Donald Trump
Emily Shugerman, Noah Kirsch
Tue, September 6, 2022, 4:46 AM·8 min read
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Donald Trump
45th President of the United States
For years, David Lesperance, an immigration attorney who helps wealthy Americans obtain second citizenships, saw a similar type of client: millionaire MAGA-heads, Silicon Valley libertarians, new-money crypto investors—basically, rich guys who wanted out of the U.S. tax system. But in recent months, he’s seen an increase in a surprising clientele: moneyed liberals who are terrified about the political future of the country and want an escape plan.
“I was on vacation two weeks ago, I answered emails and I set up phone calls for when I came back,” Lesperance said. “In the last week I had nine new inquiries. Typically I may get one or two a week.”
So-called “golden visas” have become a white-hot status symbol among the ultra-rich in recent years. Some 30 countries now offer citizenship or residency by investment, which allows individuals to live and work in a foreign country simply by spending a lot of money there—a second citizenship starts at several hundred thousand dollars and stretches to several million. For a time, the clientele was also fairly conservative, driven by fears of a pending liberal “wealth tax” or—for the tech bros—a pending IPO that would result in a massive taxation event. Now, however, the demographics have begun to shift dramatically.
Lesperance says he saw a nine- to ten-fold increase in liberal-leaning clients this summer, driven by everything from the mass shooting in Uvalde to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade. Mel Warshaw, a tax attorney who occasionally partners with Lesperance on these cases, confirmed an increase. And Eric Major, the CEO of residency and citizenship firm Latitude, said he first saw a surge in Democratic clients after the siege on the Capitol in January 2021.
“There are people who are convinced that this country is filled with lunatic Christian fundamentalists and good old boys from the South, and [that] that’s what we’re going to become. And so they’re making plans,” said Marc Hyman, founder of E-2 Visa Solutions, who observed the same pattern among liberals. “A lot of people have a second citizenship as a Get Out of Jail Dree card or as a life raft in case America becomes unlivable… and, you know, the shrimp is no longer cold in the Hamptons.”
Citizenship by investment schemes started with people trying to get into the United States, not out of it. Canada introduced the first such program in the 1980s, hoping to attract wealthy, talented individuals into the country. The United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand soon followed. Those were investors’ main options until the global financial crash of 2007, when European countries launched similar schemes to boost their economies.
Major, the CEO of Latitude, said most of his clients in the early days were Hong Kong businessmen worried about a Chinese takeover. Then, as China became a global economic powerhouse, more and more wealthy clients there started securing his services to move abroad.
“They were generating huge amounts of wealth, and in case something went wrong or there were political changes, they were looking at it from an asset protection point of view,” added Glen Craig, of Stanford Knight & Partners, who saw a similar trend.
The Arab Spring in 2008 also brought a wave of interest from millionaires in the Middle East looking to relocate to Europe or North America. The stereotype of a golden visa recipient still mirrors these trends—that of an ultra-rich tycoon from a politically unstable or autocratic nation. Vito Magagnino, CEO of the Swiss firm Mirabello Consultancy, described a former client in the Gulf who drove a golden Rolls-Royce. During their first meeting, the client forgot to bring his original birth certificate, so an assistant was dispatched to take a three-hour private jet flight to retrieve it, he said.
Not every applicant is quite that wealthy. Major gives his clients three different investment options, depending on their income level. For clients worth about $2 million, the easiest choice is the Caribbean, where a family of four can secure citizenship for less than $200,000. For those with a net worth in the tens of millions, there is Malta, which gets investors access to all of the European Union for just $1 million. And for the ultra-wealthy client looking for something even more prestigious, there is Austria, which allows a small number of individuals per year to claim citizenship by bringing “a significant contribution” to the country’s economy—usually to the tune of more than $3 million.
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