Second Passports – Don’t Leave Home Without Two!
Don’t leave home without one? The savvy business traveler these days doesn’t leave home without two or three passports. That was the conclusion of a recent New York Times article titled Carrying a Second Passport? It’s not just for spies covering the benefits of traveling with multiple passports, second citizenships, and naturalization. According to the article, for example, many people do not even realize that they already possess dual citizenship and therefore have the right to carry a second passport from a foreign country. Others do not know that they can legally buy a second passport through the so-called “Economic Citizenship” program …
One example cited is that of Alessandro Pappalardo, a New York-based artist who travels on passports from Italy and Argentina. You recently added a US passport to your portfolio. Formerly employed by an airline in South America, Pappalardo says: “I used to go to Brazil a lot and I always decided which passport to show depending on which line was shorter.”
Another example cited in the Times article is Stefan Stefanov, who holds US and Bulgarian citizenship while his company is in Poland. Choose the correct passport based on where you are going. “Of course, I do not hide that I am a US citizen,” says Setfanov. “But I don’t walk it either.”
Although statistics are hard to come by, as globalization continues apace and American citizens often feel discriminated against or targeted when traveling abroad, more Americans seem to want additional passports than ever “Smart travelers and business travelers want make sure you have two passports based on nationality because there are certain advantages, “says Jan Dvorak, president of Travisa, a passport services company in Washington, DC, quoted in the Times article.
What is the biggest advantage of having a second passport? For the sovereign individual, the greatest advantage is undoubtedly the legal right to work without restrictions in various countries, a particular benefit of passports from European Union countries. Furthermore, Dvorak says, carrying a second passport is “a way of hiding where you’ve been” when traveling between countries with sour relations, for example between Israel and Arab countries.
So how can you get a second passport? As a first step, to obtain a second passport you must become a citizen of the destination country. Once complete, the application process for a second passport is relatively easy. Of course, qualifying for second citizenship is the hard part. But there are ways, even if you don’t have Irish, British, Italian, or German ancestry (those are among the countries known to be most generous in handing out passports to American citizens based on ancestry). Israel, for example, allows anyone of Jewish descent to use what is called aliyah, or the “Law of Return.” This grants instant Israeli citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent or anyone who converts to Judaism.
Ruth Yoffe is another example cited in the Times article who also carries a second passport. Yoffe is the founder of Reloop Designs, a company that hires disabled people in Cambodia to weave baskets from plastic waste. As a citizen of the United States and New Zealand, she travels frequently in Southeast Asia. “For obvious security reasons, I always try to travel and put my visas in my New Zealand passport,” he said. “On a plane, I don’t want to be identified as an American if I have that option, depending on where I’m going.”
Another advantage is that visas cost less for New Zealanders than for Americans. “They assume that no one from any other country cannot be as rich” as Americans, Yoffe said. Many countries like Brazil charge additional fees to Americans to offset the cost of obtaining a US visa for citizens of that country.
Alex Thomas, corporate manager for Travel Document Systems, a passport and visa services company in Washington, explains in the article how some of his clients “don’t feel comfortable traveling with a US passport, and if they have an additional passport, they prefer to use … four or five people a month who ask specifically what they should do to get a passport “for another country … Because of the way things are going in the world,” he said, he expects that number to increase. In other words , The demand for second passports is at an all-time high!
However, what the New York Times article does not cover, probably out of respect for editorial guidelines and political correctness, is the fact that any entrepreneur who wants to can simply buy a second passport. So-called “economic citizenship” programs allow wealthy individuals and families to acquire a second citizenship of a country like Saint Kitts and Nevis or Dominica. The only requirement to obtain one of these passports is to make an economic investment in the country.
Although expensive, these high-end economic citizenship programs are often worth it for wealthy individuals who do not have the time or inclination to wait the two to five years required to establish residency in another country and apply for citizenship through of naturalization in one of the most liberal countries. to obtain second passports such as the Dominican Republic or Paraguay. Plus, they have the advantage of being completely tax-free and not bogged down in bureaucracy or military service obligations.