A Plan B strategy’s most potent tool has always been having a second passport.
A second passport (or even a third, fourth, etc.) indicates that you have other options, including additional countries in which you can live, work, invest, conduct business, and raise a family.
A second passport is a useful travel document that can offer a lot of additional advantages.
You’ll be able to travel more easily and visit more places if you have a second passport. And you might be able to do it more safely depending on the passport you have from your home country. After all, nobody has ever vowed to kill every Brazilian by boarding a hijacked aircraft.
Thankfully, there are many options available for getting a second passport.
Naturalization is one method for obtaining legal residency in a foreign country. You can then submit an application to become a naturalized citizen and acquire a passport after a predetermined amount of time.
For instance, our team member Joe just yesterday wrote about his experience acquiring legal status in Mexico. In reality, a large portion of our team is Mexican-born.
One benefit of living in Mexico is that many people will soon be able to seek for Mexican citizenship through naturalization, which is one of the great things about living there.
But getting a second passport isn’t solely possible through citizenship.
People who can demonstrate they have ancestors from a particular nation are given citizenship by some countries. We call this “the lucky bloodline club” since it is one of the quickest and least expensive ways to get a second passport.
For instance, Poland and Ireland grant citizenship based on ancestry (though the list is quite extensive). And this is often the quickest and least expensive method of getting a second passport.
Other nations provide citizenship by investment programs (CIPs), which require an investment or donation of a set amount in return for a passport.
The least expensive options at this time are still around $100,000, however these numbers have been declining.
Finally, there are some decisions you can make on a personal level to get second citizenship for yourself or your family.
For instance, I decided to give birth to my children in Mexico, thus they were granted Mexican citizenship at birth. They also obtain their dear old dad’s citizenships, giving them a total of five passports each.
In the end, everyone can get a second passport in some way.
But it’s true to state that not every passport is made equally. Obviously, some are worth more than others.
For instance, holders of a German passport are eligible to live almost anywhere in Europe and can travel to dozens of other countries without needing a visa. But only a very limited number of countries accept passports from Kosovo for visa-free travel.
In order to rank the value of 198 various citizenships from across the world and the ease of travel with that document, our team created its own Passport Travel Index.
Our standards are stringent; we don’t just rank citizenships based on the total number of nations to which a passport grants visa-free travel. The quality of the nation is another factor we consider.
Because of this, we factor a nation’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) into our assessments of how appealing it is.
Access to wealthier, more desirable countries carries more weight when GDP is included in the measurement of the country’s attractiveness.
The “fortunate bloodline club” I previously described also happens to have access to some of the most potent passports on the planet. And here is typically where you want to look first if you want to be considerate of your time and cash.
More than a dozen European nations allow individuals to restore their former citizenship by offering citizenship by descent.
Italy, which has the seventh-best passport in the world, and Germany, which is ranked eighth, both let descendants to restore citizenship by demonstrating their blood line.
These nations receive a strong “A” on our rating; holders of their passports have visa-free travel to 163 and 162 countries, respectively, which account for more than 75% of the world’s GDP.
Naturalization citizenship can also result in some fantastic passports.
On our passport index, Mexico receives a very respectable B+.
Portugal is another option, offering foreigners some really alluring residence schemes. Similar to Mexico, Portugal offers residency as a way to gain citizenship with as little as two weeks of yearly residence.
And with an A rating, Portugal’s passport ranks as the 14th-strongest in the world.
A Portuguese Golden Visa allows you to purchase residency by spending as little as €280,000 (currently roughly 1:1 in US dollars as of September 2022) on a property in the country.
The price goes up if you want a property that does not require renovation, and is located in a more populous area. And authorities have even stopped allowing the purchase of qualifying real estate in certain popular areas like Lisbon and Porto.
But all it takes to maintain the Golden Visa is to spend two weeks per year on the ground in Portugal. And after five years, you become eligible for naturalization.
(Of course, to stand a better chance of successfully gaining citizenship this way, it makes sense to spend much more time on the ground, and show close connections to Portugal in the years before you apply.)
But if you just want to cut to the chase, and have the money to do it, you can essentially purchase a passport through a citizenship by investment (CBI) program.
Malta offers the highest quality passport available through this method, ranked 25th worldwide. And, it is the only CBI program in the European Union.
That’s important, because with the open borders Schengen area, an EU passport opens up many more doors than just the country that grants it. With an EU passport, you can reside in any EU country you’d like.
To buy access to Malta, and the EU, you should expect to spend about a million euros. Obviously that’s pricey for most people. But other CBI programs in the Caribbean start in the low $100,000 range.
Caribbean passports aren’t as powerful as Malta’s, though. For example, Grenada ranks 64th, Antigua and Barbuda 76th, and St. Lucia 84th. These are all B/B- grade passports, so it’s pretty reasonable value for the money.
Check out the entire passport ranking here, or click here to explore more ways to obtain a second passport.
Source: The Daily Bell Rephrased By: InfoArmed