In this article, I’ll cover several possible countries I’m considering for my “country B”, which will be the country I will acquire a second passport from. It’s important to understand that, per the five flags model, I will not be living in the country where I get this passport. I’ll be living in country A which we discussed last time, not country B. So my passport country B doesn’t have to be nice, friendly, enjoyable, or livable. All it needs is a government that’s not too insane and that allows foreigners to acquire passports relatively quickly.
Why get a second passport?
Many people will give you many reasons, but the biggest reason for me is that down the road, your country’s government could move in a frightened or totalitarian direction and limit travel for it’s citizens. It could even block all travel to outside of your country, effectively trapping you inside.
I don’t expect the United States to do this, but you never know. A second passport is a very good insurance policy.
Another reason is banking. Most countries dislike banking with Americans, because our government is so powerful and intrusive, it forces banks to file all kinds of paperwork if they have American customers. As a result, many banks around the world simply don’t take American customers, or jack up their fees for Americans.
If I have a second passport, I’m no longer an American, at least to that bank, so I won’t have this problem.
A final reason is taxes. The US is one of the only countries on planet Earth that taxes you even if you don’t live in the country and don’t consume any of the country’s resources to earn a living. It’s insane. If, as an American, you have a second passport, you have the option of renouncing your citizenship and freeing yourself from this bullshit. I don’t ever plan on doing this, but at least I want the option if the US goes totally insane down the road, and starts jacking up taxes on expatriates, which is entirely possible.
Just to answer the question I know is coming, you could move to another country and renounce your citizenship from your home country without getting a second passport, but if you did that you would be forever locked into your new country and could likely never travel internationally (unless you did so as a criminal, and you don’t want to do that). So for those of you who are actively planning on renouncing your citizenship, you’re going to need a second passport.
There are three ways to get a second passport:
1. Move to a new country, or at least spend a lot of time there. Then after a while, ask for one. This can take 2-10 years or longer, depending on the country.
2. Prove ancestry in that country. This is the fastest way to do it, and often can take just a few months, but it obviously isn’t an option for most people. I’ll discus this further in a minute.
3. Spend a lot of money (starting at low six figures) and invest there in assets or real estate. This is called “economic citizenship.” This is another fast way to do it; you could have a passport in your hands within 2-6 months. Neil Strauss did this. In his book Emergency, he bought a house for $250,000 in St. Kitts and Nevis (a small Caribbean nation) and they gave him a passport.
I will not be doing economic citizenship, since it’s a direct violation of the five flags model. I don’t want my residence or my investments in my country B. I want my residence in country A and my money in country C or D. All I want is that passport. That’s it. By having your citizenship and your residence in the same country, you are at risk for that country screwing with you in seriously bad ways, as what happened to John McAfee.
Listed below is my current shortlist of options I’m looking at for my country B. Note that laws often change, so what I describe below may not be the same a few years from now. Also note that most countries won’t give you passport/citizenship if you have criminal record in your home country, so behave yourself.
Argentina. They love new citizens down there. If you’re there for six months out of the calendar year for two years in a row, they’ll give you a passport if you ask. They’ve actually naturalized illegal aliens without them asking. Pretty funny. Argentina has a good passport too, which offers near-full European access.
For a country with a requirement like that, you could move there for two years, get your passport, then move to your true country A. It’s possible I may end up doing something like this.
Various European countries if you can prove ancestry there. If you can prove your parents or grandparents were citizens, often these countries will give you citizenship. For example, many Americans get Canadian citizenship just by showing that both of their parents were born in Canada. It’s a huge bureaucratic hassle and a lot of paperwork since governments are so inefficient, but worth it if you can pull it off. These countries include: Italy, Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, Bosnia, Serbia, Greece, Poland, and several others I’m forgetting.
I will be giving Italy a shot. I’m visiting there later this year. If you can show citizenship back to three generations, they’ll give you a passport, and I’ve got lots of direct relatives on my mom’s side who were legal Italian citizens. The trick is that it must be an unbroken line of citizens. Not sure if I can pull this off, but I’ll know by the end of this year. Otherwise, I’ll choose one of the other countries listed in this article.
Dominican Republic. Just put $5000 in a savings account there, hang out there a few weeks a year, and in just two years a passport is yours if you want it. Very nice. The passport isn’t as good as Argentina’s though.
Peru. Pretty much the same process as Argentina.
Paraguay. Like the Dominican Republic, except that you don’t need to put $5000 in an account, but you have to wait three years instead of two.
Russia. This one is a little complicated, but if you start a business there and pay a tax, you can get a passport within three years. I honestly don’t know how good a Russian passport is though. This also violates the five flags model, since you want your business based in country C, not country B. Though again, you could set up a shell company in Russia and set up your real company in country C.
Uruguay. This is the best passport of all the countries listed here, but the requirements are a pain in the ass. You basically need to move and live there full time for five years. If you’re legally married and do this with your wife or a live-in family member, they’ll drop this to three years.
Again though, living in Uruguay for five years, getting your passport, and then moving to your real country A is a perfectly viable option if you’re not in a rush. It might be worth doing for Uruguay’s amazing passport, particularly if you plan on travelling internationally a lot for the rest of your life as I do.
If you have over $100,000 to spend or invest, and don’t plan on fallowing the five flags model like I am, the following nations offer economic citizenship: Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, Malta, Cyprus, and a few others.
In the next article in this series, I’ll be discussing the three key aspects of what makes a country ideal for your residence, passport, or business. Stay tuned.
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I recommend that all readers do additional outside research. While flag theory is a very nice concept worth pursuing it is a lot more difficult than many make it seem.
For example in the case of this article:
1)Banks that do not want United States citizens are not going to be fooled by your second passport. This is because passports say where you are born and anyone born in the United States is (unless they renounced) a US citizen. Additionally, most if not all banks will ask you for your citizenships on their paperwork. You could commit fraud and lie, but that has risks.
2)Most of these programs are not as east to do as you make them out to be. Pretty much all countries take 6 months + to process the paperwork for citizenship. In Latin America the time is often longer. Also most of these countries have caught on and now require you to demonstrate more real ties to the country than just have residency and spending a few weeks to months there.
3) Buying citizenship in one of the “investment” programs does not really violate flag theory. It is just a means to an end. After 5 years in most of the programs you can sell your “investments” or move your business and you are good to go. For those that make real money it makes way more sense to buy a program with a clearly defined rules than deal with developing world bureaucracy.
Absolutely. I’m only scratching the surface of a very complex issue here.
Again correct. Flag theory is complicated and difficult.
On overstatement. We’re both generalizing. A second passport and money/investments outside of the US will indeed help for many banks. Depends on the bank, county, etc. It’s also not just banks we’re talking about; it’s foreign banks, investment houses, legal firms, brokerage firms, and other businesses that will be easier to work with with a 2nd passport if you’re an American.
As of today’s date, what I listed above is accurate as stated for those specific countries. But yes, of course governments are slow and getting a passport takes time, usually months. Lots of bullshit paperwork too. I stated as much.
Again, what I stated above is true as stated for the specific countries I listed. Dominican Republic, for example, doesn’t really give a shit about that. They want more citizens.
You’re not in violation after your sell your investments, correct. But during those 5 years, you are. So if you’re not worried about that and not in a big rush, you could indeed do what you recommend. Invest, wait, get the passport, wait some more, then eventually sell the investments and put them in a different country.
Correct. As is always the case, if you have a lot of money to spend all of this stuff is easier.
Hi Caleb,
In part 1, you said that your country B should not tax international income. Are there any other requirements you have for your country B? Perhaps the requirements you listed for your country A? Apologies if you’ve already addressed this.
Cheers,
Ryan
I just realized that in part 1 I mis-labeled countries A and B because I’m a dumbass. I just went back and corrected it to avoid confusion.
So to be clear: country A = where you live, country B = where your passport/citizenship is.
So for your country B, there are no requirements other than what you stated. You won’t be living there so it doesn’t matter that much.
Optional requirements are which countries offer the best passports that offer visa-free travel to the most countries. Uruguay’s passport is the best among the ones I listed above since it offers the most visa-free travel to the most countries.
So if you plan on traveling internationally a great deal, ideally you want your 2nd passport to be as good as you can get it, but if you don’t it doesn’t really matter too much. You can still go places even if not visa-free. As an American I’m required to get a visa every time I go to China and Australia for example. It’s not a big deal; I can still go there.
It’s also helpful to have your country A in mind when selecting your country B, since perhaps having a your country B passport will allow you to stay in country A longer than your current passport allows.
The most important aspect of country B is how long it takes (and how much it costs) to get that damn passport. The rest are minor details.
Do you think that there is a minimum asset amount that below that amount, this kind of strategy no longer makes sense? Does it makes sense of a 55 year old retiree with $1,000,000 in assets ? 2,000,000? or maybe more? If I only have $500,000 in assets for example, I would think that the expense of setting such a scheme up, might overwhelm the potential savings to be had.
Which strategy to you mean? Moving away or five flags specifically?
“”Which strategy to you mean? Moving away or five flags specifically?””
Moving away in general. The 5 flags strategy is probably overkill for someone who is retired and will just have investment income. Let’s assume that I would be collecting a pension from a USA company. I would move my portable investments to a 2nd country that treated them better. And I would spend most of my time in a 3rd country. So is there a minimum level of assets to where this strategy is overkill?
It depends on why you’re doing it.
Five flags is overkill for perhaps 95% of the population, retired or not. Even I’m not going to follow the model exactly. Five flags is a huge fucking hassle of massive proportions.
Therefore, the only reason you would do such a thing is if you had MANY compelling reasons, not just one or two.
If you’re doing it just to save money on taxes (for example), and that’s pretty much your only reason, then yeah, it’s overkill and you shouldn’t do it.
But if you’re doing it because you want to save money on taxes AND you want to save money on lifestyle AND you love traveling more than life itself AND you want to protect your assets AND you like having sex with women in other countries AND you think the West is going to collapse in your lifetime AND you you have strong libertarian politics and big government makes you sick AND there are significant portions of your current country and/or culture that you strongly disagree with, then it’s not overkill and you should get to work on it right away.
That last paragraph describes me, so I’m going to do it (a variation of it anyway; three or four flags instead of five). The question is if it describes you too.
“”
Caleb Jones commented on Moving Out of the Country Part 3 – Getting a Second Passport.
in response to Blackdragon:
In this article, I’ll cover several possible countries I’m considering for my “country B”, which will be the country I will acquire a second passport from. It’s important to understand that, per the five flags model, I will not be living in the country where I get this passport. I’ll be living in country A which … Continue reading Moving Out of the Country Part 3 – Getting a Second Passport
It depends on why you’re doing it.
Five flags is overkill for perhaps 95% of the population, retired or not. Even I’m not going to follow the model exactly. Five flags is a huge fucking hassle of massive proportions.
Therefore, the only reason you would do such a thing is if you had MANY compelling reasons, not just one or two.
If you’re doing it just to save money on taxes (for example), and that’s pretty much your only reason, then yeah, it’s overkill and you shouldn’t do it.
But if you’re doing it because you want to save money on taxes AND you want to save money on lifestyle AND you love traveling more than life itself AND you want to protect your assets AND you like having sex with women in other countries AND you think the West is going to collapse in your lifetime AND you you have strong libertarian politics and big government makes you sick AND there are significant portions of your current country and/or culture that you strongly disagree with, then it’s not overkill and you should get to work on it right away.””
Well I certainly want to save money on taxes and lifestyle AND want to protect my assets AND think the west is going to collapse AND Despise our fascist leftist big government nanny society. But I could care less about travel and sex with women in other countries. I am a hard core beta male and I am perfectly fine with that.
Then I’d say its worth it for you. Go for it.
That’s very sad.
You’d be much happier if you went 2.0 instead.
“You’d be much happier if you went 2.0 instead.”
Maybe. My wife is still in good shape and I have her trained to treat me right. I don’t need or want adventures. I’m all about the low hassle, low drama.
Heh. If you’re trying to defend the beta male lifestyle, you’re in the wrong place. If you’re legally married and monogamous, you experience far more hassle and drama in a typical 12-month period than I do.
Really enjoying this series…
So if I am in country C for example, hanging out, or maybe even in USA, and I have my Country B passport with me ‘just in case’ and then the sh1t hits the fan and I need to leave using my B passport – wont they stop me when they see I do not have a Visa stamp for entry?
That’s a damn good question and I don’t have an answer for it. However, I would always use my country B passport for entry back into the US rather than my American one. It just safer that way, all around.
Once I get my 2nd passport, my American passport will go into an archive and I’ll never use that thing again (unless I have no other choice).
So I’m a lucky bastard and didn’t even knew it haha, being carrying the Uruguayan passport since 4 years ago, but didn’t had a clue was a good one for travelers. I also have Venezuela passport but that one have a bad name lately
There is only one report on the subject that tells you all the countries someone with a heavy criminal record can apply for citizenship based on exceptional contribution or to simply get a permit to reside: http://www.stephanetconsulting.com/buy-report
There are 2-dozen countries that you can apply for citizenship by exceptional contributing, in which case they don’t require you to provide a police record or to declare your past offences and not be required to have lived beforehand. These are not well known and don’t expect to get Switzerland in that list.
Contrary to Citizenship by investment schemes like St Kitts or Dominica, these are not straightforward and very much case-to case. But I contacted lawyers in one of the European countries and from my understanding its been pretty much happening for the past year. He quoted a 120 000 Euro investment. I’m still evaluating what I want to do, but I suggest to buy the report. You can get a free preview of the content first to give you an idea.
Well done, Pegolicious!I am also doing my part by inhaling this chocolate peanut butter ball my sister-in-law just dropped off (along with a few Hershey kisses for good measure…) Off to buy some eggnog…