Today i’m going to compare and contrast two popular routes for getting citizenship by investment the five caribbean programs which generally involve making a donation to get citizenship in a matter of months and turkey’s citizenship by investment program which is generally characterized by investments in real estate or depositing money in the bank What i always tell people is when you’re looking at citizenship by investment make sure you exhaust all the other options first dual citizenship can start with getting a passport through your descent through marriage if you want to move somewhere you could get it that way citizenship by investment is a great
Addition to a passport portfolio but you don’t want to rely on only the six options we’re going to talk about today what we help our clients do is sift through dozens and dozens of dozens of options we oftentimes do end up that investment is fastest easiest
Whatever it may be but always make sure you’re evaluating all your options and not just going somewhere where they have six different passports that being said we do have six criteria which i’m going to evaluate these six passports against travel privileges taxes image lifestyle and language proximity and protection
I’m going to compare and contrast the caribbean with turkey’s programs and if it’s your first time here i’m andrew henderson founder of no medicalist we’re a bowtie consulting firm that helps seven and eight-figure entrepreneurs and investors to put the pieces of their offshore pulses together from getting a
Second passport to where to live with the second residence to how to manage their taxes reduce what they pay and diversify and protect their assets you can learn more at nomedcapitalist.com you can learn more about the biggest and best offshore event called nomad capitalist live which we host every year
Uh as well so let’s start with travel privileges so let’s identify the playing field for those of you who don’t know in the eastern caribbean you have five countries that will issue you citizenship within a matter of months from when you submit your documents you have st lucia i hold that passport you
Have antigua and barbuda saint kitts and nevis grenada and dominica not to be confused with the dominican republic some of these countries do have non-donation options saint lucia has a bond investment option you get zero percent for a number of years to give you your money back but you still pay a
Lesser processing fee some of the countries have real estate options generally speaking they are what’s called approved real estate generally not very good deals and again you’re still going to pay some processing fees you’re not escaping the entire sunk cost um occasionally you’ll find like a business investment program again it’s
Rather restrictive so the general approach for like 99 of people is make the donation in these countries yeah the money’s gone forever but it’s better than like chasing down some share of a hotel room seven years from now turkey on the other hand allows you to
Invest in property it allows you to put money in the bank they recently changed that to require you to do that in lira they also have a provision now that allows residents of the country to basically recap any uh losses they have in turkish lira versus the foreign currency
If the lira drops more the interest rate so interest rates are sky high in turkey and so you can earn very high interest rates if you lose more than the interest rate in foreign currency terms you can actually get that back so theoretically your risk is limited in that but it’s still
Uncomfortable for a lot of folks or you can also hire 50 turkish citizen employees if you are expanding a company it’s obviously a lot more difficult so you’re looking at the low end 400 000 for real estate in turkey you’re going to add a little bit to that just because
You want to you know be on the safe side for a couple different provisions uh in the caribbean you’re looking at depending on your family size thirty 100 hundred and fifty thousand something like that and up depending on how many people you can often add in the
Caribbean um you know all your kids even some adult kids you can add you know parents dependent parents in one case parents who aren’t dependent right and so the caribbean is going to be more flexible in terms of how many folks you can you can have i think we had you know
One family where there was like eight or nine different people on there and so you can really um get it for the whole family turkey is a bit more restrictive but obviously it’s a nature it’s a it’s a it’s a question of do i want to make a
Donation plus fees or do i want to make a an investment plus a little bit lower fees the costs in turkey are lower what do i get in terms of travel that’s the first metric i want to study so saint kitts and nevis is slightly the strongest passport in the area they’re
All pretty much similar four to five of them have visa free access to russia all but st lucia two of them have visa-free access to china you get a few other countries if you’re westerner like venezuela for example if you really wanted to go to venezuela
They can go to europe they can go to the uk so these are not you know u.s or western european quality travel documents these are um pretty good passports though what i would call a tier b plus they can go to europe they can go to the uk they can
Go to most of southeast asia the average westerner if they were to lose or give up their western passport would need to get a visa for you know as many as something like 12 countries that you might want to go to so a place like mexico for example you can get a
Residence permit or you could apply for a visa japan places like that morocco south africa right some of these countries you might not want to go to the visas wouldn’t be that hard obviously u.s canada australia new zealand are going to be the hardest countries to get a visa for turkey has
Also some of the same challenges turkish citizens cannot go to the u.s canada australia or new zealand without first applying for a visa they also need a visa for the uk and ireland they also need a visa for europe’s borderless schengen area where the turkish passport is stronger is
Uh potentially a little bit stronger in south america and central america and the caribbean if you get one of the slightly more expensive passports in the caribbean side you’ll get pretty much all of that you might miss paraguay for example so in my case st lucia i have some holes
In south america that are covered by another passport i have um but you know turkey fills it in a bit more strongly and so for example if you want to become a permanent resident of paraguay the turkish passport’s a little bit stronger minor issue for most people turkish passport’s a little bit stronger
In southeast asia so i’ve talked to folks who go to thailand as tourists and they’ve used their turkish passports and you can’t do that with the caribbean passport now you can get a thai tourist visa pretty easily but the turkish passport is going to be stronger than all the other countries
Turkey has what we call a trc passport no u.s and no europe however because turkey’s a huge country they do have in a lot of countries that want them to come see a lot of the smaller countries outside of the western world that aren’t really bothered to do you do visa-free
Deals with other countries will open up so you know central asia for example again some of the smaller countries in latin america those countries don’t really bother i mean eastern europe for example so the balkans um a lot of countries in that region uh you know you’re not gonna have access to all
Those countries with a caribbean passport saint kitts comes the closest um same kids will get you in to all those eastern european countries but they won’t all and so if you are out of the west then turkey may be a bit stronger if you put the two together
You’ve got a pretty strong combination in terms of travel and you’re basically just left with what we call the the kuna countries canada uh us new zealand and australia and you can throw in the uae if you could measure which you could get a residence permit by starting a
Business um mexico you could get a residence permit or uh go in turkey’s e-visa regime from mexico so travel privileges uh that’s the deal taxes people talk about taxes oh turkey has higher taxes i’m going to go to antigua i want to go to some kids
They don’t have taxes now if you want to live in your citizenship country if you’re saying hey i love the caribbean we have a lot of entrepreneurs we work with time zones are important to them they don’t want to be seven hours ahead of their staff back in north america and
So some of them say hey i’d like to live in the caribbean now you can decide whether you want a little bit more rustic and affordable caribbean that these programs in the caribbean that’s what they have they’re not as developed or whether you want to get a second
Passport and then go and get a residence permit in cayman islands or bahamas or turks and caicos where things are a little bit more developed a little bit flashier that’s up to you but if you like the idea of getting a caribbean passport to live somewhere else tax-free
You can do that now if you’re an american if you’re a us taxpayer you’re still going to be subject to the u.s tax rolls and you can dramatically reduce your taxes and living in a tax-free country as an american makes things easy that all you’ve got to do is figure out
The u.s side you don’t have two countries fighting with each other and so if you become a citizen of saint kitts and nevis and then go and live in saint kitts and nevis you can reduce your taxes in saint kitts and nevis because they’re not going to tax you
Anyway but if you’re an american you’re still going to deal with some kind of tax in the u.s which is easier if you’re an entrepreneur if it’s capital gains that’s going to be harder you can certainly expatriate from the united states and solve their problem and so if
You just want to live in saint kitts and nevis hey you know maybe you don’t need to go to the u.s if you’re any other citizen then sure you check out of your country’s tax system and you move to saint kitts and nevis and so that can
Help you reduce your taxes by opening up new countries the caribbean passports you can live in some of the other countries you can basically spend um as much time as you like so if you’re a citizen of one of the caribbean countries you can live in there’s a
Hands like half a dozen you can live in the others and so you can potentially get a cheaper one and then live in um one of the tax-free ones you can get one that’s not tax-free then go and spend your time on one of the ones that’s that
Is tax-free however if you’re just gonna live in a random place for example i spend my time in malaysia i spend some of my time in colombia i spend time in various countries in eastern europe i’m not living in st lucia right and so st lucia does not have citizenship-based
Taxation neither does turkey not just pretty much any country in the world it’s the united states which taxes you full boat and again you have exemptions exclusions you can defer all the legal strategies you can use eritrea in africa which is a diaspora tax i don’t think anyone’s paying and
Then you have a handful of countries that if you leave you’ve got to keep paying for a certain number of years there’s certain conditions but by and large most countries don’t tax you by being a citizen and really the countries where uh you’re leaving like a mexico or norway
That’s they’re taxing you because you’ve been a tax resident not because you’re a citizen so if you went to live in norway for a decade and you wanted to leave whether you’re a norwegian citizen or not they’re going to say hey for a couple years go where we want you to go please
I don’t do a lot of norwegian stuff but that is my understanding uh and so really any citizenship you get if you’ve never lived in the country that’s not going to be a problem by the way even if you look at a citizenship by descent people who get italian citizenship
Through their to their family tree you can still take advantage of italy’s tax incentives as long as you haven’t been living and paying taxes in italy in recent years and so the country where you’re a citizen only really matters in terms of taxes if you’re getting it by
Investment unless unless you’re going to go and live in that country so hey if you get turkish citizenship you can live in turkey and you can live in the part of cyprus that they claim okay and so those are not tax havens all right and so if you want a tax haven
Citizenship then turkey is not your place but again as a turk you could go and get a residence permit in the uae by starting a company in one of the free zones um you could get a residence permit the cayman islands you could go to a lot of places that are tax-free
Or tax advantage and so the passport isn’t really what matters the next thing is the image and so the question is do you want a big country or a small country some people like the uh the idea that turkey has lots of different embassies all around the world right you
Have services you can access um so caribbean citizens commonwealth citizens have access in certain circumstances to uh to the british embassy so that certainly can help in an emergency but yeah turkey has more services and turkey has more heft around the world right and so um
Some people like that right what i think is if you’re coming from a big country like the us or the uk or australia or canada people know that i’d rather have a country people don’t know now again maybe you get both but i’d like to have something in my portfolio that’s that’s
Very complimentary now if i’m from liechtenstein sure maybe i’m more open to being from a country where there are more services now obviously some of those european countries can use other eu embassies not that lichtenstein counts but um you know so the image is one to consider what image
Do you want to carry obviously turkey is a larger country you know it has its share of disagreements with people i don’t know that anyone’s really thinking what you know st lucio’s disagreements are with anybody uh to the extent that they do have any uh nobody really cares
All right and so the image could play a role it’s up to you to decide whether you want that big or small image lifestyle and language the caribbean countries speak english that can come in handy if you wanted to get a residence permit in a handful of countries like
The uk that may require you in some cases to pass an english test if you for example renounce u.s citizenship and you are a let’s say you’re just a turkish citizen have had some folks come to me they did that and you wanted to move to a country that
Requires an english language test the fact that you live for 40 years in the united states will not sway them you got to take the test with everybody else and you got to pass it may not be the end of the world but if you are a citizen of a
Caribbean country one of those five then those are majority english-speaking countries and you don’t need to speak the test which is kind of interesting that you look at historically how many folks from china who don’t speak english went and got citizenship in some of those caribbean countries and then they don’t need to
Take the test at least to get in so the language is certainly one thing and those countries do speak english in case you want to live there what i tell people is you will get by but understand that just as in singapore they speak their own slightly different version of english
Just in any country they speak their own slightly different version of english i mean it would require an adaptation so english is not english it’s not english it’s not english at least not exactly on a lifestyle perspective again do you want a bigger country turkey has plenty
Of room to roam i would imagine like most of us i’m being i’m from the united states yeah most places in the united states would not interest me to live right um canada i mean wherever you’re from you probably are not interested in living from somewhere except for where
You’re from or you know maybe you want to live in new york or maybe you want to live in the beach in california or whatever um but certainly turkey has more room to roam if you like that turkey has a domestic manufacturing economy turkey’s doing stuff turkey’s exporting turkey is growing
And so obviously turkey has some of the economic stuff but turkey you know has a built-in economy it’s a real economy they have beaches they have beautiful beaches a lot of folks who can’t go to western countries go and even even some who do but a lot of you know
Historically russians and and until ukrainians got visa-free travel and to europe you know they would go to uh to the south of turkey uh istanbul it’s a mega city it’s a great city it’s bustling with life it’s not for everybody but it’s a city it’s if you
Want to live in a city and you want that guarantee as a citizen that can be worthwhile obviously the caribbean i mean some of these islands their cities are named fig tree their cities are you know named after hills right and that’s cute and i think it’s
Great um which one do you want in your portfolio proximity is an issue um i think for a lot of north americans the idea of i can either get a boat from some places in the u.s to go to my country i never encourage people who are like
I’m just going to slip out the back don’t do that but you know if you just wanted to legally get on a boat these countries are further than the bahamas i mean they’re in the eastern caribbean they are closer to south america so you would need a little bit bigger boat but
Theoretically you could do that you’ve got a lot of flights from the u.s and canada to these countries in fact some of the only flights in the world go through there if you’re coming from pretty much anywhere else in the world uh the easiest way to get to some of the
Caribbean citizenship countries is through london and there’s been times like you know you think hey i’m going to know media capitalist live in mexico hey mexico it’s not that far it’s further than you think number one and there’s no flights from mexico so if you don’t let’s say you’re not a us citizen
And you don’t have a us or canadian visa you’re gonna like potentially go from mexico back to london back to the country and so it’s not as close unless you’re coming from the u.s canada or the uk or occasionally germany or one of the other islands as you might think
But proximity time zones again if you wanted to live there could be valuable obviously turkey with istanbul is connected to pretty much everywhere in the world what i love about turkish airlines that’s my airline because all these six homes that i maintain are connected uh to istanbul so i’m one stop from
Anywhere in the world between homes and so if you buy a property in istanbul uh you’ve got a place i’ll give an example i’m going to be in bogota later this year after our conference after that i’m going back to uh for a birthday party in kuala lumpur that’s a long flight but
It’s one stop through istanbul on turkish airways and i can basically do one of their their you know longer layovers where i can spend three or four days and i happen to have a property in istanbul and so i can spend three days there and you know cut the
Journey up and if depending on where you’re living it may be a great place to stock up on supplies they’ve got endless shopping there and it’s relatively affordable and so that could be a good thing to have in terms of proximity it may be in some cases that even though istanbul and turkey
Seems further it’s actually a lot easier to get to and you can go from anywhere and i think that one of the things that i’ve talked about is that um if some if some new black swan event happens and you need to get back to your country you
Could be anywhere on earth and it’s probably one stop to to turkey into your country that’s something worth considering uh to proximity obviously we have more folks who are from europe who understand you know the turkey they don’t have as many concerns about turkey that are more open and so if you live
Closer to it you may be more open to it whereas we have a lot of north americans they like the idea of the caribbean and lastly is the protection you know what are the embassy’s going to do for you what services are available i think people slightly underestimate what
The caribbean countries can offer you obviously turkey is bigger but i think the main thing to do is consider how a passport is going to complement what you already have remember you’re not necessarily moving to this country you’re getting a passport to travel on you’re getting a passport to perhaps
Expand your investment horizons you’re getting a passport to perhaps set yourself up for future tax benefits to give yourself a place to live to have a backup plan consider your reasons for having a second passport that’s one thing we do with our clients as we walk them through all the different goals and
We often correct things where wait a second well that’s not going to solve that or if you need that then just do this and so if you want to learn more about how we can help you get a second passport and walk through not just six options but all the options out there
You can go to nomadcapitalist.com
