North America is becoming the next big market for Citizenship By Investment. Here’s why…

Since the investment migration industry’s inception as far back as 1984, the overwhelming majority of Citizenship By Investment (CBI) applicants have come from China, Russia and the developing world.

Chinese nationals account for the majority of total applications for practically every economic residency and Citizenship By Investment program in the world. And while China retains its top position as CBI source market, a curious new trend started emerging in late 2019…

For the first time in the investment migration industry’s history, US and UK nationals started investigating Golden Visas and investment passports in unprecedented numbers. In fact, US citizens were the fastest growing group of applicants for the Portugal Golden Visa in 2020, while the Portuguese D7 Visa and Italian Elective Residence programs saw similarly large application increases from Americans.

Citizenship By Investment For Americans is in high demand in 2021…

We could see it in our website traffic statistics long before the trend was being reported on by the industry and mainstream media publications… We started receiving a constant and escalating flow of website visitors from the UK and United Sates, whereas previously these countries were simply not source markets at all.

As the reality of a hard Brexit started looming in the UK, Britons with Irish ancestry scrambled to obtain Irish passports; Ireland issued nearly a million additional passports during 2019 alone.

Find out more about the best Citizenship By Investment Programs for Americans here.

And while many US applicants cite typical Plan B-type reasoning for seeking alternative residency or citizenship abroad, there is another clear and compelling driver for this trend: looming wealth taxes in the United States.

And you can rest assured, when it hits, it won’t just affect billionaires; any US citizen with a modicum of means can look forward to escalating taxes in the near future…

Yet it’s not just the case in the US. Around the world, wealth taxes are being vaunted as a silver-bullet panacea for populist disgruntlement over increasingly stark wealth disparities.

While it may have seemed unthinkable only a decade ago, socialism is seeing a meteoric rise in politics around the world.

The Bolsheviks are no longer outside, they’re already in office. And their intentions are clear and stated: Being successful has become a crime, and their preferred form of punishment, couched in the terms of social justice, is ever-increasing wealth taxes.

And while the rarified class of ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs), the dynastic families of super industrialists have no doubt already fortified their wealth decades ago, it is the regular high net worth and middle-income earners who are going to face the brunt of this new and vengeful drive towards predatory taxation.

The common factor across the first world and developing countries is a level of wealth disparity not seen since the period of feudalism in the Middle Ages.

Capitalism has rung in a period of unprecedented global prosperity; at no point in human history has there been an economic system that solved so many global challenges, or delivered so wide an array of benefits to so great a number of people globally.

Yet it has also led to a near-unprecedented gap between the haves and the have-nots.

And across the world, socialist-leaning politicians with their eyes on power are blaming the system – and the people who made the most of the opportunities presented to them within this framework – for ALL the world’s ills.

Corporate and sovereign debt levels are at all-time highs, with reckless levels of money printing being required to fund hand-outs and Covid-19 relief checks everywhere. Which, ironically enough, serves to make the rich, those who own real assets, even richer – while corroding the spending power of those who don’t…

Yet the problem is not isolated to the first world. Argentina was one of the first broke developing countries to go after their affluent citizens with wealth taxes.

Unsurprisingly, this move led to an exodus of rich Argentines to neighboring Uruguay, situated a stones’ throw across the Río de la Plata. Uruguay saw this opportunity coming, and announced a very attractive tax residency scheme for wealthy investors in the run-up to Argentina announcing their wealth taxes.

The United States is slightly behind the curve on this; but when taxes start rising, as Biden and Co have given us every assurance that they will, the same exodus of the wealthy will ensue – no matter what Elizabeth Warren may think.

And in fact, it’s already starting to happen…

In developing countries like South Africa, debt levels look set to catch up with GDP in the very near future. Here, the thoroughly corrupt and predatory ANC government are dying to increase taxes, but it’s patently clear that the infamous Laffer Curve has already been reached…

And that was before the government’s harsh Covid-19 lockdowns obliterated a large percentage of both the company and personal income tax base.

In the rest of the developing world, and in places like Kenya, Iran and Nigeria, specifically, the increasing pressure on the wealthy, combined with a deteriorating socio-economic outline, is overlaid by what appears to be another significant trend: the onset of middle-market adoption.

Long gone are the days where second passports were the preserve of the truly affluent; it would appear that in many traditional source markets, we’re now hitting critical mass. Thanks to well packaged and marketed Golden Visa and Citizenship By Investment Programs, the number of developing world nationals holding second passports is climbing.

They’re increasingly becoming conversation pieces at dinner parties. And they’re becoming as much of a necessity now as they were a luxury item previously.

Furthermore, whereas many third world applicants invest in second passports to enhance their global, visa-free mobility, so first world citizens are drawn to these CBI countries by the allure of tax-free living and trade.

Most of the Caribbean Citizenship By Investment countries as well as the likes of Vanuatu, Monaco and Montenegro offer far more attractive tax regimes than the US, which practices worldwide taxation on its tax residents and citizens.

And for those who make massive gains from investments in high-performing tech stocks or cryptocurrency, going offshore and renouncing their US citizenship may be the only way to significantly (and legally) reduce their otherwise staggering capital gains tax bills.

They say that the worst day to buy insurance is the day after your house burns down – and so too it is with second residency or investment citizenship.

And while few patriotic Americans had reason to emigrate or even renounce their US citizenship previously, the rising Bolsheviks are giving them every reason to do so in 2021.