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16 - Wealth as a Golden Visa to Citizenship

from Part III - Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2021

By
Ayelet Shachar
Edited by
Tesseltje de Lange ,
Willem Maas  and
Annette Schrauwen
Tesseltje de Lange
Affiliation:
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Willem Maas
Affiliation:
York University, Toronto
Annette Schrauwen
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Summary

This chapter explores the strongest legal and ethical arguments in favor of, as well as against, facilitating the purchase-and-sale of golden visas and golden passports. In part one, I put forward three major arguments in defense of citizenship-for-sale transactions: taming nationality; endorsing a “commodify everything” approach; and increasing government revenue. Part two advances three lines of critique against selling membership to those with massive billfolds, without requiring them to establish any tangible connection to the new home country. Part three turns from the normative to the positive, examining which justifications and rationales have resonated best with policymakers tasked with reviewing and potentially taming, or altogether revoking, such programs: security and identity fraud; tax evasion; and a preference for real and effective links (or what I have elsewhere called “jus nexi”) over the hollow form-over-substance grant of citizenship facilitated by these programs.

Keywords

citizenship by investmentcommodificationmembershipinequalityfraud
Type
Chapter
Information
Money Matters in Migration
Policy, Participation, and Citizenship
 , pp. 279 - 296
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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