All right, and joining us now is Christopher Willis. And Chris is a managing partner of Latitude Caribbean and a managing director of Latitude Consultancy. He’s been involved in immigration industry since 1995. He’s got a long list of credentials and organization has been in. And, uh, I’m not going to go through all of that because I want to get to, um, what is happening right now. A lot of people are very concerned about what’s happening in our government here in America and the European union and other things there’s a recently, uh, the EU has just, um, uh, started cracking down on people who are trying to leave.

Oh, we’ve also had, uh, if you’ve followed it, I haven’t really covered it. Uh, but you’ve got one guy that was nicknamed Bitcoin Jesus who used Bitcoin to relocate to Europe. He was just arrested in Spain and is going to be extradited to the United States because the IRS is after him saying that he transferred, uh, he didn’t report all of his Bitcoin holdings and things like that. So I want to talk about, um, you know, this, is it something that is only for the rich, what do people have to do if they want to do this? Why would they go to particular places and how this stuff works? So joining us now is a Chris Willis.

Thank you for joining us, sir. Hi, David. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. And it’s, it’s a very interesting trend right now in the U S you know, with Americans looking at getting a second residence or citizenship, because typically this wasn’t on their radar, but you know, there’s been a confluence of events, you know, over the last few years, that sort of led people to start looking at this as a viable option. And you know, it’s, it’s important to note that it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to leave the U S but it’s more having the option to leave.

Should you be set, be dissatisfied with the direction that the country is going. Obviously it’s getting, you know, closer and closer to the election and people, no matter where you sit, you know, have very strong opinions of how they’d like to see the direction of the U S and if it doesn’t go your way, then you know, half the country is going to be unhappy. So they’re looking at different alternatives and you’ve seen this because of maybe because of taxes or stuff like that. But you know, after what happened in 2020, a lot of people are looking at this and saying, and I have listeners and, and, and Africa that said, Hey, everybody here was fine with this pandemic stuff.

Nobody was freaking out about it. It was the Europeans who were freaking out and the Americans who were freaking out about it after they left, everything was fine. Well, you raised a good point. I mean, the pandemic was really the kicker to a lot of this because you’ll remember when there was the travel ban, right? So it didn’t matter who you were. If you only had a U S passport, you know, your wings were clipped and you were grounded. And so a lot of, you know, particularly the family office, did we lose them? They freeze up here.

We’re back. We’re back. It froze up for a moment. We lost that last bit. What you said, you said, if you only got one passport, what was it you said after that? So the, um, with the, with the pandemic is people were, were grounded, you know, they didn’t matter who you were. If you only had a U S passport, then you weren’t able to travel. And so when we’re speaking to a lot of family offices, you know, the feedback they’re getting from their family principles is, you know, you’ve got to fix this gap. You know, we were exposed here and we don’t want this to be a problem again in the future if there was a similar situation.

Yeah. Yeah. And it is also important. I think in many cases to have a, what I’d call residential ambiguity, uh, they, they sit tend to work with you differently if you’re actually a citizen, then if you’ve got a different citizenship somewhere. I remember when I was in high school, I went with some friends to Europe and, um, it was, uh, it was like a music organization. We were touring, but we had a day off and we decided that we’re going to ride bicycles around London. And the guy who read the bicycles to us said, um, well, you’re not allowed to ride these things to the park, but since you’re Americans, you can probably get away with it.

So we did. And, um, we had a very angry Bobby who, uh, flagged us down. He was ready to give us fines or handcuffs or whatever. We weren’t doing anything crazy. I mean, we weren’t trying to run people over. We were very, very calm, but we’re just calmly riding through. And, uh, so then, uh, as soon as we started talking to him, he goes, Oh, you’re Americans. Okay. Well, you’re not allowed to do that here. I know you didn’t know that, but we’ll just, just walk it out of here and you’ll be fine. That’s the type of thing where, where if you have these other residencies, that can kind of give you a little bit of an out sometimes, I think that’s why, what I mean by residential ambiguity.

Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, you raised a good point because I’ll go back to the pandemic and the Caribbean in particular, uh, most of the islands closed their borders unless you were a citizen, right? So I can give you an example of someone who had a multimillion dollar property in Jambi Bay and Antigua and thought, you know, I’ll go hang out there during the pandemic, but never took out citizenship. So, you know, he was turned away. He wasn’t able to travel to go and spend time in his home. So it’s, it’s that preparedness and, and, you know, to be fair, people didn’t expect something of the nature of the pandemic to kick in.

So they didn’t really think about it. Yeah. Typically, as an American, you can hop on a plane and go anywhere, right? Um, but suddenly these, um, these challenges put themselves to the front foot and people had to make some, some adjustments. Well, now, you know, I’m looking at this, this golden passport, the cost escalates to $200,000 on EU crackdown. What is a golden passport? First of all? So it’s, yeah, I mean the term golden passport or, uh, you know, there’s a lot of media spin on how these are portrayed, but in the Caribbean, you have what’s called citizenship by investment.

So in exchange from for making either a donation to the government or purchasing a approved real estate, then you can receive citizenship in exchange. So the, what’s been happening is, uh, the European union has been making some noises about how they would like to see some, uh, some enhancements, let’s say to the programs in the Caribbean. And one of that was increasing the minimum, uh, investment level. So right now it sits at a hundred thousand us and, um, there’s been what’s called a memorandum of agreement, which was signed by four of the five Caribbean governments, which agreed to raise the floor from a hundred to 200,000.

And that’s scheduled to be effective June 30th of this year. The, the, the sort of one outstanding countries, uh, indicated they will be signing as well. So the expectation is that, uh, the, the minimum investment level will start at 200,000 instead of the current of 100. Wow. Oh, they’re going to double it. Wow. That’s amazing. Yeah. When I was looking at this years ago, I remember looking at some of these Belize had like 25,000 back in the nineties and a New Zealand and all the, you know, you had golden passport, you get to a lot of different countries.

Uh, sometimes they would, um, have other restrictions, but for the most part, it was just, if you could put that much money into the country, is this something that only the very rich can do though? Is there anything that people can do that is, um, you know, to get citizenship somewhere without a big stash of cash? Yeah. The only other real way is through descent. And we have a division that specializes in this. So if you know, if you had ancestral links, um, then that could be a pathway. And you know, I remember one client we were speaking to who was looking at the Malta program in Europe, you know, which costs about a million Euro, give or take.

And, uh, you know, having discussions with them, their surname sounded Italian. So while we dug a bit deeper, found out they were eligible through descent. So they got their Italian citizenship, which then gave them full access to European union and same to the million Europe, right? So he was over the moon. Um, so it’s, it’s another way that you can do it, but the programs we focus on David are typically, you know, for your high net worth ultra high net worth, but the mass affluent and such, uh, there are other programs, um, but typically they’ll have a residency component involved as well.

So it’s important to distinguish between, uh, residency and citizenship. So the Caribbean programs I spoke about are direct pathway to citizenship. So that leads to a passport, um, other programs, you know, very much like in the U S you have a green card, right? So that type of concept would apply in places like Canada, Portugal, Spain, Greece, uh, where, you know, you have a permanent residency, but to graduate or upgrade to citizenship, you have to meet certain criteria, which is typically time and day count. So if you can get somewhere and you can afford to, and sometimes the cost of living is significantly less.

We can talk a little bit about that, but if you can get somewhere and establish residency, you might be able to get in without the golden passport based on time that you’re there. Right. Yeah, correct. I mean, there’s, you know, there’s a multitude of programs, you know, I mean, uh, in Canada, for example, where, you know, especially around the U S election, many Americans look to sort of take a hop up north and spend time in Canada. So we sort of joke out his immigration website crashes usually the day after the election because so many people are looking at it.

Yeah. A lot of people promise which way the, depending I know who wins half the country’s going to want to get out. Yeah, exactly. So it’s, it’s one of those things that there’s many other routes, but a way people could qualify, you know, whether it’s true, uh, setting up a business, whether it’s through a spousal relationship, whether it’s through being a skilled worker, for example, but for our focus it is by investment and, uh, and, or by, by decent, so the two areas that we focus on, David. I see. Well, let me ask you this. I mean, is that, um, I know a lot of people are wanting to get out of the United States because of what they’ve seen with the pandemic and because of what is happening with politics, but of course the same type of issues are there in, in Europe as well.

And, um, I guess, um, you know, uh, this, uh, Bloomberg piece, uh, that is talking about the cost of the golden passport soaring and the Caribbean, how it’s going to double in just a few months here. Uh, they also mentioned cryptocurrency. Uh, and, and that’s one of the things when you have, they just recently had a debate, uh, uh, between some gold bugs and some cryptocurrency people. One of the things they were saying was, you know, that’s, is it makes it easier for us to exit, but there also seems to be an attempt to crack down on that as well.

Make an example out of the guy they call Bitcoin Jesus. Um, he had some cryptocurrency that he did not declare evidently. That’s what the IRS is alleging. And so they contacted the Spanish government, uh, to arrest him and to extradite him for the IRS over his cryptocurrency holdings. Now that’s, that’s kind of a more aggressive aspect of it as well. Talk a little bit about that and, um, you know, how, how the issues in terms of if you’ve got money to buy citizenship or if you want to establish residency, uh, the issues of trying to get your money out of the jurisdiction here.

Yeah, there’s two elements to that. I mean, the first one is the due diligence, uh, source of wealth, source of funds is, is a key component to all of these, making sure they understand, you know, how the, how your wealth was generated and, um, that everything was done in a legal manner. Um, what we’re seeing for people who are in the, in the crypto space is that, you know, your crypto wallet can be used in terms of source of funds. However, they still need to demonstrate how they acquired the funds that led to that initial crypto investment.

So it’s going to go in that far back just to make sure it was all done in the proper ways, but in particular in the Caribbean, um, they won’t accept crypto directly. So it would still have to be converted to us, um, banking and, you know, values in the Caribbean are still very traditional. So they haven’t quite advanced to that stage yet, but certainly there are opportunities for people who have their wealth in the crypto space. Um, and it’s, you know, as, as you rightly say, many more people are looking at this saying, how can we use our crypto funds to, to, to manage this? But it’s, it’s still evolving.

Um, some countries have certainly said that they want to, um, uh, explore how they can attract the crypto market and make it as a, you know, removing barriers if you like, in terms of making investment. But the, the key thing here, as I mentioned is the due diligence. So, um, anybody who’s applying for any of these programs needs to understand that not only the source of wealth, source of funds, but you know, your personal background, uh, what’s in the public domain, uh, everything that’s advised on the forms or declared on the forms will be verified as well as a final sort of international checks, you know, within Chipotle, Europe, polls, watch lists, sanctions lists, all that, all that good stuff.

So it isn’t just a question of, here’s my money. Thank you very much. You don’t have to go through this process of evaluation. Right. Right. And that’s what you do. Uh, you help people to go through. What I imagine is a real maze of regulations, a lot of hoops and a lot of vetting and all that kind of stuff that has to go through. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first thing is we, you know, we have our first consultation where we have to understand the client, make sure we understand their motivations and their needs, and then we can suggest which programs might be best suited.

And then we have to dig a little bit deeper into the background to make sure there won’t be anything that would stop them qualifying. Where are you seeing people, uh, coming from mostly and going to in your practice? Well, I mean, we’re, we’re fortunate that we, you know, we’ve got 23 offices around the world. So we’re dealing with people with very different profiles. As we spoke about at the beginning, you know, Americans weren’t typically a major source market because you had these freedoms already. You could get on a plane and go, but if you were from Nigeria, if you were from Pakistan, if you were from South Africa, you know, you need a visa to pretty well get anywhere.

Right. So the mobility aspect here was key. So suddenly you were going, let’s say from Pakistan. If you’re going from Pakistan and then, and that froze up, so you can pick up from there. Yeah. Sorry about that. So it was going. So in the city of Pakistan, for example, you can go to 39 countries, visa free. And if they invest into the Caribbean, suddenly that jumps to 157, which includes, you know, the Schengen area, the UAE, Singapore, places like that. So it’s, it’s the mobility, the enhancing of mobility is key for people from these reasons regions.

And so that’s a keen motivation for them. But again, if you’re American, you can go to those places. Anyway, the key attraction for Americans is looking to enhance their freedoms by having another option. So it’s all about, you know, as many options as you can, you know, in the sort of volatile world we’re living in. And it’s actually becoming a little bit more of a status symbol, you know, for many Americans, you know, it’s not the car you drive or the watch on your wrist, it’s, you know, what passports in your pocket, you know, and knowing that you can access different parts of the world with all this.

So it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s becoming more mainstream as we spoke about it at the beginning. And I think that’s a key thing that as more and more people understand what the benefits are and for the wealthy, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars, they’ll spend that on a week’s holiday, right? So it’s, you know, citizenships for life and this is something they can pass on to their kids, you know, so it’s again, with a lot of the family offices, we speak to the succession planning and making sure that, you know, they’ve they’ve got this angle covered, you know, it’s a very straightforward and practical solution.

Let me ask you, cause you’re talking about having visa requirements and things like that and being able to expand that from moving from one citizenship, to another one, but the visa requirements are starting to increase as I’ve noticed the United States and even the EU are starting to add additional visa requirements. Talk a little bit about that. Isn’t, I think the European union is going to start having some visa requirements for Americans. Is that correct? Yeah. So we’re going to have like many countries have an electronic travel authority if you like, so that you still have to, you can, you’ll essentially be given it, but you have to apply, right? To show that you’ve been pre-qualified to come in.

So you have that in Canada, you have that for people going to the U S it’s not an uncommon thing, but it’s something that the EU is looking to roll out. I think they were looking to get it out this year. It’s probably rolling into 2025 now with the European union introducing this. And I think the rolling it out is what’s causing them a lot of problems right now. That’s why it’s going to, it’s continually getting delayed. But what it obviously gives them is, is access to data, right? Which is being able to track people, manage people, and to ensure that any party, anybody or bad actors or undesirables, you know, we’re getting, we’re getting picked up at these early stages.

You mentioned passing this on to your children. Talk a little bit about that. And in terms of, you know, we, we are familiar with how, you know, we have situations with open borders and immigration and you know, how citizenship is essentially claimed or passed on here. What are the types of situations that you see in other countries? I mean, is it can you, is there any other country that just lets you go across the border and just kind of hang out or, you know, like we do here, or is everybody kind of policing their borders? I imagine.

Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s getting tighter and tighter. And one of the things why the very, very popular, even though it’s the most, it’s, it’s very expensive, you know, at about a million Euro, which is not a recoverable. It gives you access to the European union and of course, all the settlement rights. So even though you’re a citizen of Malta, you could go, you know, live, work, study, retire in any of the other member States. So that’s attractive to many people, especially an American who says, well, I want to like for like, you know, so, you know, the Caribbean is great, but it’s not necessarily the lifestyle that I want.

And we’re having access to, to resources. So that’s why Europe is always an attractive alternative, but not everybody, you know, has the, um, that has the funds to do it. So the Caribbean is a nice sort of happy, happy medium. It’s also geographically much closer, familiar to many people. And, um, you know, it’s, which is why it’s, it’s a very popular option, especially because the, the processing is also much quicker, takes about six, six to eight months, give or take, whereas Malta is going to take about 18 months. And so when somebody gets a citizenship legitimately, uh, legally in one of these countries, they can pass that on to their children, generally.

I imagine there’s some, yeah. So, so basically if you were, let’s say it was a, you know, your nuclear family, mom, dad, two kids, you know, the kids would get it. And that’s not an issue. In some cases, you can include a sibling. If they’re unmarried and have no kids, um, you can include, um, your parents or your grandparents, um, you know, the family unit, so the definition of a family unit can be expanded, uh, to, uh, to allow more people to be included on one application. So there’s, each country has its own rules and how they define independent, but they’re trying to be as competitive as possible to include as many people as they can.

So let me ask you about reciprocity. You know, we’ve been talking about the legal process here. Uh, is, uh, if an American wants to get on a raft and go to the Caribbean or whatever, uh, is there, are they, is, is that a thing that is happening in their country? I mean, we see that happening in the EU. We see it happening in the U S extensively. Uh, is that anything that’s happening in the other direction or do they clamp down on that extensively? Yeah, it’s not really, not, not really. I mean, you’re right. You know, people coming into the U S, uh, the UK is having a big issue with that right now, uh, with people coming over from mainland Europe on boats and then arriving in the United Kingdom.

Um, Europe, of course, has had that for many years in particular with people starting their journeys in, in North Africa and, uh, you know, typically ending up in the Southern tip of Italy. So there’s, there’s a lot of challenges around that. Um, again, it’s a, it’s a reinforcement of the amount of migration that goes on around the world, whether it’s through displaced people, um, or the wealthy, people are moving around, you know? Um, but yeah, in terms of the, you know, the, the, the profile of person we’re speaking to, you know, they’re looking to give themselves as many options should they need them.

Cause I, not everybody, you know, someone may have a citizenship in the Caribbean and they say, yeah, it’s great. I’m going to pop down there, maybe buy a house and hang out, you know, a couple of months or a couple of weeks of the year, especially when it gets cold, let’s say in the North. And, um, and then that’s good enough for them. But for other people, it’s, they want to actually move. They want to settle there. They want to live there. They want to raise their family there. So it goes back to my earlier point that, you know, we need to understand the client and what the motivations are, and then we can see what program is best suited for them.

When somebody wants to establish residency, I mean, how complicated is that? Do they just need to, uh, uh, is there a legal process that you help people with with that? If they don’t get citizenship, are there still issues preventing them from, uh, buying property or something like that in many of these places? Yeah. You tend to have, um, you know, in some countries it’s called an alien landholding tax or they’ll have additional taxes for non-citizens. If you’re looking to go into buy, uh, varies from country to country. Many people understand the concept of buying real estate.

Um, so those programs have been quite popular, but it’s, um, you know, the, the residency, of course, is there, it’s not for life. You’ve got to renew it or you’ve got to upgrade to citizenship. That’s why a lot of people are like this and share programs, uh, because it is for life. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, let me ask you, uh, another thing too about, since we’re, we’re talking, I think in a momentarily here about, uh, the, uh, you know, kind of reciprocity of Americans going to other countries like that. Is there anything in any of these other countries for political asylum for somebody that is coming from Europe or Canada or the United States or something? Did any of them have political asylum programs? Uh, or is that, absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, um, all countries, most countries, I mean that you look at places like Canada, the United States, uh, European countries, the UK will all, you know, look to take a certain amount of, uh, asylum seekers or refugees per year. Uh, the biggest challenge, of course, is determining are they genuine, right? And so they’ll have their own different protocols to establish that, you know, there was the safe third country agreement between Canada, the U S for a while, uh, which has been, been adjusted, but you know, they’re making sure that they can understand quickly, is this a genuine refugee? Because part of the strategy in the past was that they would, you know, get on a plane, flush the passport down the toilet, turn up and say, you know, this is done for four or five years, right? Until, um, until they can be adjudicated upon.

So that’s, that’s something a lot of these countries are looking to tidy up, but with the amount of displaced people and pressures in developing countries, it’s becoming, you know, quite, uh, you know, quite the issue to be able to, uh, to manage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s pretty easy for people in a war torn country to try to make a case for political asylum, even though they don’t always get it. Uh, I would imagine it’d be a lot harder for somebody, uh, that is, uh, you know, coming from the United States to try to make a case for political asylum to go to, uh, you know, one of these other, and I would imagine that perhaps, um, it wouldn’t even be considered and most countries that would be politically friendly to the United States.

Is that true? Yeah. I mean, it’s the, the, to, to, to define, um, you know, being a person at risk and therefore eligible for asylum, it’s quite a high bar to, to hit. And you know, the United States, someone’s saying, Oh, I’m being politically persecuted for my beliefs. It’s again, many people, you know, it’s, it’s hard to say, right? It’d be hard to have that proven. So, um, but some people will try it on. Of course they will. Right. Um, and, you know, we’ve seen examples where people have, uh, have tried, I think more of a PR stunt than anything else, you know, to say, uh, you know, I want to be considered, but you know, it takes away from genuine refugees who have, yeah.

Uh, and other countries that we, we just had a case here. I was talking about earlier where, uh, there was a family coming from Germany, homeschooling family and they were given asylum, uh, about 10 years ago because the Germans are going to take away their, they were Christians. They went home school to kids. Germans are going to take away their kids. They got asylum here. Uh, but because of the change in political regime, the Biden administration decided that they wanted to deport them. So that became a something of an issue. So that’s always the case. And I guess if you get political asylum somewhere, it’s always, um, uh, subject to the whims of whatever the current political regime is, I guess, that’s kind of a shaky thing.

You know, and I’ve, I’ve worked with, um, with people with this profile in the past and you know, when you’re speaking to a genuine asylum seeker or a genuine refugee, I mean, you understand the difference, be, you know, what they’ve gone through and how they should be afforded protection as opposed to some people who are just sort of, uh, trying it on and hoping for the best because, um, you know, for people like you and I, it’s unimaginable. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And so, uh, you know, if, if, um, somebody can afford to do it, uh, it is certainly going to be going up quite a bit and just the next few months are going to be doubling it.

So there’s a, there’s always seems like there’s a constantly closing window on all these different things that are happening everywhere. Even if it is open for you at this point in time, uh, it may be closing pretty soon. Was there anything else that you would tell us that we didn’t cover about this? That, uh, I think people be interested. I mean, you touched on a good point because Canada just, you know, closed up their self-employed category with a day’s notice. Um, you know, Ireland and the UK have done similar things. Portugal changed their program. So there’s, there’s, you’re right.

If you qualify today and it’s something you want to do, you know, don’t delay too long because the goalposts could change. And, you know, we’re expecting, you know, potentially changes the government in the United Kingdom in Canada and the United States this year. Right. So that could change, you know, the direction of those three countries and therefore their immigration policies as well. You know, we also seeing pressures from the European union and the Caribbean and another jurisdiction. So again, that could impact their, um, their policymaking decisions as it relates to immigration. And as we’ve seen in the U S immigration is always a key political topic when it comes to elections.

So my advice to people is if you qualify today, you know, get it done, it’s in your back pocket, you know, you’ve got it, you know, better to, to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Right. So, um, get that done tucked away. And then if things change, then at least you’ve taken care of yourself and your family. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. Uh, we don’t see freedom increasing anywhere in the globe and it seems to be closing everything down. So if you’ve got any plans, now’s the time to make your preparations.

Uh, because, uh, it seems like globally, everything is shutting down even at the Caribbean, they’re shutting stuff down. That’s amazing. But it’s very interesting, uh, to talk to you about that. And, um, I thank you so much for what you do. Uh, Christopher Willis, again, uh, latitude Caribbean and, um, latitude consultancy and, uh, tell us your website here. I’m looking at the website and I, uh, latitude world.com. Is that, is that the best place to find you? They were looking for, absolutely. Yeah. Latitude world.com. Uh, you go into the team, you’ll find my details. Uh, please reach out and be happy to have a conversation to see how we can help you.

That’s great. Thank you very much, Chris. Great talking to you. Very interesting. Yeah. The David Knight show is a critical thinking, super spreader. If you’ve been exposed to logic by listening to the David Knight show, please do your part and try not to spread it. Financial support or simply telling others about the show causes this dangerous information to spread farther. People have to trust me. I mean, trust the science where you mask, take your vaccine. Don’t ask questions. Don’t ask questions. Using free speech to free minds. It’s the David Knight show..

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