All things considered, nothing beats a Swiss passport.
On the other hand, to paraphrase Roda Roda: you are indeed fortunate to be born Swiss and you are fortunate to die Swiss - but what in God’s name do you do inbetween?
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Doesn’t Germany have some eccentric rules on citizenship which allows you to claim it even if you only have a tiny percentage of German ancestry, don’t speak a word of the language and have never lived there?
Sort of. If you were born to a man who was a German citizen at the time of your birth, or, since 1975, a woman, than you are a citizen. So, if your great great great great great … grandfather was German at the time that your one-fewer-greats grandfather was born, and it is a direct male line (at least until 1975) and none of them renounced their German citizenship before giving birth to you or your ancestor, you are German!
On the other hand, you could have been born and raised in Germany and never left Germany, and not be a citizen if you were born before 1975 and your father’s father’s father was, not German, or even if you were born after 1975 and you had a non-german in the paternal line of both parents.
ETA: This is true of US citizenship too, though afaik either parent was always sufficient AND you get birth-right citizenship so no one falls into the trap that so many non-citizen germans of Turkish descent are caught in.
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I’m basing my extensive research on what my friend mentioned casually over a third or fourth beer once. He was pretty adamant about this, but this also was 15 or so years ago.
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There is also this consideration:
I’m a bigger fan of countries like Russia and China than some people might suspect based on my free-market view. Big countries like that don’t want to be pushed around by the US government the same way smaller countries often suffer. China is rarely mentioned as a country without extradition, but it doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States, either.
Before you balk at the idea of living in China, consider that the country is as large as The Land of the Free and provides any kind of lifestyle you could desire for your time on the lam — from five-star ultra-chic to backpacker cheap.
if you don’t have money to hire some one to handle it for you it’s definitely a pain.
We’re working on Irish birthright citizenship for myself and a couple siblings at the moment. The big hold up is to get official “original” copies of a grandparents birth and marriage license we have to physically go to a particular, out of the way NYC office. And wait in line. To get them to look. It apparently takes multiple days, during fairly limited office hours. You can’t set an appointment or do it by mail. The records in question apparently were never entered into modern systems for that. So it’s a couple days away from work to hopefully find a long lost birth cert and avoid sending off the only copy of a marriage license.
Definitely a pain in the ass of your working off grand parents or great grand parents.
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But, to be fair, I don’t think any of us qualify as “super-rich”. I seem to recall hearing that hoops can be bypassed or minimized with liberal applications of money. If nothing else, you can hire a hoop jumper for anything that doesn’t specifically require you to jump.
Not to mention that if you are an “idle super-rich” you have lots of time since you don’t have to work it around things like earning money to keep your house, food, utilities, etc. so hoops aren’t really that much of a problem.
I’m wondering how many are concerned about an economic collapse in the US rendering US currency worthless. How many are buying gold, or converting the bulk of their fortunes to Euros?
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If someone is a fugitive from the U.S. justice system I suppose authoritarian countries like Russia and China are good options. However, given that those governments will in one way or another confiscate the bulk of the assets a wealthy person is able to exfiltrate from the States his lifestyle is going to be closer to “backpacker cheap” than “five-star ultra-chic.” Snowden would be the typical best-case scenario, but he had top-notch forward-planning skills and professional credentials and experience that can make you a good upper-middle-class living anywhere in the world.
Also, I doubt that most wealthy Americans’ first choice of an extra passport would be a Russian or Chinese one (unless they’ve been operating as unregistered agents for those regimes). The second passport is one that will get them out of the U.S. and, with some way stations, into Russia or China.
Also, I love how the author with his “free-market view” is perfectly comfortable with kleptocratic crony capitalist regimes – it’s a refreshingly honest admission from a Libertarian.
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I think you may have missed something in the replies/thread. I was saying you don’t have to necessarily be super rich to get another passport…but to @Grey_Devil 's point…it is a pain to do so. With all sorts of paper work, and going to various offices and waiting around as @Ryuthrowsstuff also attests to.
dual passports is “easy” for the super rich, absolutely…because they simply buy the thing outright. It is just that it is not the only way to get one…just perhaps the simplest.
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Because women aren’t real citizens? WTF?
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Ah. I did miss that.
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no worries. We definitely agree completely!
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Nothing in history tells me that we should assume the military wouldn’t happily go along with any plan. But more than that it doesn’t require the existing military to enforce horrific repression. Globally there is plenty of precedent for the use of alternative police forces (ICE maybe) and paramilitaries. Once some segment of the military looks like they would stand as a meaningful opposition they can be eliminated either through bureaucratic measures or more direct applications of force.
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I agree with that statement to a point, and this could be a worthwhile discussion, but not on this thread. It is not exactly on topic.
You don’t even need much money to avoid the hoops if you qualify through a parent or grand parent. Depending on the country. Just enough to hire an immigration lawyer with expertise to have his interns track down paper work for you.
At least for Ireland it’s relatively simple. You basically need chain of decent from the parent or grand parent and proof of identity for yourself and each step.
So ID, birth cert for yourself. Plus the same plus marriage license for parents. And grandparents if your claiming through them.
That’s all pretty simple and quick to track down. If your going through a person born in the last half century. The more modern records are often digitised or properly cataloged and you can just order them online for a small fee. Takes maybe 5 minutes to order up once you have the details, which often requires talking to family members.
But older than that. And records may not exist anymore. Or are parked in a box at the original issuing institution. Or where ever their records were dumped when they ceased to exist. Baptismal records can be used in place of a birth cert if it no longer exists. But that means contacting a specific church parish and a very long wait.
So the major hold up is the Irish requirement that an “original” document be submitted. An “official copy” usually a notarized or certified photo copy or summary of the document you have on hand. Doesn’t count. It has to be the actual original form, or the sort of replacement originals that are issued by the same agency.
Irish records seem better than American ones. Gpas nearly 100 year old birth cert was easy to get. Grandmas 10 year younger. And their 70 year old marriage license we have to visit the hospital she was born in and a city archive for the borough she was born in and hope they have the records neccisary to issue original replacement docs. These two documents, her birth cert and their marriage license are the only hold up.
We’ve about $300 in documents. Once collected you fill out an application for the foreign birth registry, And it’s (I think) 250 Euro a head to apply. There’s no limit on the number of people who can apply in a single packet. And they send everything back to you so you can use it again.
But it’s not exactly clear what format of document is OK right off the bat. It took a bit to figure out that official replacements that become a new original count. Rather than the actual original documents. And I’m still not sure we have what to do with current IDs right. Can’t exactly get a second copy of a drivers license or passport.
After that it’s the regular fees for pass ports. Probably costs about a grand on so to do on your own. Less if you share costs on the documents.
Most European countries have a similar process. But the further back you’re going to claim, the harder, more time consuming and expensive it is to do. And at a certain point records just won’t exist.
And it’s pretty clear this isn’t just a rich people thing. Waits for registration for Irish citizenship have gone from a few months to over a year. And there are larger wait times for ordering documents then there used to be. Fees are up across the board. European governments, particularly the Irish have reported a huge spike in birthright requests since 2016.
Wealth buys you an end round on normal immigration processes. A small application of money can make birthrate faster and less frustrating. Maybe more successful if you’re claiming distant descent. But it’s fairly affordable if time consuming if you do it yourself. And the costs don’t change much, it’s not like you can toss an extra grand on the packet and it goes faster.
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Xtianists have been establishing a presence in the Air Force for a long time and Propublica isn’t starting the following investigative project just for fun:
The Constitution is particularly well-designed in regard to keeping military officers loyal to it and not the various governments formed under its other rules but get enough bad actors into the officer corps and it can be undermined by an authoritarian regime like other liberal democratic institutions.
If there’s going to be a national police force operating on behalf of an authoritarian regime in the U.S. then ICE has demonstrated it’s ready and willing to take on the job. Given the agency’s role at the border this is very relevant to the discussion at hand.
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Just send them off on a “peacekeeping” mission.
ftfy
Honestly…wealth makes nearly everything easier in life. Most notably the things not usually worth a damn in life…ironically speaking.
What I’m saying is that being filthy rich doesn’t buy you an end round of birthright. Because birthright is already an end round.
It just makes that end round smoother. And it doesn’t take too much wealth to do that.
Where as the 1% can effectively buy their own end round to any country they’d like, connection or no. Rather than sticking to the one they may already qualify for citizenship in.
And I’m pointing that out because it’s not just the wealthy who are hedging their bets with dual citizenship. The middle and working class are too. I’m not going to be able to afford to just get citizenship in a random other country while residing in the US. But I’ve got that conveint immigrant community thing that gives me an affordable out. Anyone I know with that sort of recent connection to another nation, particularly minorities. Are looking into a dual citizenship. Or hanging on to the dual citizenship they already have.
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My mother immigrated from Germany around 1960. When naturalized she had to renounce her German citizenship, thus blowing my chance to get German citizenship that way. Furthermore, after 1992 the so-called “right of return” only applies to ethnic Germans from the territory of the former Soviet Union who were born before 1 January 1993, and their dependents. Although my mother was one of the Heimatvertriebene, that doesn’t count as territory of the former Soviet Union. Crap!
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