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Are Americans Increasingly Seeking Second Passports?

Transcript of the above video:

Due to the unique set of circumstances that led me here and the unique set of circumstances that allow me to work in the capacity that I do, a lot of people have asked me about second passports. A lot of them know that I am a naturalized Thai so the issue of multiple passports and the issue of dealing with naturalization is something I have dealt with even on a personal level. A lot of folks have been asking me recently about second passports, especially Americans, and it finally caused me to make this video because I read an article from Zerohedge, the article is titled: Rich Americans Scrambling to Buy "Golden Passports" to Second Country. There is a lot in there but they end up actually quoting Bloomberg and I am going to go ahead and quote from that quotation within this article. I felt like it was right to fully cite the chain of how I found this. So quoting directly from Bloomberg which is quoted in the Zerohedge article. "The so-called citizenship by investment programs haven't historically been as popular with Americans since one of their main draws, the favorable tax regimes of adopted countries, has been of little benefit to citizens of the US one of the few nations to tax its people regardless of where they live". Just a side note, sidebar here, we have gone over that in great detail with respect to "Yes Americans are basically, a second passport doesn't relieve you of your tax liabilities in the United States".

“The current heightened interest among US citizens predates the Coronavirus pandemic but the crisis has helped turbocharge demand as they plan for how to maintain some freedom of movement with lockdown measures increasing amid a swelling second wave of COVID-19 cases".

Now I don't know exactly if Bloomberg is quite on the money on that with respect to everybody looking at this as a response to COVID. I think this happens in cycles and I think a certain age group, there is a certain subset of folks in a certain age group that get to a certain age and they say, "you know I really would like to live abroad and it would be easiest to do that if I have another nationality in some cases." Again there has been this globalization process of the world. There is a lot going on here I don't think you can lay this all at the COVID response's feet but second nationality, it is what it is. I don't want to get too in-depth on this but I think people kind of view it as a bigger deal than it really is. It certainly provides substantial benefits but I mean the notion, again like they note in there, for an American that maintains their American nationality there is not a lot of tax benefit to taking another nationality. Meanwhile, if anything there is definitely a lot of extra documentation and processing necessary to naturalize to another citizenship. I mean that will depend on the country, the level of complexity associated therewith. Long story short, for example a country like Thailand, the citizenship process is quite an undertaking let me tell you but other countries you know so-called "citizenship by investment programs" is a pretty streamlined process. It may not be the most inexpensive process in the world but it may be streamlined. 

So the reason I am making this video is "yeah I think that there is a little bit more demand this year than most" but this is something I have been aware of for many, many years and I haven't really noticed just some dramatic spike in demand but again that could also be due to the fact that travel is more difficult right now. There may in fact be a lot of pent up demand that has yet to fully manifest because folks can't actually travel in order to basically meet the requirements necessary to go ahead and get their nationality in whatever country they are looking to be in. 

Again circumstances will vary but I will probably make another video in upcoming weeks or maybe months regarding the topic of second citizenship just to see how it progresses as the months go by.