Contrarian Expatriate wrote: ↑May 8th, 2020, 5:56 pm
In the post-Corona world where wealth has been wiped out in almost every country, there will be a renewed push to compete for monied foreigners both as residents and as citizens. Further, in countries like Paraguay, the legal requirements are not the same for everyone. If you use a channel with connections, you are as good as in.
I wouldn't call CE an idiot, however like most mid-level career civil servants, his intelligence is limited. After all, a guy has to pretty limited to be capable of spending, much less be willing to spend, 30 years kissing ass as a government flunky just in order to get a nice pension at the end.
Anyway, CE is doling out his usual half-baked ideas and so I feel compelled to intervene to clarify things. Wealth is not being wiped out anywhere. However, there is a tendency for all governments to overspend and luring in rich foreigners is always a tempting way to shore up government finances. So indeed, I agree with CE in expecting governments to make it increasingly easy in the future to buy residency, especially for retirees, for those for whom the 90 day tourist visa isn't enough.
BUT, this is also precisely why dual citizenship in a place like Paraguay will not be that useful in the future for retirees with USA or other first world citizenship. (Both CE and I have USA citizenship.) Thailand alteady makes it easy to buy your way in as a retiree, for example, and I expect to see more schemes like this in the future.
Simply buying residency in the countries that interest you, when you need it, will likely be cheaper and less hassle than getting citizenship in Paraguay. The craziest part of CE's plan is that he apparently has no real interest in Paraguay itself, but rather merely wants access to Argentina and Russia. If he really expects countries with financial problems (like both Argentina and Russia currently) to increasingly compete for wealthy residents, doesn't that imply these countries will make it easy to simply buy your way in directly, using your existing USA passport, without f***ing around with Paraguay?
Furthermore, the same need for money makes it likely that governments will increasingly start taxing based on citizenship (which only the USA and Eritrea do currently), so the more citizenships and permanent residencies you have, the more governments who can claim you owe them taxes. Dual tax treaties mean you won't pay tax multiple times to different governments for the same income, but you will have to file forms with multiple governments, and be subject to audits by multiple governments. (We can also expect governments to cooperate in sharing income, banking and other information to prevent people from avoiding taxation by at least one government.) In other words, the more citizenships and permanent residencies, the more headaches.
As for connections, a call from the local consulate of tge USA State Department can indeed be helpful in certain situations, but I'd be surprised if the State Department would assist CE to become a citizen of another country.
Finally, it might be worth mentioning here another of CE's bad ideas. Namely, pumping himself full of hormones to cope with his obesity and sleep apnea other health problems. CE calls me an old man, though I'm only a few years older than him (I'm 59), and my body is clearly holding up much better than his. Unlike CE, I have no need to take hormones to stay lean and muscular, nor do I need to tote around a CPAP machine everywhere I go because of obesity interfering with breathing while sleeping. What is CE's plan if he gets locked down during a future pandemic and his hormone replacements are abruptly stopped due to supply chain disruptions? Withdrawal symptoms are horrible. This is just one risk of pumping yourself with hormones like a feedlot steer. Another risk is shorter lifespan. Which gets back to all these passport schemes. Is CE even going to be around to take advantage of that Paraguay passport if and when he finally receives it?
