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The Citizenship Route Everyone Ignores—How to Get It · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a wealthy investor andor entrepreneur and you're looking for a second citizenship, you probably already know about citizenship by investment in the Caribbean, in the Pacific, in Turkey.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're not interested in it, or maybe you've already done it, and you're looking for something else.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's citizenship by standard naturalization, but you have to actually relocate to a country or be in the limbo, like some programs have promised you citizenship, but they change the rules many years later.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's one route that people don't talk about, and that is citizenship by merit, also called citizenship by exception.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is, when a country allows you to bring your business, hire employees, invest in infrastructure, invest in real estate, contribute to the country in a certain way, and by the name exception or merit, you don't have to, for example, learn the language, wait many years.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And multiple countries around the world have that article in the law where the president, prime minister, ministry of interior, or any other high-level ministry in the government can give you citizenship in exchange for your contribution.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on the level of citizenship that you want to get, if your goal is visa-free travel, you want to live in the European Union, be an EU citizen, we're talking about higher levels of contribution.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: For example, Austria has a famous citizenship by merit program.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna cost you a lot.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of effort, it's a big business, it's a lot of time invested into Austria, but it depends on your goals.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're worth$100 million, you're from the United States, you want to get a second passport in a real country, for example, and you want to give a plan B to yourself and your family, Austria might work.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Malta, traditionally having citizenship by investment, now has citizenship by merit.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: A bit more vague, a bit more paperwork, a bit longer time frame, but it's definitely possible.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And also other countries like the Republic of Serbia and the Balkans.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've never heard of it.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a country right next to the European Union.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is not part of the European Union, it is a candidate to join, and they also have citizenship by merit.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: You bring your business, you bring contributions, you bring a favor to the country, to the economy, to the people in some way, and in exchange, they give you citizenship.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: As opposed to how it works in the Caribbean, for example, citizens by merit in all countries that offer it have no distinction between a citizen by investment or by merit and a citizen by naturalization or because your dad is from there.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to the embassy and you get a passport the same day if you want to renew it.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have the same rights.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do due diligence every five or ten years in order to renew your passport.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's no conditional citizenship as well.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is full rights from the beginning.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, even though the process might be a bit more hassled than just paying for the citizenship, like in the case of the Caribbean or in the case of Turkey, you invest, you get citizenship, there's more documentation.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: They want to make sure that you're a high-profile individual, you're absolutely clean, obviously, and you're going to bring good value to the country in terms of perception as well.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because most of the time, in all countries that offer citizenship by merit, your name will get published as a citizen.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the government will see your name has become a citizen today by this specific article.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they have to make sure that the value and the profile fits the kind of people that they want to get citizenship.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not talked about that much.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's very strategic.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can get a solid citizenship, not just for visa-free travel, but also for a country that can protect you in case of war.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: For example, Serbia, Austria, and all these other countries that offer citizenship by merit once the Dubai issues, once the UE, the Gulf issue started, they pulled out their citizens, including citizens by merit.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can also use this second passport that you get as a potential plan B to get residency somewhere else.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's not only citizenship by investment, it's not only citizenship by descent or citizenship by standard naturalization.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: There are other ways as long as you have value that you can contribute to a country.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a final note, it doesn't have to be specifically a future investment.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: It could be also a past contribution, past business, past employees that you've hired that now give you that merit or qualify as a contribution in order for you to get citizenship.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: One well-known example is Slovakia, a small country in the European Union.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: They have a really high threshold, but a hundred employees in Slovakia qualifies you technically for citizenship by exception or citizenship by merit.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been building a huge business, for example, I know an Indian billionaire who's been building a construction business and a car production business in Slovakia, he now qualifies for citizenship by merit because he's been building that for the last 10 or 20 years.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing in multiple other countries, even in Latin America, it might be a little bit more vague, it might require a little bit more documentation, but you can get citizenship through an article specifically because of the contributions to the infrastructure, contributions to land or development of that land.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Paraguay, for example, hugely popular for citizenship and at least residency by investment.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: They love when you buy land and you develop that land and you give jobs to local people to develop and to grow crops on your land, which could then lead, if the contribution is high enough, to citizenship in a strategic medical country.