The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW What Does It Take to Escape to Another Country?

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

After lockdown, many people began to think about having dual citizenship and with this election many are looking again.  What does it take?  How do you do it?  Which countries are most promising?  Christopher Willis, Latitude Residency & Citizenship lattitudeworld.com, joins to discuss alternative residency and citizenship options for Americans.Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

All right. And joining us now is Christopher Willis. And Chris is a managing partner of Latitude Caribbean and managing director of Latitude Consultancy. He's been involved in immigration industry since 1995. He's got a long list of credentials and organization has been in. And I'm not going to go through all of that because I want to get to what is happening right now. A lot of people are very concerned about what's happening in our government here in America and the European Union and other things.

Recently, the EU has just started cracking down on people who are trying to leave. We've also had, if you've followed, I haven't really covered it, but you've got one guy that was nicknamed Bitcoin Jesus who used Bitcoin to relocate to Europe. He was just arrested in Spain and is going to be extradited to the United States because the IRS is after him, saying that he transferred. He didn't report all of his Bitcoin holdings and things like that. So I want to talk about this.

Is it something that is only for the rich? What do people have to do if they want to do this? Why would they go to particular places and how this stuff works? So joining us now is Chris Willis. Thank you for joining us, sir. Hi, David. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting trend

right now in the US, you know, with Americans looking at getting a second residence or citizenship, because typically this wasn't on their radar. But, you know, there's been a confluence of events, you know, over the last few years that sort of led people to start looking at this as a viable option. And, you know, it's important to note that it doesn't necessarily mean you have to leave the US, but it's more having the option to leave should you be set be dissatisfied with the direction that the country is going obviously it's getting uh you know closer and closer to the election and people no matter where you sit you know have very strong opinions of how they'd like to see the direction of the u.s and if it doesn't go your way then you know half the country

is going to be unhappy so they they're looking at different alternatives. And I don't know if you've seen this because of maybe because of taxes or stuff like that. But, you know, after what happened in 2020, a lot of people are looking at this and saying, and I have listeners in Africa that said, hey, everybody here was fine with this pandemic stuff. Nobody was freaking out about it. It was the Europeans who were freaking out and the Americans who were freaking out about it. After they left, everything was fine with this pandemic stuff. Nobody was freaking out about it. It was the Europeans who were freaking out and the Americans who were freaking out about it. After they left, everything was fine. Well, you raise a good point.

I mean, the pandemic was really the kicker to a lot of this, because you'll remember when there was the travel ban, right? So it didn't matter who you were. If you only had a U.S. passport, you know, your wings were clipped and you were grounded. And so a lot of, you know, particularly the family office. Did we lose them? Did it freeze up here? You've got to fix this. Okay. We're back. We're back. It froze up for a moment. We lost that last bit of what you said. You said if you only got one passport, what was it you said after that? So the, with the pandemic

is people were grounded. You know, they didn't matter who you were. If you only had a US passport, then you weren't able to travel. And so when we're speaking to a lot of family offices, you know, the feedback they're getting from their family principals is, you were, if you only had a U.S. passport, then you weren't able to travel. And so when we're speaking to a lot of family offices, you know, the feedback they're getting from their family principals is, you know, you've got to fix this gap. You know, we were exposed here and we don't want this to be a problem again in the future if there was a similar situation. Yeah, yeah. And it is also important, I think, in many cases to have what I'd call residential ambiguity. They tend to work with you differently if you're actually a citizen than if you've got a different citizenship somewhere. I remember when I was in high school, I went with some friends to Europe, and it was like a music organization we were touring.

But we had a day off, and we decided that we were going to ride bicycles around London. And the guy who rented the bicycles to us said, well, you're not allowed to ride these things to the park, but since you're Americans, you can probably get away with it. So we did. And we had a very angry Bobby who flagged us down. He was ready to give us fines or handcuffs or whatever. We weren't doing anything crazy. I mean, we weren't trying to run people over. We were very, very calm, but we're just calmly riding through and uh so then uh as soon as we

started talking to him he goes oh you're americans okay well you're not allowed to do that here i know you didn't know that but we'll just just walk it out of here you'll be fine that's the type of thing you know where where if you have these other residencies that can kind of give you a little bit of an out sometimes i think that's's what I mean by residential ambiguity. Yeah, absolutely. But, I mean, you raise a good point because I'll go back to the pandemic. In the Caribbean in particular, most of the islands close their borders unless you are a citizen, right? So, you know, I'll give you an example of someone who had a multimillion dollar property in Jambi Bay bay in antigua and thought you know i'll go hang

out there during the pandemic but never took out citizenship so you know he was turned away he wasn't able to travel and go and spend time in his home so it's it's that preparedness and you know to be fair people didn't expect something of the nature of the pandemic to kick in so they didn't really think about it yeah typically as an american you can hop on a plane and go anywhere right um but suddenly these um these challenges challenges put themselves on the front foot, and people had to make some adjustments. Well, now, you know, I'm looking at this, this golden passport. The cost escalates to $200,000 on EU crackdown. What is a golden passport, first of all?

So, it's, yeah, I mean, the term golden passport or, you know there's a lot of uh media spin on on how these are portrayed but in the caribbean you have what's called citizenship by investment so in exchange from for making either a donation to the government or purchasing uh approved real estate then you can receive citizenship uh in exchange so the what's been happening is uh the european union has been making some noises about how they would like to see some enhancements, let's say, to the programs in the Caribbean. And one of that was increasing the minimum investment level. So right now it sits at 100,000 U.S. and there's been what's called a memorandum of agreement, which was signed by four of the five caribbean governments which uh agreed to raise the floor from 100 to 200 000 and that's scheduled to be effective june 30th of this year the the

sort of one outstanding countries uh indicated they will be signing as well so the expectation is that uh the the minimum investment level will start at 200 000 instead of the current of 100 wow they're gonna double it wow that's amazing yeah when i was looking at this years ago i remember looking at some of these belize had like 25 000 back in the 90s and new zealand and all that you know you had golden passport you get to a lot of different countries uh sometimes they would um have other restrictions but for the most part it was just if you could put that much money into the country. Is this something that only the very rich can do, though? Is there anything that people can do that is, you know, to get citizenship somewhere without a big stash of cash?

Yeah, the only other real way is through dissent. And we have a division that specializes in this. So, you know, if you had ancestral links um then that could be a pathway and you know i remember one client we were speaking to who was looking at the malta program in europe you know which cost about a million euro give or take and uh you know having discussions with them their surname sounded italian so we dug a bit deeper found out they were eligible through dissent so they got their italian citizenship which then gave them full access to the European Union and same to Mumbai in Europe. Right. So he was over the moon.

So it's another way that you can do it. But the programs we focus on, David, are typically, you know, for your high net worth, ultra high net worth, for the mass affluent and such. There are other programs, but typically they all have a residency component involved as well. So it's important to distinguish between residency and citizenship. So the Caribbean programs I spoke about are a direct pathway to citizenship. So that leads to a passport. Other programs, you know, very much like in the US, you have a green card, right? So that type of concept would apply in places like Canada, Portugal, Spain, Greece, where, Greece, where you have a permanent residency,

but to graduate or upgrade to citizenship, you have to meet certain criteria, which is typically time and day count. So if you can get somewhere and you can afford, and sometimes the cost of living is significantly less. We can talk a little bit about that. But if you can get somewhere and establish residency, you might be able to get in without the golden passport based on time

that you're there, right? Yeah, correct. I mean, there's a multitude of programs, you know, I mean, in Canada, for example, where, you know, especially around the U.S. election, many Americans look to sort of take a hop up north and spend time in Canada. So we sort of joke Canada's immigration website crashes usually the day after the election because so many people are looking at it. Yeah, a lot of people promise which way, depending on who wins, half the country's going to want to get out. Yeah, exactly. So it's one of those things that there's many other routes, but a way people could qualify, whether it's through setting up a business, whether it's through a spousal relationship, whether it's through being a skilled worker, for example. But for our focus, it is by investment and or by dissent are the two areas that we focus on, David.

I see. Well, let me ask you this. I mean, is that I know a lot of people are wanting to get out of the United States because of what they've seen with the pandemic and because of what is happening with politics. But of course, the same type of issues are there in in europe as well and um i guess um you know uh this uh bloomberg piece uh that is talking about the cost of the golden passport soaring in the caribbean how it's going to double in just a few months here uh they also mentioned cryptocurrency uh and and that's one of the things uh when you have they just recently recently had a debate between some gold bugs and some cryptocurrency people. One of the things they were saying was, you know, that makes it easier for us to exit. But there also seems to be an attempt to crack down on that as well.

Make an example out of the guy they call Bitcoin Jesus. He had some cryptocurrency that he did not declare evidently. That's what the IRS is alleging. And so they contacted the Spanish government to arrest him and to extradite him for the IRS over his cryptocurrency holdings. That's kind of a more aggressive aspect of it as well. Talk a little bit about that and, you know, how the issues in terms of if you've got money to buy a citizenship or if you want to establish residency, the issues of trying to get your money out of the jurisdiction here. Yeah, there's two elements to that i mean the first one is the the due diligence uh source of wealth source of funds

is is a key component to all of these making sure they understand you know how the how your wealth was generated and um that everything was done in in a legal manner um what we're seeing for people who are in the in the crypto space is that you know your crypto wallet can be used in terms of source of funds however they still need to demonstrate how they acquired the funds that led to that initial crypto investment so it's going to go in that far back just to make sure it resolved out in the proper ways but in particular in the caribbean um they won't accept crypto directly so it would still have to be converted to us um banking and you know values in the caribbean are still very traditional so they haven't quite advanced to that stage yet but certainly there are opportunities uh for people

who have their wealth in the crypto space um and it's you know as you rightly say many more people are looking at this saying how can we use our our crypto funds uh to to manage this but it's it's still evolving um some countries have certainly said that they want to um uh explore how they can attract the crypto market and make it as uh you know removing barriers if you like in terms of making investment but the key thing here as I mentioned is the due diligence so um anybody who's applying for any of these programs needs to understand that not only the source of well, source of funds, but, you know, your personal background, what's in the public domain, everything that's advised

on the forms or declared on the forms will be verified, as well as final sort of international checks, you know, with Interpol, Europol, watch list, sanctions list, all that good stuff. So it isn't just a question of here's my money, Thank you very much. You still have to go through this process of evaluation. Right, right. And that's what you do. You help people to go through what I imagine is a real maze of regulations, a lot of hoops, and a lot of vetting and all that kind of stuff that has to go through, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first thing is we, you know, we have our first consultation where we have to understand the client, make sure we understand their motivations and their needs, and then we can suggest which programs might be best suited. And then we have to dig a little bit deeper into their background to make sure there won't be anything that would stop them qualifying. Where are you seeing people coming from mostly and going to in your practice? Well, I mean, we're fortunate that we've got 23 offices around the world, so we're dealing

with people with very different profiles. As we spoke about at the beginning, Americans weren't typically a major source market because you had these freedoms already. You could get on a plane and go. But if you were from Nigeria, if you were from Pakistan, if you were from South Africa, you need a visa to pretty well get anywhere, right? So the mobility aspect here was key. So suddenly you were going, let's say, from Pakistan. So you're saying if you're going from Pakistan and then it froze up, so you can pick up from there. Yeah. Sorry about that. So if I was going, so in Pakistan,

for example, can go to 39 countries visa-free. And if they invest into the caribbean suddenly that jumps to 157 which includes you know the schengen area the uae singapore places like that so it's it's the mobility the enhancing of mobility is key for people from these reasons regions and so that's a key motivation for them but again if you're american you can go to those places anyway the the key attraction for americans is looking to enhance their freedoms by having another option. So it's all about as many options as you can in the sort of volatile world we're living in.

And it's actually becoming a little bit more of a status symbol for many Americans. It's not the car you drive or the watch on your wrist, it's what passport's in your pocket, and knowing that you can access different parts of the world with all this so it's it's um you know it's it's becoming more mainstream as we spoke about at the beginning and i think that's uh that's a key thing that as more and more people understand what the benefits are and for the wealthy you know a couple hundred thousand dollars they'll spend that on a week's holiday right so

it's whereas you know citizenships for life and this is something they can that on a week's holiday, right? So it's, whereas, you know, citizenship's for life and this is something they can pass on to their kids. You know, so it's, again, with a lot of the family offices, we speak to the succession planning and making sure that, you know, they've got this ankle covered. You know, it's a very straightforward and practical solution.

Let me ask you, because you're talking about having visa requirements and things like that and being able to expand that from moving from one citizenship to another one. The visa requirements are starting to increase, as I've noticed. The United States and even the EU are starting to add additional visa requirements. Talk a little bit about that. I think the European Union is going to start having some visa requirements for Americans. Is that correct? Yeah.

So they're going to have, like many countries, have an electronic travel authority, if you like, so that you still have to, you'll essentially be given it, but you have to apply, right, to show that you've been pre-qualified to come in. So you have that in Canada. You have that for people going to the US. It's not an uncommon thing, but it's something that the EU is looking to roll out. I think they were looking to get it out this year. It's probably rolling into 2025 now. With the European Union introducing this, and I think rolling it out is what's causing them a lot of problems right now. That's why it's continually getting delayed. But what it obviously gives them is access to data, right, which is being able to track people, manage people,

and to ensure that anybody or bad actors or undesirables, you know, we're getting are getting picked up at these early stages. Now, you mentioned passing this on to your children. Talk a little bit about that in terms of, you know, we are familiar with how, you know, we have situations with open borders and immigration and, you know, how citizenship is essentially claimed or passed on here. What are the types of situations that you see in other countries? I mean, is it, can you, is there any other country that just lets you go across the border and just kind of hang out or, you know, like we do here, or is everybody else kind of policing their borders, I imagine, right? Yeah, yeah i mean it's getting tighter and tighter and one of the things why the and very very popular even though it's the most it's very expensive you know at about a million

euro which is non-recoverable um it gives you access to the european union and of course all the settlement rights so even though you're a citizen of malta you could go you know live work study retire in any of the other member states so that's attractive to many people especially in of all the settlement rights. So even though you're a citizen of Malta, you could go, you know, live, work, study, retire in any of the other member states. So that's attractive to many people, especially an American who says, well, I want a like for like, you know. So, you know, the Caribbean is great,

but it's not necessarily the lifestyle that I want and we're having access to resources. So that's why Europe is always an attractive alternative. But not everybody, you know, has the funds to do it. So the Caribbean is a nice sort of happy medium. It's also geographically much closer, familiar to many people, and, you know, which is why it's a very popular option, especially because the processing is also much quicker.

It takes about six to eight months, give or take, whereas Malta is going to take about 18 months. So when somebody gets citizenship legitimately, legally in one of these countries, they can pass that on to their children generally? I imagine there's some... Yeah. So basically, if you were, let's say it was your nuclear family, mom, dad, two kids, the kids would get it, and that's not an issue. In some cases, you can include a sibling if they're unmarried and have no kids. You can include your parents or your grandparents. You know, the family unit or the definition of a family unit can be expanded to allow more people to be included on one application. So each country has its own rules and how they define independent.

But they're trying to be as competitive as possible to include as many people as they can. So let me ask you about reciprocity. You know, we've been talking about the legal process here is if an American wants to get on a raft in the Caribbean or whatever, is there, are they, is that a thing that is happening in their country? I mean, we see that happening in the EU. We see it happening in the U.S. extensively. Is that anything that's happening in the other direction,

or do they clamp down on that extensively? Yeah, it's not really. I mean, you're right. People coming into the U.S., the U.K. is having a big issue with that right now with people coming over from mainland Europe on boats and then arriving in the united kingdom um europe of course has had that for many years in particular with people starting their journeys in in north africa and uh you know typically ending up in the southern tip of italy

so there's there's a lot of challenges around that um again it's a it's a reinforcement of the amount of migration that goes on around the world whether through displaced people um or the wealthy people are moving around you know um but yeah in terms of you know the profile of person we're speaking to you know they're looking to give themselves as many options should they need them because not everybody you know someone may have a citizenship in the caribbean and they say yeah it's great i'm going to pop down there maybe buy a house and hang out you know a couple of months or a couple of weeks of the year especially when it gets cold let's say in uh up north and um and then that's good enough for them but for other people it's they want to actually move they want to settle there they want to live there they want to raise their family

there so it goes back to my earlier point that you know we need to understand the client and what the motivations are and then we can see what program is best suited for them. When somebody wants to establish residency, I mean, how complicated is that? Do they just need to, is there a legal process that you help people with with that if they don't get citizenship? Are there still issues preventing them from buying property or something like that in many of these places? Yeah, you tend to have, you know, in some countries it's called an alien landholding tax, or they'll have additional taxes for non-citizens if you're looking to go in to buy. It varies from country to country.

Many people understand the concept of buying real estate, so those programs have been quite popular. But it's, you know, the residency, of course, is there. It's not for life. You've got to renew it or you've got to upgrade to citizenship. That's why a lot of people like citizenship programs because it is for life. Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you another thing, too, about since we're talking, I think, and momentarily here about the, you you know kind of reciprocity uh americans

going to other countries like that is there uh anything in any of these other countries for political asylum for somebody that is coming from europe or canada or the united states or something do any of them have political asylum programs uh or is that absolutely yeah i mean um all countries most countries i mean that you look at places like Canada, the United States, European countries, the UK, will all, you know, look to take a certain amount of asylum seekers or refugees per year. The biggest challenge, of course, is determining are they genuine, right? And so they'll have their own different protocols to establish that. You know, there was the safe third country agreement between Canada and the U.S. for a while, which has been adjusted. But, you know, they're making sure that they can understand quickly, is this a genuine refugee? Because part of the strategy in the past was that they would, you know, get on a plane, flush their passport down the toilet, turn up and say, you know, the only...

In the system for four or five years, until um until they can be adjudicated upon so that's that's something a lot of these countries are looking to to tidy up but with the amount of displaced people and pressures in uh developing countries it's becoming you know quite uh you know quite the issue to be able to to manage. Yeah Yeah, yeah, and it's pretty easy for people in a war-torn country to try to make a case for political Some even though they don't always get it. I would imagine it'd be a lot harder for somebody That is you know coming from the United States to try to make a case for political asylum to go to You know one of these other and I would imagine that perhaps It wouldn't even be considered and most countries it would be politically friendly to the united states

is that true yeah i mean it's the the to to define um you know being a person at risk and therefore eligible for asylum it's quite a high bar to to hit and you know the united states someone's saying oh i'm being politically persecuted for my beliefs it's again many people you know it's hard to say right it'd be hard to have that proven so um but some people will try it on of course they will right um and you know you know we've seen examples where people have uh have tried i think more of a pr stunt than anything else you know to say uh you know i want to be, you know, it takes away from genuine refugees who have. Yeah.

And other countries. Yeah. We just had a case here I was talking about earlier where there was a family coming from Germany, homeschooling family. And they were given asylum about 10 years ago because the Germans were going to take away their Christians. They want to homeschool the kids. Germans are going to take away their Christians. They want to homeschool the kids. Germans are going to take away their kids. They got asylum here. But because of change in political regime,

the Biden administration decided that they wanted to deport them. So that became something of an issue. So that's always the case. And I guess if you get political asylum somewhere, it's always subject to the whims of whatever the current political regime is, I guess. It's kind of a shaky thing. Oh, absolutely.

It's, you know, and I've worked with people with this profile in the past. And, you know, when you're speaking to a genuine asylum seeker or a genuine refugee, I mean, you understand the difference between, you know, what they've gone through and how they should be afforded protection, as opposed to some people who are just sort of trying it on and hoping for the best. Because, you know, for people like you and I, it's unimaginable. Yeah, yeah, it is. And so, you know, if somebody can afford to do it, it is certainly going to be going up quite a bit in just the next few months.

They're going to be doubling it. So there's always seems like there's a constantly closing window on all these different things that are happening everywhere even if it is open for you at this point in time uh it may be closing pretty soon is there anything else that you would tell us uh that we didn't cover about this that uh i think people would be interested i mean you touched you touched on a good point because canada just you know closed up their self-employed category with a day's notice um you know ireland and the uk have done similar things portugal changed their program so there's there's you're right if you qualify today and it's something you want to do you know don't delay too long because the goalposts could change and you know we're

expecting you know potentially changes the government in the united kingdom in canada and the united states this year right so that could change you know the direction of those three countries and therefore the immigration policies as well you know, the direction of those three countries and therefore their immigration policies as well. You know, we're also seeing pressures from the European Union and the Caribbean and in other jurisdictions. So again, that could impact their policymaking decisions

as it relates to immigration. And as we've seen in the US, immigration is always a key political topic when it comes to elections. So my advice to people is if you qualify today, get it done, it's in your back pocket, you've got it, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, right?

So get that done, tucked away, and then if things change, then at least you've taken care of yourself and your family. Yeah, certainly we don't see freedom increasing anywhere in the globe and everybody seems to be closing everything down. So if you've got any plans, now's the time to make your preparations. Because it seems like globally everything is shutting down. Even in the Caribbean, they're shutting stuff down.

That's amazing. But it's very interesting to talk to you about that. And thank you so much for what you do. Christopher Willis, again, Latitude Caribbean and Latitude Consultancy. And tell us your website here. I'm looking at the website. LatitudeWorld.com, is that the best place to find you? Absolutely, yeah, LatitudeWorld.com.

You go into the team, you'll find my details. Please reach out. I'd be happy to have a conversation to see how we can help you. That's great. Thank you very much, details. Please reach out and be happy to have a conversation to see how we can help you. That's great. Thank you very much, Chris. Great talking to you. Very interesting.

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