of the regulator for the um Malta IIP, which is now the the Malta policy.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh they they release even richer data, but only once a year.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh but they do release a set like they just released a few days ago a 78-page report on that program.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so um it's unfortunate that not everybody does this because I've I you know I've mentioned in the past that there are typically, I think I mentioned it on the last podcast, that there are typically three main criticisms that are levied against investment migration.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is that uh it's just wrong, rich people shouldn't have any kind of advantages.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a moral argument, which is you know, uh you can you can argue that I disagree.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the second one is the national security argument, which in my opinion doesn't hold water at all because investor migrants.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a straw man.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because in investor migrants are the most closely scrutinized category of immigrants, so that doesn't make any sense at all.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um the third argument is that the industry is not transparent enough, it's opaque.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that uh there is some merit to that argument because not all the countries release detailed statistics on how, for example, the money is dispersed.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see one of the things that's very astonishing about uh the Maltese annual report is that they say exactly, for example, how much money Henley and Partners, the original concessionaire of the program, has made.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um they've made 45 million 45 million euros uh over the lifetime of that program by being the concessionaire.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so yeah, nice work if you can get it.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in my opinion.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: But there's so you see, there's a reason why everybody wants to get into that government advisory space.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: But in any case, back to Portugal and I thought it was to help the country and help uh democracy and freedom.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, there it is that too.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, look, uh, I don't think that there is any chance that that program could have had the type of success that it had, were it not for a private sector concessionaire being involved.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there are other companies that could have done uh as good a job, maybe not.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I who knows, right?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I fully, I fully uh you know, I'm I'm I'm happy for Henling Partners that they made that money.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think they deserve it, I think they've earned it, they they come by that money honestly, I think they get a lot of flack for it unnecessarily.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's a different discussion.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um about about Portugal and the SEF and those data.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we can analyze the data from that program 16 ways from Sunday because they just released so much data.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you go to the IMI data center, plug, plug, plug, uh, which you'll have access to if you're an IMI Club Pro member, uh, we have, I think, about 20 different charts and graphs on that program.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the SEF only releases a one pager each month, but you it takes an IMI to put that all together in a systematic fashion and make graphs and charts out of it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: So um kudos to the SEF for doing that.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the median age in Portugal is north of 45 years.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's actually 46 years.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: So they're they their working populace is aging and they need new blood.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: If they're going to maintain their economic growth trajectory over time, they're gonna need younger, more younger people to come and settle there and join the workforce.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the D7 visa obviously is was historically pitched as a sort of a retirement visa.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the Portuguese authorities have a lot of discretion in terms of whom they let in versus whom not.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: And consequently, they've been letting in a lot of remote workers.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's I think they kind of caught wind of the whole digital nomad sort of uh phenomenon, and they were like, we want to get a we want to cash in on that as well.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I mean, like it's on the basis of remote income, like a salary, even, you can get it.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas previously they were looking for um income from rental properties or royalties, etc., etc.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: So these kind of I mean, like the the Portuguese D7 is the is is even easier than something like you know the EU blue card, which Rogelio is is is obviously more a fai with than I am.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um but yeah, I mean that's that's if you if you look at the volume of applicants, um, you know, the D7 is the easiest and it's being used in versatile ways, but fundamentally the Portuguese authorities understand that we need these aged people of a particular skill set, talent, and and and baseline income to come and settle in Portugal if we're going to remain competitive in the next 10 or 20 years.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh practically every Latin American country has an independent means visa.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them are extremely attractive, whereby I mean you can get in Mexico, in Panama, in Argentina, in Uruguay, essentially immediate permanent residency just by qualifying for an independent means visa at very low thresholds of income as well.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh in some of those countries we're talking I mean, in already in Portugal, which is in Europe, I mean the the minimum is five euro a month.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Something like that.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're supposed to, you know, go a little bit north of the bare minimum uh just to be on the safe side.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have to make that argument uh with the SCF, I suppose.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: But um in in all of the you know, Central American countries you have them, you have them in all of the South American countries essentially, and typically it's somewhere between a thousand, fifteen hundred dollars of of uh regular income and PR right away, and often uh a path to citizenship in two or three years.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting citizenships to be picked up that way uh in the very short time frame.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Mexico and Argentina obviously have pretty powerful passports also.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so for example, let's that's another play, right?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're one of these guys that's going to a CBI firm in Dubai, and you're saying, hey, I I you know I need to have more uh visa-free countries to travel to, I need a better passport, and they'll tell, okay, we'll buy a passport and buy citizenship in Dominica or in St.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Kitts or whatever.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh or you can go and spend some time, a little bit of time, uh, for a couple of years, like six months a year for two years straight in Mexico, for example, and pick up that passport instead, which is arguably as strong as most of the Caribbean passports.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of interesting independent means visas out there.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know, Rogelio, you're offering a bunch of them on your website.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh wonder if you can tell me, if you can uh, as you say in Spanish, destacar a few um independent means visas that you think are worth a second look, especially for our for Americans.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of different options for uh Americans to consider.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: One of the uh things that are most prevalent around the world, including Latin America, are Rentista visas, right?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in Central America, Costa Rica, for example.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh these are a great option.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what I would uh encourage people to do, however, is to before you do anything, uh figure out if if you have you qualify for citizenship through ancestry.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there are a lot of countries out there that are very liberal two, three generations back.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: We had an uh an example of a client, very active client with us, uh, has done multiple different investment uh solutions, and we got to uh looking at his background and he qualifies for an Italian passport.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's thrilled.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thrilled that it's him, it's his heritage.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot that we could do to help folks, uh, especially in countries that have uh European roots, like uh the US.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh my my just back of the napkin analysis indicates that almost uh a third of Americans, possibly more, um potentially qualify.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if they can find the documentation, if they can demonstrate um the lineage, almost a third of Americans qualify for some European EU citizenship.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you widen the scope of that to include all of the Western Hemisphere, so you know, Latin America included, uh we're we're talking several hundred million people.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean that's another Europe.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's another Europe that can be added to Europe.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just sitting just sitting there waiting for people to pick it up.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they do need to maybe engage a genealogist, genealogist, uh to demonstrate those links, uh, but it's certainly feasible.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we just saw last week what's happening in Italy is that the Italian consulates, uh especially in countries like the United States, where uh the Italian consulates remain closed uh even now, uh many places anyway, and in Brazil and Argentina, uh the the Italian consulates there, Brazil and Argentina, you know, between them have almost a hundred billion Italian descendants.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um in those countries, the Italian consulates are not processing citizenship by descent applications in a timely manner.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're legally by law, they are required to process or to to give an answer within two years, but they're not even accepting appointments, which is an unreasonable delay according to Italian law.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: A few years ago, some uh Brazilians and Argentinians took the Italian consulates in their countries to court in Rome and said, Look, we've been trying to get appointments here for years, we're not getting these appointments, this is a violation of the Italian Citizenship Act.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they won.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: They won these cases.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: So now, if you're an Italian uh by descent, if you can prove it and you can't get an appointment with your local Italian consulate, you can go to Rome with your legal representative, you can present your case, you can show that you've made all reasonable efforts to uh file your application for citizenship by dissent in Italy, and the judge will, by decree, grant you citizenship by dissent in Italy.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so, this is, I mean, to i in my opinion, this is probably bigger even than independent means visas.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Probably should be the subject of a different different episode.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it's a huge thing.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, uh Rogel.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: We should definitely uh schedule that and invite uh I have a lot of people in mind, including my colleague in in the north who I started a podcast with Mr.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Stefan Pacik.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're very familiar with that.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's a veritable guru when it comes to identifying this.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Not as hard as people think.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh genealogist is required in some cases, but there are a lot of other uh solutions out there, mainly AncyT.com that can get you almost all the way there.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if uh such a company were to focus on this sector and optimize using technology for this, it's a massive opportunity because you could really delight a lot of Americans with that plan B without needing to invest.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's ways that we're thinking about uh executing that.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, uh citizenship through ancestry, you'll never hear someone from Henley mention that.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: They won't say it.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the the guy's uh his name is Massimo Barino, they won't let oh, they will just go golden visa passport.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just the difference, right?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's just an approach.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's ultimately giving, you know, it's it's what I call downselling.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's not upselling the client to the product that you know has the biggest commission or or or or referral fee or kickbacks from property developers.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's ultimately giving them the most obvious thing first.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: And uh to the uninitiated, this is a quite mire.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like they they don't know the difference between residency and citizenship necessarily.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: They may not be aware that the uh that certain European programs go back as far as four generations deep.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm looking at Italy and I'm saying, okay, Italy's got a population of what, 60 something million people, and then I'm seeing that there's about 80 million Italian descendants worldwide that potentially qualify for Italian citizenship.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think is the um the the threshold?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, how how many new citizens can can Italy bear before they start changing their laws and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, we just I mean, are they gonna double their population?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: No, but they'll probably move to before they they they turn the faucets off is to say, cool, we're going to uh turn you know our current tax tax system into citizenship based taxation.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you're happy to, you you're more than welcome to come and be Hungarian, and Hungary is one of the countries where it's citizenship based unless you've got two passports.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: But then you know the default may become you have, you know, it's like you've got to become a citizen and you will pay tax.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if they're smart, they'll do that, they'll do that after they've naturalized millions of people, right?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh citizenship by descent.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be you know the rug pull of the century.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, I speak under correction, but I think Hungary actually naturalized like a million, so it's something like 10% of their population.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: Is now new citizens, so just reclaiming their citizenship back ancestrally.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Aurelio.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that uh we're excited about is uh is doing a US road show uh in Miami, San Francisco, and New York, we're bringing certain countries to the U.S.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: uh to discuss all of the different mobility on-ramps that exist.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: So Portugal most likely will be our first country roadshow starting in April uh from the Miami Bitcoin Conference to San Francisco and and elsewhere.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but Italy with this change, Christian.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh no Stefan mentioned uh yesterday briefly, but now I had the fuller picture from if you just said that's a no-brainer.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: You go to New York, Boston, Philly, bring the solution, and you can capture thousands of Italian Americans that say, Oh, okay, great.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for that business development idea.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to tune into this tomorrow.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Look, look, it's uh this is low margin work, obviously.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not like a golden visa, but uh I mean it doesn't have to be that low margin either.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can you can probably get away charging 15, 20, 25 grand on a case like this.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth it to a lot of people.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today, folks.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: But we'll be back soon with another episode of the Mobility Standard.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, I encourage you, the listener, to send us the questions you have about investment migration.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: If we're able to answer them, we'll do so during our next episode.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to remind you to follow our work on imidail.com, the world's number one publication for investment migration, home to the internet's greatest collection of investment migration data, real estate expert opinion, and the intelligence you need to be a successful investment migration professional.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.