PT Golden Visa Survives, Caribbean CBI Escrow Concerns, South Korea Investor Visa Real Estate More Expensive, ++
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Investment Migration This Week
In a surprise twist of political fates, the very same governing party that in February introduced the bill to end the golden visa now seeks to keep most of the program: The ruling Socialist Party has submitted changes to the More Housing bill that will see the golden visa survive but with the real estate and the capital transfer options eliminated. Golden visa capital will still find its way into real estate, but only indirectly via the still-valid fund-investment option.
While some CBI programs in the Caribbean require that developers keep escrow accounts in local bank accounts, others allow them to maintain an escrow account abroad, a practice that could compromise the CIU’s ability to verify that the investor actually paid the full amount. Now, stakeholders are ringing the alarm bells: Off-island escrow accounts, they warn, are enabling unauthorized CBI real estate discounting on a large scale.
Provisional visa holders of Australia's Business Innovation and Investment (BIIP) visa staged protests in Sydney and Melbourne last week over sharply increased waiting times for permanent residency following the government's deprioritization of the visa. BIIP visas were removed from the priority processing list last year, causing PR wait times to increase from three to five months to three or more years. The backlog of BIIP applications currently stands at over 32,000.
South Korea’s investor visa, which has raised at least US$10 billion in the last 23 years, is doubling the real estate minimum investment. Originally set to sunset last month, the?South Korean investor visa’s?real estate investment option will remain available for at least another three years, but at a higher price point. South Korea has approved more than 23,000 applicants for its investor visa since the year 2000.
The government of Serbia, an EU candidate country, wants to give immigrants and refugees citizenship after just a year of living in the country. Beyond the 12 months of legal residency, the simplified route to naturalization merely requires that applicants have attained a secondary education degree, are employed or self-employed, and declare that they consider Serbia “their country”. Such an expedited route to citizenship contrasts sharply with the European norm, which typically requires at least five years of continuous residency for naturalization.
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The Quebec Immigrant Investor Program may never be the belle of the ball again, but with a bit of makeup and dim lights, she can still find suitors, writes Stephane Tajick in this opinion piece for IMI. Stricter new rules, which include a donation requirement and applicants' mastery of French, are expected to sharply reduce demand for the program.
The UK Supreme Court this week settled a nearly four-year-old legal dispute over self-serving UK Tier 1 investment structures. UK financial advisory Maxwell Holdings had financed applicants' investor visa investments on the condition that the funds be invested in a company owned by a firm related through family to Maxwell Holdings. In the twice-appealed case, the Home Office argued the applicants had not complied with program rules because the investment was not under their control, an interpretation the Supreme Court also confirmed. The ruling is expected to have wider implications for other UK firms that have used similar structures.
In this installment of our?Unsung IM Programs?series, we head to South America’s second-largest country to look at two often overlooked independent means visas; the?Argentinean Rentista and Pensionado visas. The programs offer a lightning-fast path to PR and citizenship in Argentina to those who can maintain themselves in this cheap, fun, but also challenging country.
?Investment migration people in the news this week included:
Graph of the Week