This Just Changed Everything About Citizenship by Investment

For decades, the tiny Caribbean country of St. Kits and NeAs ran what they called the platinum standard, a sort of no strings attached citizenship by investment program. You write a check,

you get a passport, you never have to show up. There's plenty of people, including nomad capitalist clients who've obtained citizenship in countries like St. Kits and NeAs. They never even been there and they travel the world using that passport. But that era is

ending. Starting later this year, St. Kitsune NeAs is introducing a new requirement, a physical residence requirement and a genuine link test that fundamentally changes what Caribbean

citizenship has been about going back even to the 1980s and certainly for this entire century. This isn't just a minor tweak. It's an entire signal to the industry where one country is saying no

more are we going to simply take donations in exchange for passports. We're going to actually make people move here. here. And I imagine for many of you watching, if you're thinking about getting a second passport, you thought, I I don't know when I have to move

somewhere else and uproot my life and take the kids out of school. Well, if that's you, pay close attention. I'm going to tell you what exactly is happening and what you need to do to preserve your second passport option.

And what I've told you is the best time to get citizenship by investment is years ago. Prices almost always go up. Programs go away. People think it's a sales pitch. It's not. It's the truth.

If the sales pitch is, you go to nomad capitalist.com/apply and you become our client because we offer more passport options than like pretty much anyone else in the business. And we actually help you with an

unbiased approach at picking which one or ones are best for you. We don't just sell passports like commodities or candy bars at a store. So, the second best time to get citizenship by investment is

now because I've been telling you for years, the process is going to get harder. Caribbean passport prices have already doubled or more. Requirements have gone up. Virtual interviews are now

required. But now St. Kits is going to say, "Hey, you got to come and spend some time here and become part of our society." Nothing wrong with that, but kind of changes the entire basis of optionality through second passports.

And so kind of the whole centerpiece of this is going to be a mandatory physical presence requirement paired with what they call a genuine link. If you've heard that before, Malta with their old me program, they were big on the genuine

links. We want you to own a house. We want you to come and spend some time here. Donate to a charity. Like, do some stuff so that we can tell the European Union, hey, this guy isn't just coming in and giving us money. He's he's

actually part of he's one of us. And so now the Caribbean's modeling that the Caribbean was the place that was more lightweight. You would just go and you would do the whole process remotely. And that's still possible. They do have the interview requirement, but now it's it's

not going to be possible. And so I'm going to share with you an article from the trade publication in the industry about how S kits is going to overhaul their entire program and what this could

mean for the rest of the industry. I'm also going to share my comments on this. I do believe that Caribbean citizenship by investment still plays an important role in your passport portfolio. I think you got to hurry and go to

nomadcapist.com/apply and get your Caribbean passport. I don't think that's the only passport you should rely on. And so I'll share my comments and what I think you should do. St. Kitsanas is going to fundamentally

restructure its CIP in 2026 with the genuine link requirements and phase out passive financial contributions in favor of residents and not just living there but active participation pathways. What

I see this is is St. Kitsanas has always tried to be what they call the platinum standard. they've always charged more money and maybe they had an extra visa-free travel country or two, maybe

their due diligence was marginally a little bit tougher, but you know, by and large, I think most people look at the five Caribbean citizenship countries as somewhat of a commodity. We'll walk

through our clients, you know, sometimes they're in crypto. They need better travel to Eastern Europe. Okay, this one's better or this one worked better during COVID or this one, you know, had this policy or that policy and and so,

you know, people see them as a commodity. They're not necessarily a commodity, but the idea that St. Kits was like, we're going to convince people with the platinum standard never entirely understood that. They've always been very nice to me, but I never

understood that. And so now I feel like they're trying to say, hey, we want to be not the Caribbean anymore. We want to become like Europe, where we actually want people to come and invest and spend time. It's like that's never what the

Caribbean programs were ever really about. Planned reforms that one in a recent statement from the CIO executive chairman Calvin St. Juice represent what he characterizes the most ambitious transformation in the program's history.

And and by the way, I'm probably not getting invited again to like this July's like come to St. Kits. We have an event like come and speak and we'll invite you like 11 days before the event starts. I'm probably not going to get that after this video, but that's okay.

Under the framework set for implementation this year, citizenship will require a substantive connection to St. Kits through the structured physical presence, meaningful economic activity, including business establishment and job

creation, productive investment aligns with national priorities, and long-term engagement in social, cultural, or philanthropic endeavors. Now, understand that a citizenship by investment unit,

it is a bureaucracy. Nothing wrong with that. Um, but they they speak differently than you and I do. understand part of what they're doing is they're trying to keep the wolf that is the European Union from the door because

they want to keep their visa-free travel to Europe. I quite frankly think that at least for a lot of our clients like sovereignty in a country that stands up for itself and doesn't just like bend over for anybody is kind of more

important than like going to Europe without a visa. You can get a golden visa in Europe and then you won't need a visa. You can keep your US or UK or Australian or Canadian or whatever other passport and you won't need a visa to go

to Europe. There's plenty of other passports that have shanken access that you don't rely on in the Caribbean. I don't think I've ever used my St. Lucia passport to go to Europe even though I could. I use other passports for that.

Understand that part of this is we want to sound like we're doing something and we're changing stuff. And so when countries sometimes say, you know, job creation, it could be, hey, invest in

some fund we've created and that fund will invest in companies and that will create jobs. Let's see what comes of this. I don't think that they're going to have any business anymore if it's

like you've got to move to St. Kits and like start a farm or start a grocery store. I don't no one's gonna do that. I think it's probably going to fall in the middle where it's not going to be entirely passive job creation. They are

going to want you to to kind of do some stuff there. If you don't already have a Caribbean passport or if you don't get started pretty licickety split, maybe by the time you get started, St. kids will be too late, but there are four other

countries and potentially a fifth with Saint Vincent and the Grenardines potentially coming on board. You want to do this before they all roll this out and and you're you know you're stuck running a mini march somewhere in in a

Caribbean island. The program will establish an innovation pathway for applicants aiming to establish active partnerships through innovationdriven business, research, technology, or skills transfer projects. And by the

way, I've been an entrepreneur my entire life since I'm like 19 years old. I don't even entirely understand what this means. thereby contributing to economic diversification. I get it. I'm glad that they want to diversify their economy. I

think that what worked great was donate a couple hundred thousand dollars, we send you a passport and we make sure that you're a good person and we take that money and invest it how we see fit. And I've been really proud to be St. Lucian and see like they've invested

that money in low-income housing and building a road or building a school. I mean, these are tiny countries. I mean, they one school they could build with like C, you know, with the CBI money. I thought that worked pretty well. I don't

know why we're messing with this other than continued pressure from the Western powers. At which point I just say to myself like, you know what, we don't if if if our entire sovereignty is up for debate, we don't need to like plate Europe. Like it's okay, cut us off.

Like, okay, we're cool. So instead, they want to create an innovation pathway for applicants aiming to establish active partnerships through innovationdriven business. St. Kits' citizenship will commence its transition away from

contribution-based pathways in 2026. The shift will reflect what officials term international best practice, mirroring standards in leading PR, permanent residence, and naturalization frameworks

across the EU, the UK, and the United States. This is fundamentally the issue. The Caribbean is not the EU, the UK, and the US. Let's be honest, most of those countries, probably barring the US for

sure, but most of those countries do less due diligence on citizens that they're naturalizing than St. Kits does on its citizenship by investment investors. I mean, some of the things

that I've seen that the Caribbean countries do in terms of due diligence, I mean, they're not letting in people who have problems. And so, you have to be of good character. You have to have a clean record. I I've been through

numerous of these processes. They ask you follow-up questions. I mean, it's a thing. That's that's one of the reasons why I've developed what we do at Nomad Calas for our clients. We have case officers and those case officers are are

supposed to absorb as much of that as we're allowed to absorb because without someone absorbing it, it can become overwhelming going through these due diligence processes. It's literally why I went through the Dominica process many

many years ago and gave up back when I had nobody to help me. It was a lot to absorb. It's what why I built this business the way I built it because I realized entrepreneurs and wealthy people don't have time to handle it

alone. They already have good due diligence. What is the international best practice of making people move to your country? The United States now sells a Trump gold card. What What's I

guess there's some vetting for that. What What do you have to do to get a Do you have to live in the US with a Trump gold card? What What international best practice is being violated? The European Union has golden visas. You don't have

to live there a single day or you have to be there one day a year for some of them. You may not get citizenship being there one day a year, but you can keep that golden visa in your back pocket, which by the way is why I would rather

have the Caribbean have lower citizenship by investment prices, lose visa-free access to Europe, and I'll take the difference plus a little bit more, and I'll get a golden visa in Europe, and then I can live in Europe,

and I can and no other country on earth is going to care that St. Kitsen NeAs didn't adopt international best practice to plate the US and the EU. that's already violating their own

international best practice. St. Kits also plans to launch priority 1, a concierge and civic integration service to support investors beyond CBI approval. So you can you can see that

the nature of this is changing again like they should do whatever they want in their country. I'm sure there are some some powers that be pushing them. Now listen, I I really believe they should do whatever they want in their

country. I don't know that's entirely their decision to do this, but understand I mean we're making some some big changes here. You know, when I started Nomad Capitalist, the price for Dominica was the cheapest. It was

$100,000. St. Kits was $175,000. Those prices are now higher. There's more requirements. It just keeps getting more difficult every year. I guess because the countries implementing the best practices don't want you to have options

because more and more people are leaving those countries. Just look at all the British people who are fleeing to Dubai and elsewhere. when people are leaving your country and taking their tax dollars with them, you go and you push on the places that they're going, can't

push on the UAE as effectively as you can some tiny countries in the Eastern Caribbean. So bottom line is if you know that you have options, even if the EU one day doesn't like St. Kits or St.

Lucia or Dominica or Grenada or Antiga and Barbuda, your option is you can get into Europe many other ways, other passports, other golden visas. But here's what the industry is talking about. The trade publication says market

response signals cautious adaptation. One guy who uh sells passports at a at a bodega. I think you just come in and kind of point and they just they just give you a that's the one I want. Said

that the planned reforms align with emerging client preferences noting that many citizenship clients are successful innovators and experienced entrepreneurs who given the opportunity to run a

business in the federation St. kits and neas as an alternative to donation will be keen to do so. Well, I've been an innovator and I am an experienced entrepreneur going back to the mid 2000s

and I will tell you I have a lot of respect for St. Lucia. I've watched the prime minister's address. I have done more than probably a lot of you know CBI citizens do to look at the country and

yet I do business all around the world. There's nothing really compelling about me to go to St. Lucia and do business. I'm a believer in treating the world as a buffet where St. Lucia is a great

citizenship and I intend to be a good citizen of their country and I try and uphold the values that I hold when I travel to St. Lucian. I don't get into trouble. I'm not calling uh the St.

Lucian embassies or the British embassies which in some cases I would have access to. It's a small island. It probably doesn't really have the systems and services and facilities that you need to run an international business.

nor do I as a person who does business all around the world want to be relegated to one island. Maybe some people do, but the reality is very few people who get these Caribbean passports go and live in these countries. There

was talk during co of like what if people started to move to the country? Can they even support it? Everybody knows people get Caribbean citizenship to not have to move here. And I'm sure they'll play this video somewhere in some European Commission bureaucracy

hell where like I'm the only one who can say the truth. People get Caribbean citizenship as a tool for global mobility in exchange for benefiting countries who have small economies and need country and need foreign capital

and they don't have a lot of assets. They don't have oil. You know, sugarcane prices went down. There's a lot more competition for that. You know, the Western world already shut down their banks in the '9s and the 2000s and more

recently. Like, they don't have a lot of things to sell. And I believe these countries should have the right to be sovereign countries. and I will gladly support people's ability to go and donate a couple hundred thousand to get a citizenship. Citizenship in 2026 and

beyond is a commodity, not belonging. And that's the basis on which these countries operated. And so the idea that everyone's just going to adapt and say, "Yeah, yeah, sure. I want to go and run

a small business in St. Lucia." It is going to collapse. And we can moralize all we want. But you know what? I'm a believer that every country has the right to be sovereign. I'm a believer that the smallest unit of government is

the best. That's why I have more faith and more trust in the St. Lucia government than I do in the United States government because the St. Lucia government is a smaller unit of government. Therefore, they're more

responsible to the people. They can't get away with a lot of nonsense that a big country gets away with. And I believe those countries have the fundamental right to operate and not have every advantage of the few that

they did have taken away by Western powers. And the last one is citizenship. I just don't think that's good for these countries. So, we can talk about the self-interest of nomad capitalists all we want, but fundamentally what you're

doing is you're engaging in a peaceful transaction with a peaceful country when you obtain citizenship in these countries where they're just going and taking care of their citizens and like helping improve the quality of their life. When you donate whatever it is,

millions of dollars for a Trump gold card, that money goes to blowing people up and killing them. I don't know. I'll take building housing for people and okay, we can we can make this a moral issue. But the bottom line is for you,

the people in this industry that I work in and where I encourage you to hire Nomad Capitalist at nomadc.com/apply, the rest of the people in the industry are going to sit by, oh, I guess

everyone's going to have to move and open up a a grocery store now. Oh, you know, I'm sure we'll adapt. Well, here's what you can do. Number one, get a Caribbean citizenship by investment as soon as possible. I've been saying that for years. If you're just doing it now,

the price has already doubled on you. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. You should do it now before the residence requirements are imposed. That's a talk that it's it's going to be in other countries potentially. You should do it. If you work with Nomad Capitalists who

will help you pick the best country, not the one that pays us the highest comm. I know there's other adviserss that you know that, you know, they get paid commissions. Uh they get kickbacks and I'll bet a number of them recommend the

one that gives them the biggest kickback. I I've never been in favor of that. We actually do provide unbiased advice. And if you don't like the Caribbean, we have like dozens of other passport options that you can get more

than pretty much any adviser out there. Figure out like, do I need Caribbean citizenship? Which one's the best? And if I do need it as part of my passport portfolio, do it now. Number two, the idea that people are just going to like

adjust. Here's the thing that I think people are going to have to adjust to. I've said this for years. If you're a Westerner and you value passports based on, well, do I ever need a visa to go anywhere? Maltis, they've got a new exceptional merit program that's back.

It's going to cost you a lot of money to become Maltese. And if you want the best passport, that's what it is. It costs a lot. Other than that, in my mind, you should try and put together residence and citizenship programs that you cobble

together, i.e. be the hey I've got a passport where I can't visit the EU or maybe in the future my country will lose access to the EU because my country stopped being treated like a like a like a colony and I will either get another

passport or or European golden visa or European residence permit or digital nomad visa or whatever it is and I can get in and and be in Europe and not rely on my on my second passport for that. I think that we have to understand that

the Western world is desperate and they are going to use this whole high-minded concept of due diligence and genuine links and oh, you're letting in the

terrorists as an excuse to keep out honest business people and wealthy families who just want an option. And I think you're going to have to accept at some point the less you pay for second

citizenship over time, the less optionality you may have in the West. And so that's why you want not only multiple passports, not just two, but a stack. That's why you want residence

permits. And I think the other part is, you know, I said to myself, I I love being able to go to Europe. But quite frankly, if you told me, hey, you can't go to Europe for the next 10 years. I I really wouldn't be sad. I think a lot of

people, including nomadish clients, are just like, hey, I'm used to going to Europe. I will feel like I'll feel ashamed if I can't go there. Do you want to go there? If you do get a golden visa or invest in one of the European

passports or whatever, except that if you want the freedom that comes with the global south and the Caribbean and I think the next big ones are going to be the African passports, South and

Principe is doing well. It's $90,000. It's now a lot cheaper than the Caribbean programs. Botswana will come out with one. You know, Turkey and Egypt have real estate based programs. You're seeing more countries, you know, talking about programs. Bellarus is talking

about a program. Why is everything revolved around can I go to the west? Again, if that's where you are, then there's a plan for you. But if your plan is, you know what, I'm tired of this West and they're overt taxing me and

it's going the wrong direction and they don't represent my values, then we build a stack that accepts that some countries are going to be you're going to need a visa to go to Europe. And so, you know, I would I would get the Caribbean

passport now if I could. I would also say maybe I just go and get an African passport as well where I can pay a lot less because they don't have European visa-free access and they're not in a tussle with Europe in response. I don't

believe this is the new normal. I don't think people are going to go to the Caribbean in as high of numbers. I really would be surprised to see that for most people because these programs are tools of convenience that help

people gain optionality without having to move. There are other options. I've been telling you for over a year now that Africa is going to be a next frontier. I can tell you of all the places that I go, nobody would care if

I'm South Maya. I've been to Singapore with an African passport. All they care about is are is your country on the list. So the idea that we're going to pay more and we're going to move somewhere and open a local business and

create jobs in a place we don't want to to not just go and get another passport. I don't understand. That's the deal. St. Kits and NEA is the Canary in the coal mine. I think we'll see stricter rules

across the Caribbean because they've committed and God bless them getting along with the western world. And the countries that have just kind of existed without the western world, not as enemies, but just as as neutral, we

can't go there, I think, are going to be increasingly attracted people who want sovereignty. You have to ask yourself, you know, there's a spectrum. Sovereignty and and agency are on a

different spectrum. Here's the bottom line. If you want to get into the European Union, you're going to sacrifice some sovereignty and some agency for that. That's just the direction the Western world is going. So, you've got to decide which is more important. I do think Caribbean

citizenship will remain a vital tool whether they, you know, stay in the good graces of Europe's visa-free travel or not. But I would get that passport now. Go to nomadcist.com/apply if you would like our help. But do know

this is a canary in the coalmine. We are seeing the changes that I've been telling you about for years. It is going to get harder to preserve your optionality. Get it now. And I would say

get comfortable. not always having to be in the West because they don't like these programs and they don't like you having freedom.