Sunday, Sept. 4, 2022 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
Even when you have the “best,” two is greater than one.
Americans live in a democracy, the largest economy in the world, the pop culture leader and a largely free society. By most global standards, we have it good. But for many Americans, all this isn’t enough to keep them from pursuing second citizenship.
Why do they do it? In a word, the answer is options.
For at least three decades now, the wealthy have pursued second citizenship by investment for jurisdictional arbitrage opportunities. The trend was predicted to continue and grow in the seminal 1997 book, The Sovereign Individual, by investors Sir William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson. What the authors didn’t predict is the coming rise of expansive citizenship by descent programs that would also extend dual citizenship eligibility to millions of everyday Americans by the year 2022.
This newfound eligibility combined with the effects of COVID and the great resignation has created a new class of American remote workers, eager to be able to visit and stay abroad for several months at a time.
With just a U.S. passport, these Yankees can go, but they cannot stay.
Right of access vs. right of residence
Being welcome to visit does not mean being welcome to stay.
American citizens have the right of visa-free travel to some 186 countries and territories. By any measure, such access is elite on the global scale. However, the right of access for tourism does not convey the right of residence. The difference is lost on many Americans who have never had to apply for a tourist visa, let alone a residency permit.
Consultants, freelancers, online entrepreneurs and other knowledge workers with a yearning for slow travel make up the tens of millions of Americans with an urge to see the world as they work. This means Americans now looking for an extended workcation abroad likely have to apply for a temporary residency permit, or fashionable, new nomad visas that are popping up in various countries.
Having citizenship in a foreign country removes the need to apply for residency permission to live, work, do business, or study in that country. Even better, citizenship in countries party to a regional union, such as the European Union (“EU”) or South America’s MERCOSUR often allow the citizen to live, work, study or open a business in any other of the countries in the trade union.
Many Americans contemplating a global lifestyle have realized they would rather apply once for a citizenship that gives them full mobility rights rather than perpetually chase visas and temporary residencies, with the recurring attendant application costs and hassles.
Having a Plan B
In national catastrophes, the most direct way to safety is to leave the danger zone. Whether facing war, famine, economic collapse, or totalitarian rule, the fastest solution on a personal level is geographical exit.
People from countries less fortunate than the United States intimately understand this. For Ukrainians, Afghans, Venezuelans and Yemenis just in the last twelve months alone, seeing is believing. But the fact is lost on many Americans because good times have conditioned us to feel that our country is exempt from the same historical ebb and flow that collapses empires and raises new prosperous societies. Most of my American clients pursuing second citizenship reject the notion that we are exempt. They pursue a second citizenship to have a predetermined landing zone to safety as part of a plan B.
Of course, having a backup alternative for emergencies doesn’t speak to the fact that cultural and legal mores within a community change over time. Besides just escaping from a national crisis, many Americans are comforted by knowing they can opt-out, either for a few months, years or indefinitely to escape an infringement on their bodily autonomy, perceived confiscatory levels of taxation or any other policy shift that they may find unpalatable.
They acknowledge that in the realm of human freedom of geographic movement, option only begins at two.
Intergenerational mobility asset
People want to give their kids the world.
Americans, like all people, want their children to be safe, successful and happy even after we’re gone. To this end, many people realize that future life and work opportunities for their children and grandchildren might exist in other countries.
The possibilities I most often hear clients reference are free university education and healthcare, or merely the desire to gift their children the ability to live in more countries. As the law of citizenship in many countries stands now, in most instances, obtaining a second citizenship for the family can result in an intergenerational mobility asset that will be passed on indefinitely to future progeny.
Currently, most countries in the world permit multiple citizenship, with the issue trending towards more countries allowing their citizens to hold the status. This means that for many Americans obtaining second or even third citizenship, these additional mobility privileges they are introducing into their lives will reverberate in future generations.
It’s a nonpecuniary gift for one’s descendants — one that gives them freedom of movement, in other words, options. It’s also a trend I expect to continue and even accelerate in the coming years.
Parviz Malakouti-Fitzgerald is a citizenship expert, writer, and Los Angeles-based immigration attorney at the Law Office of Parviz Malakouti.
