Did you know you can buy a Mexican passport for US$15,000? A Belizean passport for $9,000? Or a passport from Moldova for $4,000?
These passports, among others, are on offer from a company I’ll call Passport Scams, Inc., or PSI. I’d prefer to publish the actual name of the company, but as I have no desire to defend myself in a frivolous lawsuit, I won’t.
While I have no proof the passports PSI sells are fake, I’m 100% certain they’re not issued through the ordinary process of naturalization. Why? Because Mexico, Belize, and Moldova don’t have citizenship-by-investment programs. In virtually all cases, the only way to qualify for a passport in these countries is through an extended period of residency.
Take Mexico, for instance. The Mexican constitution states anyone born in Mexican territory is a Mexican citizen. You’re also automatically a Mexican citizen if at least one of your parents was a Mexican citizen at the time of your birth.
Otherwise, to obtain Mexican citizenship and qualify for a passport, you must first qualify for residence there. You must then relocate to Mexico and spend five years as a legal resident. If you hope to qualify for Mexican citizenship and passport, you must spend most of your time in Mexico during that five-year period. And you must be able to speak Spanish and prove it by taking a test.
It’s not as simple as writing a check for $15,000.
Keep in mind, there are workarounds in certain situations. If you have Mexican ancestry, you’re adopted by a Mexican citizen, or you’re married to a Mexican citizen, the process doesn’t take as long. It’s also a shorter process if you’re a citizen of a country on the Iberian Peninsula (consisting primarily of Spain and Portugal) or a Latin American country.
There’s one more exception as well. You can bypass the five-year rule if you make a significant contribution to Mexico. To qualify under this exception, you must have made a significant contribution to Mexican business, science, culture, art, or sport.
So if you’re the next David Beckham and want to become a Mexican citizen, you could potentially join the national soccer team. You could then lead the Mexican soccer team to win the World Cup. Since Mexico has never won the World Cup, a grateful nation might just award you citizenship.
What about qualifying for citizenship by making a significant contribution to Mexican business? I know an attorney who used to offer this option to his clients. He was working directly with officials from the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (Spanish abbreviation SRE), the Mexican office responsible for processing citizenship applications. That was several years ago, and at the time, the going rate was around US$200,000. He stopped offering this service when the SRE stopped delivering the promised certificate of naturalization.
Today, another company I know of claims the required investment is around $1 million. That sum invested in Mexico should get you an interview with the SRE, but there is no guarantee your application for citizenship will be approved.
A million bucks, of course, is a lot more than $15,000. And since the entire process is unreliable, we don’t offer this option to the many clients we’ve helped acquire second citizenship and passport.
What’s really happening? I suspect but cannot prove PSI is offering either “grey market” or “black market” passports.
A grey market passport is one where not all the normal guidelines for its issuance are enforced. In most cases, the promoter finds a corruptible insider with the authority to issue a passport with little to no questions asked, usually someone from the office responsible for issuing passports. For instance, PSI might have found such an insider in the passport office and is paying, say, $5,000 cash for each passport issued, then pocketing the rest.
Such a passport is genuine and officially issued, but in an unofficial and unauthorized manner. Depending on the quality of the insider access, a certificate of naturalization may or may not accompany the passport. Without it, the passport might not be renewable and you may be unable to even use it to enter and leave the country or to open a local bank account.
A black market passport is one that is counterfeited or manufactured from lost or stolen blanks. The passport itself is not genuine, nor is it officially issued. National intelligence agencies, organized crime families, and terrorist groups all trade in black market passports.
Using grey market or black market passports is risky. Border control authorities need catch you only once. And they regularly receive updates of blacklisted passport numbers from Interpol and other sources. Grey market passports may be cancelled anytime, especially once the insider responsible for their issuance is found out or leaves office. In virtually all cases, it is impossible to renew a black market passport.
How can you know whether the passport you’re considering is legitimate or a grey or black market offering? I look for the following red flags:
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Too cheap. The total cost of the least expensive legitimate citizenship-by-investment program, in the Commonwealth of Dominica, comes to about $130,000 for a single applicant or $210,000 for a married applicant with up to two children under the age of 18. Any passport issued for much less than that amount should be presumed to be grey market, unless the company offering can point to specific law authorizing its issuance.
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Too easy. No country issues a certificate of nationality and a passport without a detailed application process, including a criminal background check.
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Too fast. It takes months, not days for a country to issue a passport. The levels of bureaucracy are deep, and the wheels move slowly. Anyone promising an overnight solution is working from at best the grey areas of the law.
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Too anonymous. Any promoter that tells you that you have to pay cash for your passport, that the ability to issue the passport is based on a secret law or regulation, or that promises to issue you a passport in any name you choose, falls into this category.
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Too limited. Passports that come without a certificate of nationality fit into this category.
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Too late. Some promoters continue to market the now-defunct citizenship-by-investment program in Belize, for instance. Belize ended its program 15 years ago, although there have been recent discussions about reviving it.
If you’re seeking a legitimate second citizenship and passport, get in touch with us. We’ve helped hundreds of clients acquire citizenship by investment in the Commonwealth of Dominica and other countries in the last decade. Indeed, we’re the only US-based company licensed to offer Dominica citizenship and passport.
