How much is citizenship and is it possible to trade them

Фото: Depositphotos

In 1850, the Russian political emigrant Alexander Herzen was forced to think about acquiring some other citizenship: Russian Emperor Nicholas I ordered Herzen to immediately return to Russia, which the socialist, who had already lived in exile, did not want to do at all. Herzen refused. It was unsafe to remain a subject of his native power, and Alexander Ivanovich, a convinced democrat, chose a new homeland for himself - he became a “draft peasant” in the village of Chatel (now Burg) near Murten, in Switzerland, says “Currently,«.

In “Past and Thoughts,” he recalls:

Schaller (the then president of the Canton of Friborg, Herzen’s political associate - HB) promised Vogt to talk about my naturalization, that is, to find a community that would accept me, and then support the case in the Grand Council. In Switzerland, for naturalization, it is necessary that some rural or urban society must agree to accept a new fellow citizen, which is completely in keeping with the self-rule of each canton and each town in turn. The village of Chatel, near Mora (Murten), agreed for a small contribution of money in favor of the rural society to accept my family as one of their peasant families.

Herzen successfully received citizenship and after a while even went to “his” village, where he was so drunk with local wine that he slept on the way back and threw “without knowing how, from Mohr to Friborg, in the pouring rain”. Soon Herzen made a will in which he handed over five thousand francs to the community of Chatel, and Julian Schaller and Professor Vogt bequeathed 25 thousands. It was performed after the writer's death in 1870. Herzen never lived in Switzerland.

By the standards of 1850, Herzen’s problem was exotic: he was perhaps the only wealthy Russian who openly confronted the emperor. Today, there are more such Russian Herzenes, and in order to gain other citizenship they do not need to go in a wheelchair from Friborg to Chatel. You can, for example, simply buy a house worth at least $ 400 thousand dollars in Saint Kitts and Nevis, an island nation in the Caribbean belonging to the British Commonwealth - and you have a passport that allows you to enter the country of the world without a visa in your pocket.

It is not necessary to come to Saint Kitts and Nevis at all. You can get a passport and for a smaller amount - then you need to make $ 250 – 350 thousand to the St. Kitts and Nevis charity fund for diversification of the sugar industry. That’s how the creator of VKontakte and Telegram founder Pavel Durov solved his problems with the Russian authorities in 2014. How this affected the sugar industry of the islands is unknown. The program for the sale of passports on the islands works with 1984 year.

• Antigua and Barbuda - also an island nation in the Caribbean, also a member of the British Commonwealth. To obtain citizenship, it is necessary to invest at least $ 250 thousand in the National Development Fund or to purchase housing with a total cost of at least $ 400 thousand. After obtaining citizenship, you must live on the island for at least seven days a year. A passport allows you to enter 129 countries without a visa, you can get it for 4 – 6 months.
• Dominican Republic, too, in the Caribbean. Passport is paid by direct payment to the state - from $ 100 thousand per person to $ 200 thousand for a family with two minor children (if there are more family members, then for each additional relative they take another $ 50 thousand). With the passport of the Dominican Republic, you can enter without a visa in 50 more than countries, including the UK.
• Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) - a state on the island of the same name from the group of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. Guadeloupe is located to the north-west of Dominica, and Martinique is located to the south-east. The passport sale program is valid from 1993, the document costs up to $ 100 thousand per person, and it’s not necessary to be on the island, although it’s probably convenient: Dominica’s official language is English.
• St. Lucianot far from Martinique, has recently started selling citizenship. Investments - from $ 100 thousand, do not need to go there. The passport guarantees visa-free entry into the Schengen countries, the UK, Ireland, almost all of South America.

To obtain citizenship in Singapore, you first need to invest $ 1,8 million in the country, for example, opening a company with an annual turnover of $ 37 million per year (for construction and real estate - from $ 148 million per year). But this is Singapore.

Sell ​​their citizenship and the EU countries.

Фото: Depositphotos

One of the first is the direction of "economic development" mastered Malta - at least 880 thousand euros, and you are a happy holder of a European passport. You can even go to work tomorrow in Germany.

In 2011, Austria, Hungary and Cyprus introduced similar schemes. Austria does not disclose the value of its citizenship, but requires applicants special talents or extraordinary success stories in the past, you can become a Magyar for the amount of 360 thousand euros, Cyprus asks 2,5 million euros.

In many other countries, from Latvia to the UK, Canada and the USA, there are also investment programs for granting citizenship, but they imply several years of life in the country: an investor receives a residence permit, and only a few years later citizenship. In fact, for a little more time in some of these countries you can get citizenship in the usual way, without any money - if, of course, you figure out how to enter there and get the right to work.

Back side of the coin

In the 1940, in the Third Reich, a plan was actively discussed for cleansing Europe from Jews by resettling them to Madagascar. The plan did not materialize because by that time Britain had imposed a naval blockade, and in 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, the Nazis decided to destroy European Jews right in Europe.

Nevertheless, something similar to the Madagascar plan was nevertheless realized - it was not the Jews who were resettled, but the so-called “biduns”, and not to Madagascar, but to the Comoros, located between Madagascar and Africa. The scheme was carried out in 2005 year and its essence was as follows.

“Biduns” (not to be confused with Bedouins) are people born and raised in the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, but for various reasons did not receive citizenship of these countries forty years ago when it was distributed (the word “bidun”, in fact, was formed from Arabic bidoon jinsiya - stateless). In 1970, the parents of current non-citizens simply did not pay attention to the need to fill in some papers: many of them were nomadic and did not depend on the state. Since then, however, Kuwaiti and Emirates citizenship has become one of the most valuable in the world: citizens (who are a minority percentage) receive guaranteed income from the state (about $ 55 thousand per year), free land for housing, interest-free mortgage, bonus to create a family ($ 20 thousand), free education and health care. Nobody wants to give bidons with these benefits. According to official statistics, there are only a few thousand stateless people in the Emirates; according to estimates by international humanitarian organizations, up to one hundred thousand. In Kuwait, the situation is similar.

In 2005, the Comoros (former French colony that survived the 1975 20 military coups) gained power in the 200 year, Ahmed Abdullah Mohamed Sambi came to power - he made an interesting deal with Syrian-French media mogul Bashar Kivan. Kivan offered Sambi to give bidus Comorian citizenship in exchange for $ XNUMX million Arab investments in the Comorian economy.

Thus, 4000 Bidunov received Comorian passports with limited rights: this passport did not guarantee the right of permanent residence on the Comoros, as well as the right to vote, but it was possible to enter the islands with it to start a business. The population of the Comoros was against (why should they biduny?), Biduny themselves also did not understand what to do with a passport, which, strictly speaking, does not give them anything - but the authorities of the United Arab Emirates, by hook and by crook, imposed this new citizenship, after which the newly minted citizens of Comoros simply deported. Further, their ordeals were followed mainly by international human rights organizations.

Is it possible to sell citizenship in terms of political theory?

On this account there are two schools of thought: yes and no.

Supporters of the passport trade resort to the argument of the ancient Greek cynic Diogenes, who was the first to declare himself a “cosmopolitan” - a citizen of the world. Indeed, on what basis, besides chance, is one born a subject of the Queen of Denmark, and the other a citizen of Nigeria?

The Canadian philosopher Joseph Karens once described the very concept of citizenship in its current form as “the modern equivalent of feudal privileges”. This argument is resorted to by businessmen engaged in marketing citizenships of Caribbean island states: if you are a US citizen doing business in the Netherlands, it is more profitable for you to become a citizen of Malta than to endlessly receive various permits from the authorities. All people are equal by nature: if Gerard Depardieu is more profitable to pay taxes in Russia than in France, who will stop him?

Here, citizenship is firmly connected with the idea of ​​the state - and the “less” it is, the better for Pavel Durov or the co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin, who refused American citizenship in favor of Singapore.

The idea of ​​unattached individuals (“rootless cosmopolitans”, as they would say in former times in the Soviet Union) is opposed by the political concept of citizenship. Its origins are also found in antiquity - say, in the Platonic dialogue “Crito”, where Socrates, who is awaiting the death penalty, tells his students that he will not run from Athens to stay alive because there are more important things than life, namely, loyalty to the laws of his policy . At the heart of this concept of citizenship lies the participation of a citizen in the life of his country — political, social, cultural — and the responsibility for its present and future. It is on the idea of ​​citizenship as participation that the laws of most European countries are based.

Alexander Herzen also adhered to this concept - he justified the purchase of Swiss citizenship by the impossibility of returning to Russia, of which he felt himself a true citizen.

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