The Quest for Consistency in CIPs

Citizenship by Investment Programmes (CIPs) have changed the way we perceive sovereignty. The right to citizenship that was once available only to people who were natively born, with parents who were natively born or after a long period of naturalisation, can now be acquired more rapidly by foreigners who previously had little to no links to a nation.

There are benefits to these new possibilities, but also threats. All can agree that our world is becoming more economically borderless. Advances in digital technology and airline travel shrink distances from one continent to the next and, as a result, nations need to work closer together, not only in matters of economics, but defence and security. 

When it comes to CIPs, this is a unique challenge; one that Caribbean countries must consider carefully as they look to a future where CIPs will expand membership of the Caribbean family to people from all over the world.

The Common Links

Each nation determines its own laws surrounding CIPs, and each has differing requirements, from the amount to be invested in order to obtain a passport, to the time period between application and granting (or not) of citizenship. Yet all nations in the Caribbean and beyond that offer a CIP still have common requirements.

Applicants for CIPs must have no criminal record, and be of good character. They must be able to show a clean and legal source of investment funds (so arriving at an airport with a big bag of cash in-hand won’t do). They also must make a clear commitment to a government-approved investment like government bonds, a national economic fund or real estate. So simply indicating plans to invest, or showing an interest in doing so, will not see citizenship granted. Beyond these common parameters, the variables from one programme to another begin to emerge.

The Price of Access

Some nations, such as the UK, have a much higher barrier to entry. If you’re a high-flying foreigner from outside the European Economic Area (and Switzerland), you can apply for an “Innovator Visa” formerly known as the UK’s Tier 1 Entrepreneur Visa. This would allow you to stay for up to three years once having met the requisite investment threshold, with the ability to become eligible to apply for the right to settle after the third year. This set-up limits many, and discourages many more even if they have the means.

Locally, Dominica, Grenada, and St Kitts and Nevis have all offered (individually) a CIP for under US$200,000. For those who seek dual citizenship or need a new passport without a residency requirement, a CIP among these provides a fast avenue to do so. These more affordable offerings may make the CIP industry a ‘buyer’s market’, but also pose a growing headache for security services in the region and beyond. They also have a bearing on the CIP industry itself.

Antigua and Barbuda has found great popularity in recent years among Canadian tourists, drawing over 23,000 in the first half of 2018 alone, but there is no prospect of two-way traffic. In June 2017 Ottawa announced it was imposing a visa requirement on anyone arriving from Antigua and Barbuda. The Trudeau government thereafter signified in early 2018 that it would consider restoring the visa-free provision for travellers from Antigua and Barbuda, but only if significant “improvements” were made to the country’s CIP. It’s here that the relatively low starting cost of US$100,000 for a passport has proven costly to the nation and its citizenry.

Neighbourhood Watch

The manner in which nations with CIPs interact with each other, as well as with those that do not have CIPs, will be an increasingly important security issue in the years ahead. In this environment, governments now have to anticipate threats that arrive on their shores not via landing craft and fighter jets, but via private investment, infrastructure and digital technology. This threat is made all the more pervasive by the reality that individuals and organisations that pose obvious dangers to a country’s security, such as intelligence agents from rival nations, can also operate in the same space as non-state actors like terrorist groups or organised criminal networks.  

The recent establishment of the Caribbean Customs Organisation is a fine example of the evolving response to emerging threats. When the Caribbean Customs and Law Enforcement Council (CCLEC), the precursor to the Organisation, was founded in 1989, money laundering was certainly occurring but the means for doing so, compared to the present environment, were far more restrained. As technology has advanced and limitations on currency transfers globally have reduced, laundering has thrived, especially as new threats have emerged concurrently, such as the ability for CIPs and cryptocurrency to form a dangerous nexus when both are combined in criminal activity.

There is no suggestion that any government which operates a CIP is engaging in money laundering. Neither that cryptocurrency is exclusively a technology used for crime. Instead, it’s one largely like any form, where it’s not criminal in its nature but can be used by those with a criminal intent. 

It cannot be overlooked that there is easy access to many CIPs at a time when threats to nation states are growing, and emerging, in devious new ways. The Canada and Antigua and Barbuda episode shows that other nations beyond this region are increasingly ready to assert security around their own borders as international threats grow.

A Secure Conversation

The Caribbean region may appear far safer than many others, and will be so — until it’s not. Easy answers to enhancing the security of CIPs around the region will be elusive. But the question must now be asked: how can security of CIPs from one nation to the next be enhanced? Could region-wide standards be pursued that maintain individual CIPs but lift their security overall? Yes, nation states remain sovereign, ultimately accountable only to themselves and their people, so such a pursuit would not be easy. But neither is seeing with clear eyes the problem in thinking a region can continue to build its security without bolstering issues related to certain individual CIPs that could pose security risks if pursued with malicious intent.