CBI Guide – the independent guide to citizenship and residency by investment programmes, digital nomad visas, and golden visas – has passed two significant milestones.
Designed as a utopia for remote workers, and located on the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira, the world’s first official digital nomad village offers free workspace and wifi for those staying a month or more.
Following the launch earlier this year of 5-10-year visas for entrepreneurs, investors and specialised talents, the UAE has further announced the introduction of a new class of visas, marking the latest in a series of steps to liberalise its stringent residency rules with the aim of attracting talent, boosting economic growth and diversifying its oil-focused economy.
Mauritius unveils more favourable visa options including lowering the cost for residency by investment and is seeing a flurry of new developments positioning the island in the spotlight as borders reopen.
Zanzibar joins Mauritius in unveiling a new tax and residency programme to allow foreigners to live and invest in the Tanzanian island as Africa opens up to non-citizens.
Widely considered the pioneer and one of the world’s foremost experts in investment migration, Henley & Partners Chairman Dr. Christian H. Kaelin says the significant worldwide expansion of investment migration is simply unstoppable.
Speaking at The World Ahead Gala Dinner hosted by The Economist in Athens in July, Dr. Kaelin stated that all over the world countries have realised the importance of residence and citizenship to attract much-needed foreign direct investment, debt-free capital, talented entrepreneurs, and experienced investors.
Further accelerated by the need to alleviate the financial distress following the Covid-19 pandemic across the world, Dr. Kaelin pointed out that more and more countries are offering investment migration programmes or introducing new options, like digital nomad visas or tech visa, in order to attract highly sought-after talent and capital to support their economies and strengthen their ‘sovereign equity’.
This year, Singapore announced the launch a Tech.Pass visa programme offering tech entrepreneurs from across the world the chance to set up and operate companies in the southeast Asia trading hub. While the UAE, which has a high expatriate population, recently announced it was enhancing its Golden Visa program to grant citizenship to select individuals, such as "investors, doctors, specialists, inventors, scientists, talents, intellectuals, artists and their families”.
Dr. Kaelin coined the term ‘sovereign equity’ in 2019 in Davos to describe how investment migration has the ability to endow nations with sustainable investments in a relatively short time frame without them having to increase debt and thereby burden future generations – while gaining highly qualified and experienced entrepreneurs and investors as new residents or even citizens.
Dr. Kaelin stressed that, particularly in Europe, there is also a pressing need to introduce much more positive migration policies to manage the global refugee crisis constructively while also attracting international investors and talent. He acknowledged that although politically challenging, it also presents a tremendous opportunity for the EU.
“We need more, not less immigration of people who contribute positively to society,” he told the audience.
As countries continue to roll out long-stay visas for foreigners in an attempt to replace lost tourism dollars and to attract remote workers, Singapore announces the launch in 2021 of a Tech.Pass visa programme offering tech entrepreneurs from across the world the chance to set up and operate companies in the southeast Asia trading hub.
Adding to the globe's growing list of digital nomad visas introduced in 2020 is Work in Iceland, a programme that allows foreign national remote workers the chance to reside in, and work remotely from, the stunning country of Iceland with their family for up to six months.
Following the unveiling of a raft of remote working visas in the last six months, Greece and Croatia are the latest nations to roll out the red carpet for global remote workers, with programmes designed to lure digital expats to their shores in a bid to replace the lost tourism dollars due to the pandemic.
Just one of a raft of remote working visas unveiled worldwide in the last five months, Antigua and Barbuda’s Nomad Digital Residence (NDR) Programme, which invites remote-working foreigners to reside on the island for up to 24 months, has witnessed a high number of applicants, especially from the US, UK and Canada, and has been receiving up to seven inquiries per day since its launch in September.