By Black Star News
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
The Caribbean countries of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lucia are now offering citizenship by investment (CBI), in some cases for as little as $200,000.
A passport can also be obtained if you buy a home in these countries. This passport bestows on the owner visa-free access to around 150 countries.
For many wealthy people, the islands lack of taxes on things like capital gains and inheritance make the CBI program very attractive.
The major applicants for the CBI program are citizens of the United States, where the current toxic political social climate is said to be driving interest to move to the islands. Reportedly, people from Nigeria, China, Turkey, and Ukraine are also among the top applicants.
However, there is some opposition to the citizen by investment program.
In Antigua, some are turned off by what they see as an unethical selling of the country’s land. After one protest, against the CBI program, former Speaker of the House Gisele Isaac said, “There was a sense of nationalism; people felt we were selling our identity, so to speak, to people who knew nothing about us.”
St Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has also criticized the CBI program saying that citizenship should not be “a commodity for sale.”
Today, in the region, passport sales account for 10 to 30 percent of the islands GDP.
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