I’ve been talking a lot about economic and market risks in Notes lately.
But there’s a potentially even larger risk that you’re completely ignoring today.
If you live, work, invest, own a business, bank or hold assets in a single country, you’re putting all of your eggs in one basket.
You’re making a very large bet that everything will be alright in that one country – forever.
It would only take one bout of political turmoil, a natural disaster or a tanking economy for you to potentially lose your money and your assets… maybe even your freedom.
And that’s why I regularly discuss the benefits of having a solid Plan B.
A Plan B is simply a personalized insurance policy that increases your freedom, protects your hard-won assets, helps you make money and ensures that you are in a position of strength no matter what happens (or doesn’t happen) next.
And having a second residency or, preferably, citizenship is a cornerstone of any successful Plan B.
There are a number of ways to get a second citizenship.
If you have ancestors from countries like Ireland or Italy, you potentially can get a second passport for free. Or you can pay to get an economic passport from countries like St. Kitts of Malta. There are also countries where you can naturalize over a certain number of years and earn a passport.
But, today I want to share another way to get a second passport…
In Sovereign Confidential, our premium intelligence, we recently interviewed a young Pakistani couple who obtained Brazilian citizenship and passports for their entire family. They did so by having a baby in beautiful Florianópolis, on the country’s southeast coast.
Right on the Atlantic Ocean, tourism is a huge industry for Florianópolis and greater Santa Catarina state. Government officials have an economic incentive to keep the region safe.
Brazil’s violent crime is largely concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and other cities. With a homicide rate of 12.9 per 100,000 people – about half of Rio’s rate – Santa Catarina state is one of the safest areas of Brazil, comparable to the island of Bermuda.
So, with less anxiety for your family’s safety, you can focus on Brazil’s great benefits.
When your child is born in Brazil, there are benefits for your newborn, all your older children and you and your spouse.
First, your child automatically gets Brazilian citizenship.
Second, your other children are immediately eligible for “residency of indefinite term” (i.e. permanent residency), which grants them the right to stay within Brazil indefinitely.
Once your older child has his or her residency card, those 10 years of age or younger at the time of receipt are eligible for provisional naturalization. Within six to nine months of applying for provisional naturalization, your child will receive Brazilian citizenship.
If your child is older than 10 when they receive their residency card, you can submit your child’s citizenship application after you become a Brazilian citizen.
(For comparison, in my adopted country of Chile, children not born there must wait until they are 14 years old to apply for Chilean citizenship… even if their parents gained residency when the child was one-year-old.)
And finally, immediately after your newborn’s birth, you and your spouse have the right to apply for a “residency of indefinite term,” which grants you both the right to stay, live and work within Brazil.
After securing residency, one year later you can apply for citizenship. You’ll need to pass a Portuguese language test, and then wait for a few months for the Brazilian government to process your citizenship application.
So, within two years of having a baby in Brazil, your entire family can have second passports in hand. Certain economic programs would charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for the same result.
Plus, a Brazilian passport is a solid travel document.
Brazilian citizens enjoy visa-free travel to 147 countries, including Europe’s Schengen area – the 26-country free trading and passport-free bloc – and the United Kingdom.
Brazilian citizenship comes with another benefit: membership in Mercosur – a free trading union of countries, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Passport holders in these countries can also easily obtain residency and work permits in the other member countries.
Mercosur is not exactly the Schengen area of South America. Schengen is truly borderless. Mercosur’s walls are half way down, but not entirely. You still must apply for residency, work permits, etc. in the other countries. But, the processes are much easier for fellow Mercosur members than for the rest of the world.
Also, easy residency benefits apply to Associate members of Mercosur (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Suriname).
At Sovereign Man, we often hesitate to issue superlatives.
But from our research, Brazil is THE BEST country to secure permanent residency and a second citizenship by having a baby.
Again, your citizenship isn’t instant. But, you won’t have to pay $140,000 or more for a second passport (the cost of Antigua & Barbuda’s citizenship by investment program for a couple and two children under 12; the cheapest in the Caribbean).
In my opinion, a second passport is one of the best, lifelong gifts you can give to your children. And they can then pass on this gift to their children and so on… all because of your planning and decisive action.
