Latest / IMI Podcasts / #2 - How the Investment Migration Market Performed in 2020: Lessons Learned

Transcript

#2 - How the Investment Migration Market Performed in 2020: Lessons Learned · IMI Podcasts

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: For investment migration, 2020 was a year of both setbacks and of considerable advances.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: While the pandemic brought record global awareness of the usefulness of alternative citizenships and residencies, it also made putting investment migration plans into practice far more difficult.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: Some programs have seen record application volume while others have seen it collapsed.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: Service providers speak of a sharp rise in demand, but also in difficulty in catering to it.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: In this episode, we discussed how different investment migration programs performed in 2020 and asked which lessons may be gleaned from those observations.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: We'll try to explain the divergence in performance during the pandemic between Greece and Portugal, and why the Caribbean was able to carry on with business as usual.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: We want to know whether there is something besides the pandemic that explains the sharp decline in EB5 applications over the last year, and also try to map out the regional center program's future beyond its June 30th expiry date.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Ahmad wants Stefan Tajik, our guest in this episode and the designated Canadian, to explain why Canada, an ostensibly immigrant-loving country, keeps making it harder to immigrate.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: We want to know if 2020's reportedly sharp rise in inquiries will eventually translate into actual applications in 2021, and also try to understand which markets will be the biggest sources of investors in the next few years.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: Finally, we have to talk a little bit about the biggest news story this week: the heralded opening of a North Macedonian CIP and what effect that will have on the competitive balance of European CIPs.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: All that and much more in today's episode.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'd like to remind you that you can follow all of IMI's stories on our website, imidail.com, and on our mobile phone apps, our free newsletters, as well as on your favorite social media network.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: You can also follow this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcast platforms.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: With the preambles out of the way, let's get this show on the road.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: In Greece in 2020, obviously the pandemic has had a very different effect on different programs.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: Greece is one of those, the Greek Golden Visa is one of those programs that really was hit very, very, very hard.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Pummeled, I would say, in fact, walloped.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: They have seen the application approval volume fall by 89% from 2019 to 2020.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: Ahmad, what do you think is the main reason for that?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um basically because you have to travel.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Portugal, you can do everything you want absolutely uh remotely.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be in Portugal at any point of the time.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: In Greece, you have to be there.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And another thing about Greece having worked the program with some uh people as well is that buying uh property in Greece is not as simple as doing it in Portugal.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Both are difficult, but buying property in Greece is developers tend to overprice.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find a lot of uh let's say old properties that were refurbished but still don't I mean they would be 150, 170 max, but they're selling them for 250 as a goal uh means to the golden visa.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So And you're saying this doesn't this doesn't happen in Portugal?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: It does, but in Portugal you have you have that happening in the 500,000, but in the 350,000 option, there's a lot more, let's say government scrutiny going on there.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: In Greece, everything's up for uh for play.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's an open market, you can choose any property you want, you can choose a couple of properties.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in Greece you actually do have to go.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And keep in mind in Portugal you do have the fund option, which can be done remotely, and you don't have to worry about what you're buying.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can do it just with a little bit of due diligence on the fund.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: In Greece, you have to be there, you have to see the property, and during coronavirus you couldn't.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you don't want to see the property, you want to buy it remotely and say, okay, I just want the residency.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: The government of Greece tells you you have to be here.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you tell them I can't be there because you won't let me in, they're gonna tell you no, you have to be there.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was, I think, in my opinion, the main driving factor in the Greece Golden Visa getting hit so hard.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, we did an interview on IMI with a number of uh local experts, a number of local golden visa providers, lawyers in Greece.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: And what so this is what, for example, Alexander Varnovas of Varnovas Law Firm, uh, one of the leading golden visa providers in Greece, he said that they had seen many improvements in the program.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, the they have had since I believe summer 2019, they've had a pretty business-friendly administration, uh, the Mitsotakis government in Greece, and they've lowered a bunch of taxes, they've cut a lot of red tape, and I also believe that they have tried to um reduce red tape specifically for the Golden Visa.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: Varavas and and Panas Rosakis, they were saying that there are three main things uh that changed in 2020 to make the Greek program more accessible during a year with closed borders.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: So they have enabled the remote purchase of a property.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: They did that sometime during 2020, but maybe too late to save their 2020 numbers.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they've also enabled application by proxy, which I believe in the past you needed to show up actually at the immigration bureau in Greece to hand deliver your own application.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Now you can have your lawyer do that for you.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, there's been a number of um, well, three distinct offerings for tax residency.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: Number one is that they have a fixed tax of 100,000 for people who invest uh above a certain amount, I believe it's 250,000, and transfer their tax residency to Greece.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: And you can get even lower, down to 25%, sorry, 25,000 euros a year if you invest as much as 3 million.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: They've also introduced a 7% flat tax rate for pensioners who move to Greece and a 50% tax discount to professionals who become fiscal residents.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: So the reason I'm mentioning all this is because a lot has been done in Greece to mitigate that state of affairs that has caused it to lose so much golden visa or forego so much golden visa investment in 2020.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Problem with Greece, in my opinion, is that it they did not react as fast as they should have.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at the Caribbean states when the coronavirus hit.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Those guys momentarily they were ready.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Greece took about eight months to actually do something to get the golden visa running again.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a problem we're gonna see in a lot of countries that let's say have complicated laws and procedures when it comes to immigration, and a lot of them are in the EU.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I agree 100% with Rohelio, Greece does not get the let's say attention.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: It deserves.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, of course, when you mention about the Caribbean and how they were able to sort of I don't want to say hit the ground running during the pandemic, but they certainly were able to adapt very, very rapidly.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: That has a lot to do with their prior experiences with hurricanes.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: So Dominica famously in the in September or October 2017, when they had dual hurricanes, they were able to keep processing going throughout that hurricane.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason they were able to do that is most of their processing is actually done out of London, as far as I understand.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: They have uh fully digitized their CIU processing.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you've ever been to the the CIU office in uh Roseau, uh is that do I pronounce it in the French way or in the English way?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: Roseau Roseau or Roseau.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: For those of you who have been to the CIU processing office in Roseau, you'll you'll see that it's it's surprisingly small considering they do about 2,000 applications a year.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so that's because that processing is done remotely.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of the Caribbean programs have in place that type of infrastructure where they're not actually reliant on being able to go to a physical office to do any processing.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so obviously they they they've readjusted their systems as a reaction in the past to natural disasters.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: And now that COVID came along, they were already kind of prepared, so it hasn't really stopped them.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: I and I think that's very interesting.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: What's more interesting to me is what is it that Portugal did right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because Portugal obviously doesn't have any, or they have very little, I imagine, experience with hurricanes.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: They are a European country, they're a country about the same size as Greece in terms of population.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: And the the divergence in performance between the two countries really, really surprised me.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, what do you think, Stefan?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: What's the what's the reason for the big difference in performance in 2020 between Portugal and Greece?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's there's a couple of things I would say.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, first of all, Ahmed is completely right.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, if you just can't apply, if you can't go through the process because you know you can't land in Greece, etc.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh obviously that by itself you know explains everything, right?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then so Portugal has established itself as the best solution in terms of uh residency leading to citizenship.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because of uh the low residency uh period that you need to be there physically.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, after five years you can uh you can apply for naturalization, which is you know the main asset of the Portuguese program.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: And when you Yeah, but but this Stefan Stefan, this was also the case before the pandemic, right?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: So if that's what if if it's that uh Portugal is an inherently higher quality program, uh which which you know you could argue maybe that it is, then we would have seen a a difference before the pandemic as well.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think overall there's an understanding nowadays that the Portuguese uh product is probably the best one throughout Europe.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, if you want to take a deep dive, uh the Greece program is very good also, you know, more affordable, uh leads to citizenship, you can apply for naturalization after seven years, but uh you know the naturalization process can take two to three years in Greece.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: What about EB5 prohibitio?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: What happened?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: What the hell happened to EB50?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh certainly wasn't a surprise to start the year uh with some low numbers.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think after the the flurry of applications in 2019, everybody took a well-deserved break.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: As you guys remember, November 19th, I believe, was the last day at the$500,000 level, and everybody after that uh took time to regroup after many, many months.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very busy.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think the record it was, if not the most, one of the top three for sure, most active quarters uh in the program's history.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, between October 1st and uh you know the middle of November, it did more uh we filed more applications of the industry than almost in any other uh three-month period before.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: But those are way days past, right?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um what happened, I think, in 2020 was uh a perfect storm, if you will.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: One, uh uh it takes some time to adjust to a new price increase, and so there are folks that might have missed that window that weren't inclined to jump in when the price was nearly twice as much.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think the main drivers were twofold though.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: One, uh industry is typically very used to meeting investors in person.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not something that you do over the phone or over the internet.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we were grounded, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Starting in early March throughout the entire year.
• 13:04
  unknown: Uh uh.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe the other reason was the administration in power at that time was passing a whole bunch of uh executive orders that were very uh anti-immigrant, uh, from the H1B to additional bans.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh at some point after four years of uh those types of policies, uh it might have reached a breaking point where wait, it's 900,000, uh COVID isn't doing that well there, the colleges are shut down.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: The last thing people want to do is emigrate during the pandemic.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: It probably uh is a combination of a lot of things.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the problem is that it's still the case.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think uh we have not yet recovered as an industry.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 2020 was the worst on record from a number of investors' point of view.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think in the first nine months of the year, about 120 investors total globally is not something that no as no one could have predicted that steep a drop.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: Now, Rogelio, uh there's uh an important date coming up for EB5.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh is it June 30th?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well what'll happen what's happening then?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us about that.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for the first time since uh September of 2015, uh the reauthorization of the program was delinked from other programs that are always renewed.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right, it's always part of an omnibus bill, right?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and now it isn't.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when that you know, it isn't.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so now for the only way it can continue, we're talking about the regional center program, not the direct program, which is permanent, but the regional center program, the the the most uh popular uh of the two options.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh unless a new uh legislation is passed in both houses of Congress and signed by President Biden, uh that program, EB5 program will no longer uh uh continue.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so there's a lot of uh discussion and debate.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's some very uh thoughtful uh uh legislation in place that's being discussed in terms of reforms of the program.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: The difficulty is not so much that the industry doesn't want it to be renewed, of course we do.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's just getting anything uh approved in Congress of any any stripe.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: It can be uh voting for July.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's controversial these days.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: So after this recent uh$1.9 trillion uh response uh bill.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh oh, by the way, did did you get your stimulus check?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I'm still waiting for it.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's a mailman right here, and maybe he has it with him.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um I won't I won't be waiting holding my breath for that.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, so it's very, very tenuous to not have the comfort of being with others and having to really go down that aisle by ourselves and get that approval from both houses of Congress when when for a year now EB5 hasn't had that dramatic an impact.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a tremendous program, creates so many jobs, should be a part of uh of uh the toolkit of what we do here in America.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: But um we'll see.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: So so let me ask you this.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: Let me ask you this, Valelio.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: If if this um if EB5 gets approved on its own, not as part of Appropriations Act, right?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: So if it's not part of that, yeah, if it's its own legislation, does that mean that the the people who advocate for this program in Washington, will it be, will they have more power to influence things like changes to the program, changes to, for example, the 10,000 visa cap um to deal with the backlog, that kind of thing?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: So there's really two camps out there that are lobbying uh this bill and and see who comes out in front.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh the majority of the industry, I believe, who doesn't want to risk the worst case scenario of nothing passing and are going strictly with reform bills that both Senator Grassley and Senator Leahy uh support.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that is a reauthorization for five years, still 10,000 uh visas, no change to TEA regulations or anything of the sort, but some very well uh needed and much uh much delayed uh reforms to the program.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: But at least we get five years of certainty, which is what I think the program desperately needs.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, we've been re uh short-term reauthorizations.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think Suzanne Lizcki, you know, tremendous researcher in the industry.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: She Yeah, yeah.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: I I just gotta say, since you mentioned her name, uh just to give a shout out to Suzanne.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh her blog, lucid text, is hands down, hands down the best uh EB5 blog out there.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's my number one source for whenever I'm wondering about something in EB5, I always check her blog.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, big ups to Susan.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: And she has this thing where I think it's now we're up to reauthorization, short-term reauthorization or number 18 or 19.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of fits and starts.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and the program deserves its uh a five-year uh renewal.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: That is on one side.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: The other side wants to put more changes in.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: They want to see if they can lower the investment amount, they want to see if they can remove the TA, get more visas, and that just causes, I think, personally, more uh more complexity than the the Congress can handle.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh an EB5 program being renewed for five years, and let's see uh let's see that.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: What are the odds?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: What are the odds you think?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh where's your money?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm uh I'm an optimist in at heart uh and in action, but any any immigration bill of any kind uh in this political environment, so we'll have to see uh what IISA and those can do to uh hopefully get this.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Robert Kraft uh has been doing a tremendous job, obviously, for many years.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh question is how much longer can he keep carrying that uh on his uh on his shoulders?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: He's he's getting up there in terms of years.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: Don't worry, I'll I'll cut this out later in case in case Robert decides to listen to that.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: A very vigorous uh leader of the IUSA and has done a tremendous job.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's out of our hands.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's really up to uh which senator or congressman will put a bill up and will it get the momentum to be placed for a vote?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a lot of moving parts with infrastructure coming up and other big uh policies.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll see.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: So staying on the same continent, but moving a little bit farther north.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we had a conversation the other day.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: Ahmad said, What is up with Canada?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Why why do they keep making it more and more difficult?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they say they are a nation of immigrants, they are publicly saying we need a million, what is it, a million new immigrants a year, something like that.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um and yeah, maybe you can explain a little bit what you mean by that phrase, Ahmad.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know, why are they making it harder and harder?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then let's see if if Stefan, because this is right in his uh wheelhouse, let's see if he can uh provide an effective answer to that designated Canadian.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Canada's a country that prides itself on loving immigrants and wanting more immigrants and being built by immigrants and so on.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: But uh when you come to practice, doesn't really show.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, you have Canada has like a billion immigration programs with a pilot program opening every two months, maybe.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's insane.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, when you look at the criteria needed, be it for investment migration in the Quebec investor program or the PNP's provincial nominee programs per uh province, or even the pilot programs like we have in British Columbia or skilled migration itself, people are finding it harder and harder to get to Canada.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: People still go there, they still bring in a lot of people.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the criteria, I mean, even if you want to look at a skilled migrant, which is a skilled migrant, which will go there and maybe work as an accountant or work as uh let's say uh quality assurance person, to get to Canada you need at least a master's and education, you need the uh English level better than most Canadians or French.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean they want everybody to come in, but they don't want everybody to stay.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the the image we're getting from working in the industry with Canada.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what is going on?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: So for years the industry uh has been trying to p you know lobby the federal government to reopen.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Program.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: The federal immigrant investor program that was closed uh practically a decade ago now.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't feel I I haven't felt that uh this government had any uh it wasn't a priority for them to reopen an immigrant investor program.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they had other priorities in terms of immigration, other programs, etc.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: The difficulty always with entrepreneur programs is that uh it's the scalability for the industry is always problematic, and it requires a certain amount of presence, physical presence that not all entrepreneurs or investors will want to have, right?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh before you qualify for PR.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: Can I in general you have to be present?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you you I remember um a couple of years ago, Stefan, in your column in IMI, Tajik's Take, you wrote an article entitled Startup Visas.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: Governments want them, but your clients don't.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's some truth to that.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's some truth to that because obviously, as a government, you want to look good and you want to look like a job creator and you want to look like someone who is bringing in a bunch of highly qualified fintech cutting-edge specialists.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um so you design these very hopeful, or you have a very hopeful profile of the type of immigrant that you want to attract, but maybe as a country, you're not as you're not as hot as you think you are, necessarily.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so you can have these, you can have these programs.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't mean that there are people around the world who are willing to jump through all those hoops to come to Canada, for example.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, obviously, uh there's a lot more restrictions placed on the programs.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's much more difficult to qualify for a business program uh in Canada than you know, Portuguese program or you know, a lot of other options around the world.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: Canada is for one, you know, if you really want to come to Canada and you have chosen Canada, then you can make the effort.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: And if you decide to live there for extended period of time, you know, maybe not the whole half of the year, but you don't need necessarily to be a tax resident for PR, you need to be there two to five two years out of five years.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a requirement.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: As well, if you want to become a citizen, you need to be physically present.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's more strict than it used to be.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: So uh it's not open to everyone.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Then they're not looking to attract as many investors as or capital as other places, they're more facilitate nowadays than anything.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And now a word from our sponsors.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, my name is Rogelio Castares, and I'm the CEO and founder of the Global Residency and Citizenship Group, headquartered here in Miami, Florida.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're the only U.S.-based investment firm that provides a globally diversified platform of mobility assets acquired through venture capital, real estate, and private equity investments here in the United States, as well as in over 20 destinations around the world, including Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: We've read a lot this last year about how there is a massive increase in demand for investment migration.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then we've sort of questioned whether that demand has been able to translate into actual applications.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: And what we've read a lot about in the news, especially for some of the well-known, very big firms that appear sometimes in Bloomberg, Financial Times, etc., they they talk of a massive increase in inquiries.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: And they've they often cite very round numbers.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: So they'll say, oh, we've seen a 300% rise in Indians applying to investment migration this year.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the articles uh in the FT this weekend stated that the company in question would not give out the underlying data.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: So do you think that there is a mismatch between, you know, yes, there's a huge increase in inquiries, but for pandemic reasons, let's say, that there has been there's a gap between demand and the actual ability to supply these programs.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh I understand that you know, without an increase in inquiries, okay, that you can mention that.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: No, we talked, we we talked about this, Relio.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's inquiries.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Inquiries is what happens after a murder.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Understood.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Understood.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh inquiries, that's uh to internalize that.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh without an increase in interest, sorry, an increase in inquiries, there can't be any increase in application.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they're one and the same.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I only question uh why not just discuss the ink the actual figures.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: No matter how much interest there is, unless there is actual investors uh being uh helped and processed, if you will.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, someone told me someone told me from one of these companies that they had reported in the press that that there had been a 200% increase in Nigerians uh inquiry.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: But the 200% increase was from like four four to twelve or something like that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I actually remember that case, Christian.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was one to three.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and that's you know, maybe that's just uh an industry thing.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there is not a lot of transparency on actual numbers, uh, market share, etc.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's maybe a subject for another day.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh probably another podcast we can uh we can get several, several podcasts.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but you know what, it can all be on us as an industry.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if if Greece, for example, was practically shut down and others weren't able to process, like I'll I'll speak of what I know best, which is EV5.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh all these consulates have been closed.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been impossible to move forward and even with an approval, secure that green card and move to the states.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so that you know has a very chilling effect on demand, and and and they did it for safety reasons, which we understand, but that certainly was not helpful.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that that applies to all countries and all embassies and councils, I would I would imagine.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think 2020 was 2020.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I'm glad that I think we're all glad that it's behind us.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see what we can do now with this new momentum as the pandemic lifts and people get to travel again and realize that they never want to go through this type of experience ever.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: The thing is, when you were talking about inquiries, not inquiries, that increase in inquiries is does have an underlying um, let's say, afterthought, which is our industry, our services are not that well known.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you don't go on to Uber Eats and type in immigration, get Henlian partners.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have to actually search for it.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So by getting more people asking you about, for example, the Greece Gold and Visa Porto, that means that awareness is growing.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you're reaching people in the market that never talked to you before.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually reaching out to you.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you know that your market actually needs this more.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now they need the service, they need somebody to provide to them.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, maybe an increase of 300 to 1 to 3 won't make a difference.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'll have an increase in inquiries of 10,000 and nobody will sign now.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think for the future, this is a good indication that more people are coming to know about investment migration, about the options they have, and so on.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think, Radha?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 100%.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh from the work that we're doing to establish relationships with uh development companies and immigration attorneys around the world, you all say the same thing.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Americans, Americans, you know, thank God for Americans.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm paraphrasing here a little bit, but they are getting direct inquiries, not through you know established companies.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: They're just picking up the phone and going on the internet and calling and emailing uh these developers.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're many of them don't even have any formalized marketing program or a website, yes, but not anything that's structured.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: And to be receiving inbound uh inquiries that way is uh is a testament to the the awareness and the need.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: I I tend to agree with uh what both of you just said, but what is the implication of that?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: Does that mean that once things are sort of back to normal and borders are open, that we will see massive backlogs?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: If I can answer that, uh obviously with the cr with the pandemic, uh economies around the world were hit, right?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: So you know you expect during that period to have uh a decrease in in demand.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: But as economy picks up again, and I think the remote working and the fact that so many markets are below potential already, um, we're gonna have another increase.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: What do you mean when you say so many markets are below what what do you mean so many markets are below potential?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: What do you mean?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for example, you talk about Nigeria, like a Nigerian market, for example, it's an emerging market.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, you have inquiries, did I say it correctly?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Inquiries from uh from markets over there, but it probably doesn't represent the actual uh potential that you can represent, right?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of push factors for Nigerians to either relocate or get a second residency or a second passport.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh we don't have that many yet uh markets that you can say have reached potential.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: For example, uh you have China, you had Iran, you had perhaps the UAE.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh some of even India is not there yet.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you see the difference between China and India, and you know India has not reached potential yet.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: No, there's still so many markets, so many markets that are far from potential.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of it, as you can see, when people you know throw out numbers like 300% increase and things like that, but you might think it's not backed by numbers.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, a lot of it is hype.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: You make a very interesting point, Stefan, about that that there are a limited number of what we might call mature investment migration markets, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned China, to some extent, uh it's the case in the UAE, although China's probably farther along than uh Iran probably had its peak uh a decade ago, maybe something like that.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: And India, yeah, not even close.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, no African country, with the exception of maybe Egypt, is really close to um realizing its its full potential.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: So where do you what is what what is the next market that's gonna reach maturity and what is the next huge growth market?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's still a lot of markets that can grow, a lot of them.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you have places like Indonesia, for example, that have huge potential that you know produce very limited amount of of uh of uh you know investor visa, investor clients.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and don't forget, all these markets are growing, so the number of high net worth individuals will grow every year.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, for me, the this industry is still at infancy.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the biggest issue uh as we noted before was you know with the EB5, if it's not renewed or being kind of uh you know neutered, and uh the Cyprus program being out of the window, the biggest difficulty is finding supply of quality products to sell to uh you know to your clients.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: But so so what about because what what what we've spoken about before, what we spoke about last episode is that you know now that you mention the markets that have huge potential, you're mentioning those markets that are emerging, right?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: But we've kind of hypothesized uh on this podcast before that even more interesting perhaps than those emerging, fast-growing economies are the is the growing awareness in already mature economies, uh like the rich countries, of the availability of residency and citizenship by investment.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think obviously that's what Rogelio with his new venture is hoping to capitalize on.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: I think that the United States, for example, for me it's a more interesting market than Indonesia.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: In Indonesia, you have fewer than 100,000 millionaires, and in the United States you have 20 million something millionaires, right?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so if they if their eyes are opened to the possibility and the need for residency and citizenship by investment, that in sum has far greater potential, I would say.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's let's go back to let's go back to the study you did.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the guest IMI Daily did a very in-depth analysis of the top ten most promising markets, right?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: For the future.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: That was an in-depth study that analyzed things quite quantitatively and qualitatively.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the US wasn't on that list, it was 10 countries.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's right.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what was the number one country on that list?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Vietnam.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Vietnam.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: The reason that the United States is not on that list is because the so I say that the United States has enormous potential.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: But that doesn't, that doesn't mean the same, that's not the same as saying that it's an eligible market right now.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because as you've pointed out in the past, you need to do that groundwork.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: You need to do that, you know, go out physically in the market, meet people, make people aware of the need for these types of services.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: If that is, if that is, if you're able to do that in the US market, if you're able to spread uh sort of, if you can evangelize uh and and spread the good word of investment migration in the US market, then yes, there then the sky is the limit.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, then you can then the market size of investment migration can easily surpass$100 billion a year.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: 100 billion with a B.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: We've gone a lot further in 2020, but there was nowhere near the same awareness in the US market for of the availability of these types of solutions.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's nothing like what you see in the emerging markets, right?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: But if you can make that happen, then for sure the US will blow just about every other market out of the water.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Vietnam.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh speaking of Vietnam, the number one market, I was on the phone yesterday with uh a fan of the show, uh Patrick Pavlik.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's a veteran of EB5, uh, both in China.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's in Kaifu Investments, right?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was in Vietnam as well.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's back in his hometown of uh of Cleveland.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: He was thrilled to hear uh about the Slovakia uh news that you broke, I guess what, a couple weeks ago, uh, on uh their citizenship through ancestry.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: But what he was telling me is that Vietnam now has passed a regulation or law that won't allow any travel overseas without severe quarantines and paperwork and permissions until the middle of 2022.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that was announced, I think, about a month or so ago.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: The Vietnamese now uh are that whole industry is quite shaken by that news, understandably.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: My my college roommate, uh one of my closest friends, is Vietnamese.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: I've been probably 15 times to Vietnam, visited him on most of those occasions.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he told me his cousin was patient number one or patient zero in Vietnam.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: Apparently, there there was a ton of you know social media blowback because they're you know from an upper class type of family, and and uh you know, the common man in Vietnam just couldn't understand how somebody somebody could return from Paris Fashion Week and bring back COVID, right?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe uh if I were, and I'm not Vietnamese, I don't know if you guys can tell.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: If I were them, I would say, hey, do you ever want to go through this again?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Your friend, uh college roommate, I bet he regrets uh not going for that great golden visa three years ago.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right now, right?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you never know, it's like an insurance policy.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to be late to get it.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think by and large, if we can project that very uh powerful message that why go through this again if you don't have to?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: One of the questions that I'm left with following 2020, and with the the sudden and disruptive and and uh to some to a lot of people, no doubt, heart-wrenching development in Cyprus, uh brutal, immediate, permanent closure of the Cyprus Citizenship by Investment Program.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: Between one and two billion euros a year was going into that program.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: A ton of capital, right?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: And what what happens to those applicants that would have gone to Cyprus?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: Where are they going now?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: Is is uh Malta, Malta's main policy, is that the the natural substitute?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a direct substitute, obviously.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: You have to part with a great deal more money in donations that you'll never get back, but it is the only other direct route now to EU citizenship.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'll put this question to all of you.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: Where will the demand that was there previously for the Cyprus CIP, where is that gonna get rechanneled now?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think the the wealthier ones are gonna you know go for uh Malta.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the rest, um I would say Montenegro is gonna pick up some of that demand.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um and probably Portugal.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I have to disagree about Malta.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think Malta's a knee-jerk reaction.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing about Malta is that the residency requirement makes it an entirely different program from the Cyprus citizenship by investment program.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was easy, you get it, you stay home, and that's it, you're an EU citizen wherever you are.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think Portugal may play a bigger role because it's I mean, uh a program that leads to EU citizenship.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the Caribbean will have a chance to come in and take the bulk.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have Montenegro, you have what you recently announced, Christian, a possibility of North Macedonia opening one, which is very interesting as well.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: We'll talk about that in a second.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: That'll be our last topic.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the Caribbean are in full position to get because I'm talking again, I'm gonna go with my experience in the MENA region.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the passport, and it's about the passport or getting the passport conveniently.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Malta's no longer convenient.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Portugal takes a long time.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have the Caribbean states which give you a good passport and you don't really have to go anywhere, and they're the next best best choice, in my opinion.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think they're gonna cover most of the gap.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big coup for them if they can.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: You need to point out that uh you know, Cyprus program is a two it was a two million euro program, whereas the Caribbean real estate it's two hundred thousand dollars pretty much.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not the same people that apply to one and the other one.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: So if somebody wants just a good passport that can have visa-free travel to Europe, obviously the Caribbeans are the leading you know possibilities price-wise and everything.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to have you know freedom of movement in the European Union, that's where you're gonna look at uh Cyprus, or you're gonna look at Montenegro, or you're gonna look at Malta, or you're gonna look at Portugal.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it it doesn't hit the same uh market segment.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: I I I uh I'm more on your side of this, Stefan.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think that I think that Cyprus and the Caribbean are targeting completely different demographics.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that if what you want is if you if you want a route to EU citizenship, today your your options are basically Malta and Portugal, right?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: Those are the two realistic routes to citizenship in the EU.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: If you just want if you just want mobility, in if you want to be able to travel visa free within your Europe then any Caribbean passport or a Montenegrin passport will do.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I I but that was also true in the past, right?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: So that if what you were looking for was simply visa-free access to Schengen, you wouldn't invest uh two and a half million in Cyprus.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: You would just invest two hundred thousand in the Caribbean.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: No?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: Am I wrong?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I'm with you.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, why did they take the Cyprus citizenship?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is it basically because they want to live in the EU?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they want to live in the EU, you still have the options of Greece and Portugal, and anybody who lives can apply for citizenship eventually.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean Malta's MRVP did have uh something called the long-term residency, which allows you to reside in other different uh EU countries, and you can always apply for an EU blue card and so on, if you have a permanent residency in an EU state.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the thing is the Cyprus citizenship, I think it's bigger than yes, it's not the same as the Caribbean, obviously, because it's on a different scale and comes with different benefits.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the people who take Cyprus residency have bigger plans than just either traveling the EU or residing in it.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: They have investments for they need financial freedom and so on, something which Cyprus gives it to them.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: People in Arabic countries and Chinese in China and East Asian countries, African, they do have a difficult time moving money around.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: EU citizens don't typically have that problem.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: Alright, one final thing that we're gonna talk about because we're running out of time, but we have to mention this today because it's such a piece of bombshell news.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um North Macedonia, it looks like they are launching a citizenship by investment program.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's not, as far as I can tell, I'm not I'm not gonna go on record and say it's 100% official yet, because I have seen no formal announcement to the to that effect from the government.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: But what I have seen is that in December 2019, so a year and three months ago, they did they took what I consider the most important step in opening a citizenship by investment program, which is they, you know, how we've talked about this before, how so many countries around the world have a provision in their nationality acts that permits them to naturalize individuals of who they consider of particular merit or of special interest to the state, they can they can naturalize them at their discretion.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_03: What the difference between so if you want to take it a step further and make it a citizenship by investment program, which is something that's formulaic and standardized, you need to define what special merit means.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: You need to say, we will consider it special merit if you contribute such and such an amount within such and such a time frame and this or that type of investment vehicle.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that is what North Macedonia did actually right before they changed the name.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: So it was the Republic of Macedonia that changed its uh citizenship act, and and it was it's been amended now by North Macedonia, and they're saying if you invest 200,000 euros in one of these funds that we will designate, and you pass due diligence checks and so on, then we'll give you and your family citizenship in North Macedonia.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: The reason so we've been hearing talks for many years about North Macedonia potentially opening a program, and and we have seen these legal changes in the past, but it's moved a step closer this week because I I became aware of it because Harvey Law Group issued a press release in in um Thai media, uh wherein they announced that they had become the exclusive master compliance agent for the Asian continent.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: And now there is an official website.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: It looks a little bit unofficial because there's no.gov domain name, but even the main website of the of the North Macedonian government is not.gov.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: So uh I'm not gonna hold a lack of a.gov domain name against them.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: In any case, what what's on that page?
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_03: It says, okay, these are the uh Harvey Law Group is the master compliance agent for Asia.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: Then you have another master agent for the Middle East and the CIS countries, and that is some company uh that I think none of us have ever heard of before.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_03: I've the name escapes me at the moment, but I'm sure we'll hear a lot more from them in the coming weeks.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then a number of more, let's say, household names in the industry uh that are also have also been appointed agents, sub-agents in in the Middle East.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now, obviously the opening of so so that this all means that North Macedonia has moved a lot closer to actually launching a formal citizenship by investment program, and that's very interesting because of what they what they offer.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we mentioned just before North Macedonia and Montenegro are offering in many ways the same thing.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: They they both have visa-free access to Schengen, they both have 124 um visa-free destinations worldwide, and they are both in advanced EU accession talks.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: So they're essentially selling a lot of the same benefits to prospective applicants.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: However, and this is important, North Macedonia is saying come to North Macedonia and the investment amount is 200,000.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: Now, to be fair, it's a donation, as far as I understand.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: They're calling it an investment, but the government is under no obligation to return that capital.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_03: So effectively it it's a donation, yeah, um, of 200,000.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas in Montenegro, it is an investment of 350,000 into real estate, which is, at least in theory, recoverable uh after a number of years have passed.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: So, what do you think, guys, the uh the impact in uh on the competitive position of Montenegro will be uh with the potential and now increasingly likely introduction of a formal CIP in North Macedonia?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's the the perspective point will be uh how fast can any of those countries ascend to the EU?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: We all know Montenegro is you know tattooed as the next one to ascend to the EU.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, some of us might have accepted expected to that have happened you know in 2021.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh is it gonna be 2025, 2023, you know, never.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's basically the whole gamble, right?
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, same thing for Macedonia.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so they have certain chapters that they need to close, and it's sometimes more complicated than others.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: So uh you you you're putting money on potential because obviously on paper it's the same thing, Montenegro or North Macedonia is the same thing as a Caribbean passport.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's the Schengen area and it's Russia.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: What you're paying is for potential.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's it for today, folks.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_03: But we'll be back soon with another episode of the Mobility Standard.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: In the meantime, I encourage you, the listener, to send us the questions you have about investment migration.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: If we're able to answer them, we'll do so during our next episode.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: I want to thank my co-host, the inimitable Ahmad Abbas and the illustrious Rogelio Casares, and remind you to follow our work on imidaily.com, the world's number one publication for investment migration, home to the internet.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: Greatest collection of investment migration data, real estate, expert opinion, and the intelligence you need to be a successful investment migration professional.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for listening.