IMI Podcasts

This week in IMI:

New Q1 2023 Private Briefing Available Now: Request Your Confidential Copy

Saint Lucia CIU Circular Says Promotion of CBI Real Estate Discounts Violate License Terms

Active Investor Visas: 5 Lessons to Ensure Profitability and Client Satisfaction

Malaysia M2H Applications Down by 90% Since New Rules Imposed, Says Industry Association

The Proposal to Close the Golden Visa is Unconstitutional And Will Not Solve Portugal’s Housing Crisis

Greece Extends Golden Visa Transition Period by Another 3 Months to July 31st

Record Application Volume Sees Greek Golden Visa Authorities Struggling to Keep Up With Demand

A summary of this week's news in investment migration.

Listen to Investment Migration This Week on Spotify.

Singapore’s Economic Development Board has decided to sharply raise the minimum investment required to qualify for permanent residency in the city-state through its Global Investor Program. The threshold will rise from investments of SGD 10m and SGD 25m in categories A and B, both of which have hitherto demanded a minimum investment of only SGD 2.5m. Even under the previous thresholds, interest was limited: By the government’s own count, the program has averaged 60 approvals a year since 2020.

Property developers, industry associations, and the governor of semi-autonomous Madeira all expressed their vehement opposition to Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa’s intention to close the country’s golden visa program. Accusing the government’s housing policy of being more “ideological than logical”, they warned the state’s moves would tarnish the country’s reputation, cause an unnecessary loss of sorely-needed foreign capital, and remove Portugal’s competitive advantages.

Madalena Monteiro, a lawyer specializing in Italy’s “Dolce Visa”, said during an appearance on our Mobility Standard Podcast that there was a “99% chance” the Senate would introduce a real estate option for the program in the coming weeks. As golden visa options in the EU dwindle following the recent closure of Ireland’s IIP and the heralded end of Portugal’s golden visa, the Italian alternative has been the subject of renewed interest. The lack of a property investment option has thus far prevented the Dolce Visa from garnering the application volume of its southern European peers.

In an impassioned opinion piece, Martin St-Hilaire and Philippe May May argue that Vanuatu might as well give up on meeting the EU’s ever-shifting standards for citizenship by investment programs to retain visa-free travel to Schengen. Instead, they propose the pacific nation target the mid-market, focusing on citizenship investors motivated by factors unrelated to travel to Europe. Specifically, they propose reducing the program’s asking price from $130,000 to somewhere between $75,000 and $95,000. 

Stephane Tajick, another IMI columnist, asks whether there’s still hope for investment migration in the EU and whether the industry itself could have done more to avert Brussels' ongoing - and recently successful - anti-RCBI campaign. 

Our guest this week on the Mobility Standard podcast was Madalena Monteiro of Magwind. She came to talk about the Italian "Dolce Visa", one of Europe's remaining golden visa programs. 

We spoke to Madalena about:

• What happened in Portugal last week, and whether the Italian investor visa stands to benefit;
• Why the Dolce Visa has a "99% chance" of getting a real estate investment option in the next few months;
• Why so few investment migration companies have historically marketed the program, and why that is about to change;
• How the upcoming bill in the Italian senate would make the program far more attractive;
• What the drawbacks of the Italian program are;
• How to be a tax resident in Italy but still pay a low tax rate;
• How the Italian government is taking its EU competitors into account when improving their own golden visa program;
• And innumerable other topics. 

Listen to the episode with the player below or find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcast platforms by searching for "IMI Podcasts".

Investment migration remains a small-firm industry because, in this market, scale offers few benefits and several disadvantages.

The most eventful week in the history of investment migration is drawing to a close. 

One major golden visa closed outright when Irish Justice Minister Simon Harris unceremoniously announced that his country’s Immigrant Investor program would be closing with immediate effect. Last year, rumors of the program’s potential closure drove a surge in applications, almost entirely from Chinese investors. The program received 1,316 applications in 2022, more than five times the number received in the preceding year. While giving no concrete reason for his decision, Harris hinted that pressure from the European Union had played a role. 

The really big news this week, of course, was Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa’s announcement that Portugal’s golden visa, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading RBI schemes, would be closing. A few days before, rumors of the program’s imminent closure had surfaced in Portuguese news, but most industry observers had anticipated a more nuanced approach from the government, one that would leave some categories of the program open. The PM, however, indicated he would scrap the program altogether. Questions now remain as to whether there will be a transition period, what will happen to those who invested in something other than real estate, and whether the announced measures are even constitutional.

In Spain, meanwhile, leftist parliamentarians submitted a bill that seeks to remove the real estate option from Spain’s golden visa program, which they said was driving up property prices in the country and “expelling the local population.” The draft bill aims to leave the golden visa program open only to those who invest at least a million euros in business or bank deposits or 2 million euros in government bonds.

Market commentators questioned what level of demand we might expect for Russia’s new golden visa program, which will provide permanent residence to applicants - and five generations of their family members - who invest in Russian real estate, companies, or social projects. Minimum investments range from about $200,000 to $680,000.

The Saint Kitts & Nevis Citizenship by Investment Unit issued a new set of regulations for the Caribbean’s most popular CIP merely seven weeks after its first raft of changes. The new regulations reverse some of the regulations introduced in December, which had, among other things, prohibited the re-sale of CBI real estate.

Finally, IMI this week announced that IMI Connect - our bi-annual landmark event for investment migration practitioners - would take place in Malta between the 18th and 20th of May. A wide array of industry leaders have already confirmed their attendance, and tickets will open for sale to the public in the coming weeks. 

Malaysia now has four separate residence-by-deposit programs after Sarawak - one of two Malaysian states that control their own immigration policies - introduced its own version of the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) program. Sarawak’s program offers essentially the same benefits as its federal counterpart - the right to reside for 5+5 years anywhere in Malaysia - but at one-fifth of the cost. 

This week on the Mobility Standard podcast, David Lesperance and Melvin Warshaw discussed the persistent uptick in American interest in investment migration and renunciation, the tax pitfalls American expats need to avoid at all costs, and the three positions American HNWIs take on the expatriation question. 

Our new report - Low-Tax Living in High-Tax Europe - provides a guide to 11 special tax regimes in eight Western European countries that enable individuals to pay a single-digit tax rate in otherwise high-tax countries. It covers regimes that are particularly favorable to those who receive high passive incomes such as dividends, capital gains, rental income, royalties, and similar, as well as those with high professional incomes. If you, or your client, is attracted to Western Europe for its lifestyle proposition but deterred from residing there full-time by high levels of taxation, this guide will show you how to have your cake and eat it too.

The European Council has agreed to give Vanuatu another 18 months to reform its program before it implements a full suspension of the country from the Schengen area’s visa-waiver agreement. Vanuatu has agreed to work with full transparency during the reform, inviting the EU to observe and advise the process. Theoretically, at least, we may soon see a CIP that’s not only approved by the EU but partially devised by it.

2022 was the year Grenada’s Citizenship by Investment Program joined its peers in Saint Kitts & Nevis and Dominica to become the third Caribbean CIP in history to receive more than a thousand applications in a single year. Q4 2022 statistics released by the country’s Finance Ministry last week reveal Grenada’s program broke a wide array of its own records: All-time highs were set for applications, approvals, revenue, and per-applicant investment. The backlog, unfortunately, has reached unprecedented highs as well. 

Lawsuits against Portugal’s SEF from golden visa applicants - some of whom have waited for more than two years to get an appointment - are multiplying. What began with a handful of successful and highly publicized cases last summer has, by the SEF’s own count, mushroomed to 63 suits so far. Industry observers expect a deluge of suits as delays persist.

True Blue Development, the company behind the Kawana Bay resort project in Grenada, this week issued a press release in which they confirmed the international arbitration proceedings against the government are moving ahead. While the developers

Our guests this week on the Mobility Standard were David Lesperance, Managing Partner of Lesperance & Associates, one of the world's leading experts on international tax and immigration, and Melvin Warshaw, a US-based cross-border tax and private client lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in the field. 

Lesperance and Warshaw are also the authors of our American Exceptionalism column, where they explore investment migration questions that uniquely impact Americans. 

We spoke to them about:

• The bump in American interest in investment migration we saw during the pandemic has persisted even after the end of the crisis. What's driving Americans out the door in 2023? 
• The three types of approaches American HNWIs take with regard to investment migration. 
• The tax pitfalls Americans moving abroad need to avoid at all cost and the harsh penalties for non-compliance.
• How you can set things right with the IRS if you discover you're not in compliance. 
• Why the IRS is ramping up its enforcement of tax reporting non-compliance among expats, and how US expats can get out ahead of it.
• A status update on the long wait lists for expatriation appointments among US consulates.

Lesperance: "Mel and I have a client for whom taxes would clearly be one of the reasons to consider moving abroad. But, he said: 'Well, I'm a hedge fund manager I understand statistics. I know that my children statistically won't be victims of a mass shooting event. But I know with 100% certainty that they are going to go through active shooter drills at school, and I know that every time they go to play soccer with their friends, or go to the movies, or go to Mcdonald's, they're going to be thinking about that and I just don't want that for my kids."

Globalization is reversing, history is returning, and the world is becoming a perilous place again. The Western hemisphere will be an exception.