On 2 December, Bruno L’ecuyer, Chief Executive, participated at the council of Europe’s committee meeting on the subject of Migration, Refugees and Displaced persons.
Bruno was invited to present the views of the industry based on the points by the committee as attached.
The meeting was held in the presence of the Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe (PACE) President.
The Qatar-based Arabic news and current affairs satellite TV channel, Al Jazeera, in a one-hour programme aired across the region earlier this week, alleged that Caribbean countries with CBI programmes were also selling diplomatic passports to individuals who make significant financial contribution to political parties.
The television station named Dominica, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, and Grenada among the countries that had benefited from the sale of foreign diplomatic passports.
Under the CBI, Caribbean countries provide citizenship to foreign investors who make a significant contribution to the socio-economic development of these islands.
In the television programme, a man identified as Leo Ford is seen and heard saying that the prime minister requested funds for the 2018 general election campaign.
But Mitchell told reporters that the Al Jazeera television programme alleging that his NNP, which won all the seats in the 2018 general elections here, “is totally false.
“The NNP did not receive a single cent from these people. I have asked my fund-raising people and they did not even know these people”, said Mitchell.
Last year, the Grenada Citizenship by Investment Committee announced it had “suspended the acceptance of applications in respect of the approved project, Grenada Sustainable Aquaculture, until further notice”.
Source: jamaicaobserver.com
Published: 28 November 2019
The proposed “Citizenship (Amendment) Bill” is yet another blatant anti-Muslim legislation by the BJP government in India. The bill proposes to amend the Citizenship Act 1955 so as to enable Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, and Parsi illegal migrants from three neighbouring countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan) to become eligible for citizenship of India. In other words, the bill intends to provide citizenship of India to all illegal migrants from the three mentioned countries except Muslims.
The lacunae in the proposed bill is evident: The first major lacuna in the proposed bill is that it makes religion the ground for providing or denying citizenship, which is a violation of the Constitution.
Second, it suggests that only six mentioned communities faced persecution in three neighbouring countries, a claim which cannot be established empirically. The question arises as to what will happen to Ahmadiyyas in India who have certainly faced persecution in Pakistan and other Muslim countries and many of them might be settled here in India.
Thirdly, it assumes that many people did not face persecution in three neighbouring countries because they were Muslims. It suggests as if the ground for discrimination and persecution is only religion. It ignores the empirically established fact that besides religion — caste, race, language, culture, etc can also be grounds for persecution. The persecution of Bengali-speaking Muslims and the subsequent creation of Bangladesh with the active support of India is a pointer to the fact.
Moreover, the sexual minorities (LGBTQs) can also face persecution due to their sexual inclinations and there may be people (migrants) belonging to these inclinations who felt/feel suffocated under the religious traditions they were brought up with. Eventually, they refuse/refused to identify themselves with any religion whatsoever and thus they may prefer not to be affiliated to any religion or faith. Besides, for instance, there may be agnostics, atheists, and people from tribal cultures and not professing any mentioned religion.
As the proposed bill does not address these problematic issues satisfactorily, it is bound to fall flat, if not in Parliament where the ruling side has a huge majority, then of course in the Supreme Court of India.
Will lead to social tensions and increased inter-communal violence: The Bill, if passed, will create spaces for “citizenship vigilantism” like “cow vigilantism” and will certainly lead to the mushrooming of “citizenship vigilante groups”. It will increase the incidence of lynching as many potential suspects (read: Muslims) will face the wrath of organised gangs of citizenship vigilante groups.
India is a country of continental size, with 1.37 billion people. In a country like India, this kind of exercise is very difficult. The bill, if it becomes law, will be followed by the preparation of a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is quite a cumbersome process. The experience of Assam should be an eye-opener for policymakers. Under the proposed bill, citizenship is reduced to pieces of paper. Millions of landless people in India might not have any document required for the registration of names in the NRC. Marginalised people who are under tremendous stress and anxiety due to loss of jobs and problems related to marginalisation may go for extreme actions like suicide (as is happening in Assam), making India a country of mass suicides.
International Implications: The three mentioned countries, first of all, will deny the charge that people of the six mentioned religions were persecuted and it will be difficult to prove otherwise. It will definitely make the lives of 1.7 million Hindus in Bangladesh difficult as there may be a Muslim backlash over there. Moreover, people from the six religious communities who are living in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan will face problems.
It can also create problems for a robust Indian diaspora living in several other Muslim majority countries.
The matter of the “politically created non-citizens” will become an international issue. If the number of such non-citizens or infiltrators or illegal migrants reaches 20 million or more, as the government claims, it will become a major international issue. The countries of their perceived origin shall be asked to take them back, which will not be accepted by those countries at all. From the OIC to the UN to the EU and at all international fora, the matter of these so-called non-citizens will be discussed. It is a fact that India cannot send them back and the countries of their perceived origin will not take them back. Under such circumstances, what will be the fate of those people? Either they will be kept in detention centres, which will be impossible, or they will be stripped of their citizenship and thereby also of their voting rights, which is perhaps the main objective of this otherwise futile exercise. In any case, the bill has the potential to create more problems than it aims to resolve.
The proposed bill is not in the national interest of India. Besides creating a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and extremism, it will tarnish the reputation of India as a secular and democratic republic.
Source: asianage.com
Published: 28 November 2019
Cyprus has stripped Kremlin-friendly Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and two other Russian nationals of Cypriot passports after admitting flaws in its citizenship-for-investment program, Cyprus’ Politis newspaper reported Wednesday.
Cyprus said this month it had started a process to strip 26 individuals of citizenship they received under a secretive passports-for-investment scheme. Sources on the Mediterranean island had told Reuters its list of individuals to lose passports included nine Russians.
Politis named Deripaska, his son and his daughter among those whose Cypriot passports were rescinded.
Vladimir Stolyarenko and Alexander Bondarenko, former executives whom Russian authorities placed on an international wanted list on fraud charges, were also listed in the Politis report.
Deripaska’s spokesperson said that Cyprus has not officially informed him that it rescinded his citizenship, the state-run TASS news agency reported.
Cyprus introduced a citizenship-for-investment plan in 2013. Under the program, foreigners who invest at least $2.2 million into the Cypriot economy can buy a passport and visa-free travel throughout the European Union.
In the five years from the beginning of the citizenship scheme to 2018, the Cypriot government approved 1,864 citizenship applications. Including family members, the number was more than 3,200, and is close to 4,000 today.
The ramifications of a ‘hard’ Brexit could see the United Kingdom plummet out of the world’s top ten best nationalities to 56th globally, according to new research.
Britain is currently the eighth best nationality in the world, according to the research – but is tenth in the rankings due to some countries being in joint position.
France on the other hand, is set to see its nationality ranked best in the world once again, followed by Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark.
This is according to the latest findings of the Kälin and Kochenov’s Quality of Nationality Index (QNI), which ranks the merit of nationalities worldwide.
It does this by looking at data to assess the quality of life and opportunities for personal growth within a country – giving it a percentage out of 100.
The Kälin and Kochenov’s Quality of Nationality Index ranks the merit of nationalities worldwide (pictured, a map showing the quality of nationalities across the world)
The index also looks at the external value of nationality, and how influential it is on giving people opportunities outside their country of origin.
Areas including the level of expected welfare, education, healthcare, life chances, and global travel and settlement are assessed in order compile the rankings.
This year, France is set to hold on to the top spot for the eighth consecutive time, earning a score of 83.5 per cent out of a possible 100 per cent.
It is less than one percentage point ahead of Germany and the Netherlands, which sit in joint-second place with 82.8 per cent.
While the difference between the quality of French and Dutch and German nationalities is relatively narrow, France’s comparative advantage lies in its greater settlement freedom.
In the top 10 on this year’s index, Denmark finds itself in third place with a score of 81.7 per cent, while Norway and Sweden hold joint-fourth spot with 81.5 per cent.
Positions five to ten are held by Iceland (81.4 per cent), Finland (81.2 per cent), Italy (80.7 per cent), the UK (80.3 per cent), Ireland (80.2 per cent), and Spain (80.0 per cent), in that order.
But the UK could see its position plummet should it pursue a ‘hard’ Brexit, according to the research, compiled by Prof. Dr. Dimitry Kochenov, a law professor and author of Citizenship in the Netherlands, and Dr. Christian H Kaelin, a Swiss lawyer and author.
EU countries generally perform extremely well on the QNI, largely due to the liberal degree of settlement freedom permitted between member states, as well as the stand-out quality of many of the nationalities in and of themselves.
However, the UK could become the exception to this rule, with its current eighth position potentially in jeopardy if it crashes out of the EU without a deal in place.
Prof. Kochenov explains: ‘The UK may be about to establish a world record in terms of profoundly undermining the quality of its nationality without going through any violent conflict.
‘Depending on the still-to-be determined outcome of Brexit, the UK could see itself falling from the elite group of ‘very high quality’ nationalities into the ‘high quality’ bracket.
‘A truly “hard” Brexit would result in the UK having a nationality that does not grant Britons settlement or work rights in any of the EU jurisdictions or Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland: a collection of the most highly developed places on earth, greatly diminishing the quality of its own nationality in an irrevocable manner: either you have such rights, or not – and in such a scenario UK citizens won’t have them.’
Although unlikely, in the worst-case scenario and depending on the economic downturn caused by Brexit, the UK could possibly fall even further and into the ‘medium quality’ tier alongside China and Russia.
Elsewhere in the world, the US occupies 25th place on the QNI with a score of 70 per cent. The country’s relatively poor standing is primarily due to its low settlement freedom compared to EU member states.
China ranks 56th — a four-place improvement on last year, and the Russian Federation climbs up two positions to 62nd place.
The UAE has attained its highest rank ever, securing 42nd place.
The bottom three nationalities on this year’s QNI are South Sudan (157th), Afghanistan (158th), and Somalia (159th), with respective scores of 15.9 per cent, 15.4 per cent, and 13.8 per cent.
Dr. Kaelin says the index is highly relevant to both individuals and governments.
‘It’s clear that our nationalities have a direct impact on our opportunities and on our freedom to travel, do business, and live longer, healthier, and more rewarding lives.
‘The reality that the QNI describes is, in many respects, unfair and regrettable: in the majority of circumstances, our nationality plays an important role in establishing a highly irrational ceiling for our aspirations.’
Prof. Kochenov adds: ‘The QNI is a clear illustration of the simple fact that speaking of the different nationalities of the world as equal, or even comparable, is misleading.
‘We see that some nationalities offer bundles of rights, while others, quite clearly, are painful liabilities, dragging down the holders.’
Source: dailymail.co.uk
Published: 20 November 2019
It started in the evening on September 18, two years ago. The winds picked up; waves began crashing ashore with intensity; the skies darkened.
Unbeknownst to the people of Dominica, Hurricane Maria was slowly gathering the strength it needed to destroy over 90 percent of the island’s structures, cripple its economy, and force a small country that did little to cause climate change to reckon with its consequences.
Yet despite the ominous signs befalling Dominica, many residents say they were no more worried than usual. The tiny Caribbean island, after all, is no stranger to hurricanes. Situated in the eastern Caribbean, Dominica sits just over 500 miles northeast of Caracas, Venezuela and among a string of islands that stich the Caribbean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. And though the soon-to-end 2019 hurricane season spared the nation, it may not be so lucky next year, or the year after.
In the span of a single night, Dominica was torn apart. But from the devastation, the tiny country forged a new goal: to become the world’s first climate-resilient nation, capable of prospering despite a new era of storms made worse by climate change.
As Maria approached land, the island’s residents quickly realized the storm would be much worse than they had anticipated.
“We kept listening to the radio to figure out what was going on,” says Ann Aeevieal, a local cook at the Tamarind Tree Hotel. “They said it was a Category 2, and then a Category 3.”
As we continue pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warming the planet, hurricanes like Maria are expected to grow in number and intensity. Studies have shown that the Atlantic Ocean is heating up, causing storms to become more common, intense, and long-lasting.
Warm ocean water is fuel to a hurricane, powering it like an engine. The warmer the water, the more the engine revs, growing faster, larger, and capable of dumping more water. As Maria neared the Caribbean Sea, it burst to life, a process meteorologists describe as “rapid intensification.”
Stephanie Astaphan, an employee at the island’s Secret Bay hotel, says, “When you’re living in the hurricane belt, you get desensitized. And then Anderson Cooper said, ‘The island of Dominica is about to get a Category 5’ and I had this out-of-body experience.”
Then the storm hit. Local baker Sheila Jelviel lives in Scott’s Head, a southeastern neighborhood where the hurricane struck the hardest. Just after nightfall on September 18, the sea rushed into her home. A small skiff rammed itself through her front door. “We had to go out the window in the back to escape,” she recalls.
Though Maria was the worst storm to ever strike Dominica, the country’s economy has been shaken several times over the past decade, absorbing major hurricanes and tropical storms in 2015, 2013, and 2010.
Hurricane Erika wiped out an estimated 90 percent of Dominica’s GDP in 2015. By comparison, the World Trade Organization estimates that Hurricane Maria cost Dominica just over two years’ worth of economic output. Financial experts anticipate it will be roughly three more years before Dominica can return to its pre-hurricane state.
Five days after the storm hit, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit addressed the United Nations General Assembly.
“I come to you straight from the front line of the war on climate change,” Skerrit said in his address. “In the past, we would prepare for one heavy storm a year. Now, thousands of storms form on a breeze in the mid-Atlantic and line up to pound us with maximum force and fury.”
Skerrit’s impassioned speech was a plea for the funds to make Dominica into the world’s first fully climate resilient nation. It requires not replacing what was lost, but building for a future where climate change all but guarantees a storm of Maria’s scale will strike again. Dominica is striving to construct not only hurricane-proof buildings but also a diverse economy, including a tourism sector that attracts more high-end spenders and an agricultural system that grows a variety of fruits and vegetables eaten locally, rather than primarily exporting bananas.
The island also needs to appear pristine. While Dominica’s economy has grown from selling agricultural goods and timber, the island itself is the product it sells to the world. In an area only slightly larger than Austin, Texas, Dominica contains 365 rivers, enough to swim in a new one every day for a year, locals like to point out. There are active volcanoes, lush rainforests, stunning coral reefs, and black sand beaches. On travel websites, it’s billed as the Nature Island, a destination for the athletic adventurer or the affluent yogi in search of retreat.
“The challenges are not just related to infrastructure. Resilience in our view is how vulnerable you are in the first place,” says Pepe Bardouille, CEO of the government’s Climate Resilience Execution Agency of Dominica (CREAD).
Amid new policies and regulations, Bardouille says there’s a new collective consciousness now preparing for future hurricanes like Maria.
“It’s incumbent on every citizen to know what they need to do for themselves,” she says. “Making decisions about what they’re building, whether they’re getting insurance, those are individual decisions—not things a government can do.”
CREAD was established in early 2018 to ensure that every sector building back after Maria was keeping climate resilience in mind. Uniform building codes, varied agricultural products, new geothermal energy plants, improved healthcare facilities, reliable transportation infrastructure on land and at sea—it’s CREAD’s job to figure out how to hurricane-proof everything as much as possible.
“How to keep a society and economy in a small country with a limited tax base and a huge number of climactic challenges running on a shoestring. Those are the challenges,” Bardouille says.
One component of Dominica’s plan to become climate resilient involves banning plastic. The reasoning for the ban boils down to infrastructure. Dominica’s waste collection system, run by the government-created, privately run Dominica Waste Management Corporation, collects trash that goes into a single, already-stuffed landfill. But what if residents could instead individually compost their single-use items in the hot, humid conditions of the Caribbean? Might they lessen, or avoid altogether, the need for recycling machines that may not hold up during the next version of Hurricane Maria?
In resorts and national parks, Dominica lives up to its Nature Island title. It’s hard to find litter of any kind. But venture into the island’s cities, drive along its roads, or peek inside a drainage ditch, and plastic trash is everywhere.
Less visible trash would make Dominica look cleaner, and a pristine Caribbean island is a place where tourists want to visit and spend money.
“It would be very simplistic to say this is just about building back,” says Bardouille.
“I think there’s a serious underestimation of the amount of trauma and post-traumatic stress, and the impact it had on the fabric of our society. We have to now look at the economic strength of our nation,” she says.
In 2018, Dominica passed the Climate Resilience Act, which fully came into effect on the first day of 2019, and in a budget address delivered last July the prime minister highlighted how far the country had come. The economy has grown by 9 percent. Tourism is on the rise. All schools are open. A new state-of-the-art hospital welcomed patients in August. Five hundred new homes have been built and more than 1,000 are under construction.
The government expects banana production to return to pre-Maria levels, and, to ensure food security, distributed seeds to farmers for other staple crops like dasheen, yams, potatoes, and passion fruit, which are are sold locally.
It’s Easter weekend in Scott’s Head, and the sky is free of clouds. The ocean laps the shore with meditative regularity; the wind barely moves. It’s difficult to imagine the chaos that ripped this neighborhood to shreds and left the island so destroyed that it was repeatedly described as a war zone.
Jelviel, whose home was rammed by a boat during the hurricane, shows me her house, now mostly rebuilt. The government assisted her with two windows and a door, but the 64-year-old mostly credits her neighbors with helping restore her home. The community in Scott’s Head is tightly knit, she says, and they took care of each other after the storm.
Just two blocks south, Hidjes Adams, the public relations officer at a local fishing co-op, leans against a pumping station for fishing boats, holding back tears as he recalls the days following Maria.
“It was a monster,” he says of the hurricane. “The damages are still existing. I saw starvation, people grasping, fighting for food and for water. There are still people without roofs as we speak.”
This is where citizens and government sometimes clash. Rebuilding is expensive, and reconstructing a home or a business that can weather a Category 5 hurricane is even costlier. Many luxury hotels and resorts have benefited from the country’s Citizenship by Investment Program, which gives a second passport to foreigners who significantly invest in local businesses.
Others living in small, low-income communities like Scott’s Head feel left behind. Jelviel says that with some help she could buy a bigger stove and bake more bread every morning. She would earn more money and be better able to fortify her home, she says.
“We cannot rebuild,” she says of her neighborhood, “but there is a lot of potential.”
What unites the country, however, is a sense of patriotism forged from shared trauma. Embroidered on t-shirts and painted on buildings is the mantra “Dominica strong.”
It’s how every citizen seems to describe their country—strong in the wake of disaster.
“People are taking things more seriously. They’re building much stronger,” says Aeevieal from the Tamarind Tree Hotel. “I think it’s a good comeback. We did a good job.”
Nature, too, is healing its own scars.
When Hurricane Maria blew through Dominica in 2017, the winds were so intense that leaves were stripped from trees.
It worried Bertrand Jno Baptiste, or Dr. Birdy, the island’s foremost bird expert. Would the forests still be hospitable to the imperial parrot, called the sisserou locally, a large, multi-colored bird with bright, lime-green feathers? The country’s national bird is endangered and found only on the island. Baptiste spent hours searching for it, listening for its loud call and trying to spot its graceful flights.
“I did not think it was going to come back. It was so bad,” he says. But after 13 hours of watching, one appeared, and then more, and now the birds are routinely spotted flying above the rainforest canopy.
The trees at the edge of the rainforest still show the scars of Maria. Bare branches face the ocean, still struggling to regrow what was ripped off in an instant.
“There’s no one who doesn’t think this won’t happen again,” says Baptiste.
Like their famous parrot and rainforests, Dominica is coming back to life, albeit with the scars to remind Dominicans that hurricanes of such magnitude will always be part of their reality. To become truly hurricane proof is to function like the country’s tropical ecosystem, capable of recovering—even thriving—in the wake of disaster.
Source: nationalgeographic.com
Published: 19 November 2019
The new EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Modernization Regulations are effective. Although there are many changes to the EB-5 program that are included in the new regulations, the biggest changes are: increased minimum investment amounts, new targeted employment area (TEA) definitions, and designating authority of TEAs is taken away from the State and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will now be directly responsible for verifying the project is located in a qualified TEA.
First, the EB-5 investment amounts have increased from $500,000 to $900,000 if the project is located in a TEA, and from $1 million to $1.8 million for a project not located in a TEA. Since the investment amounts have not changed since the program’s inception an inflation study was conducted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consulting with the Departments of State and Labor. The federal agencies determined that the increase will reflect the present-day dollar value of the original investment amount set in 1990 by the U.S. Congress. They have also added that every fifth year there will be an inflation correction to the dollar amount.
Additionally, the new regulations outline what is required to qualify a project as a TEA and requires that the USCIS will make the determination, not the individual states. Prior to the new regulations, a regional center could simply request a TEA letter from the state, county or city government where the project was located (depending on the state). This will not be the process anymore, since the USCIS will adjudicate all TEA requests. This will improve integrity within the EB-5 program since the regional center operators will not be able to gerrymander their projects into qualifying as a TEA when they do not.
CMB Regional Centers (CMB) will continue to offer quality investment opportunities for any investor that was unable to move forward with an EB-5 investment prior to the new regulations taking effect. As a leader in the industry CMB’s in-house project development team, business attorneys, economists and financial advisors have already underwritten new projects that will comply with the new EB-5 regulations and will be available for subscription in the near future.
Source: globenewswire.com
Published: 21 November 2019
When Jho Low splashed out on a €5m property in the resort town of Ayia Napa in 2015, there was an additional benefit for the Malaysian financier: a Cypriot passport.
Now Mr Low’s alleged role in a multibillion-dollar international corruption scandal has triggered a national outcry in the Mediterranean island nation, raising searching questions for the government in Nicosia, the Cypriot church leader who lobbied on his behalf and the firms that handle such transactions.
The case has led to renewed scrutiny of what the European Commission brands the “inherent risks” of the schemes in EU member states that offer citizenship or visas to the international super-rich. Brussels has set up a group to propose extra safeguards by the end of the year.
But critics say the response is inadequate to the task of stopping suspect money and characters flowing into the EU.
“This approach will probably have little respect from member states, and much tougher legal action is required to force states to end these dodgy schemes,” said Tina Mlinaric of Global Witness, a non-governmental group.
Most EU member states, including France and the UK, offer “golden visas” that grant a right of residence to the wealthy. Cyprus was one of three — along with Bulgaria and Malta — that offered citizenship in exchange for investment, according to a commission report this year.
Nicosia has for decades specialised in providing residence permits and legal services to wealthy businesspeople from outside the EU. When the island suffered financial collapse in 2013, president Nicos Anastasiades went further and offered nationality to foreigners prepared to pay at least €2m for a property.
“Selling golden passports made sense for a government struggling to rebuild the economy,” said Antonis Ellinas, a political scientist at the University of Cyprus. “But the scheme has always lacked the necessary political oversight.”
Cyprus has acquired almost 4,000 citizens under the arrangement and raised about €6bn from real estate sales. Mr Anastasiades’ former law firm offers services to investors applying for golden passports, although officials say the president severed all ties to avoid the perception of a potential conflict of interest. He has previously rejected calls for Cyprus to cancel the golden passport scheme, which he says has been unfairly criticised.
In May, the Cypriot government tightened rules for granting nationality, increasing the level of due diligence and requiring applicants to have a valid visa for travelling in the EU’s free-travel zone. Advertising the passport scheme was also banned, since when applications have fallen sharply.
Yet past cases have come back to haunt Nicosia. A Reuters investigation in October found that Cyprus had given nationality to eight relatives and associates of Hun Sen, the authoritarian prime minister of Cambodia for 35 years. The Cyprus news organisation Politis revealed soon after that Mr Low made a two-day trip to Nicosia in September 2015 to pick up his passport.
Mr Low was given nationality even though allegations had surfaced online months earlier of his involvement in the misappropriation of hundreds of millions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB state investment fund. The US last year indicted Mr Low over an alleged plot to misappropriate more than $2.7bn from 1MDB. He has denied any wrongdoing.
The affair was still more embarrassing for Nicosia because Mr Low was given access to a fast-track process for granting citizenship that required cabinet approval. His case was even backed by Archbishop Chrysostomos, head of the Eastern Orthodox church of Cyprus. Chrysostomos told local media that Mr Low had also given €300,000 towards a theological school and that he had previously intervened on behalf of other passport applicants.
The Cyprus government responded to the storm over Mr Low’s case by announcing it would strip citizenship from 26 people because of “mistakes” in the award process. Officials say this includes Mr Low and the Cambodian octet, as well as nationals from Russia, China, Kenya and Iran. Mr Low’s spokesperson urged that the government “should not yield to external political pressures, which seek to breach the fundamental human rights of Cypriot citizens”.
The Low affair has also focused attention on the intermediaries in golden passport and visa schemes.
A fee of €650,000 relating to the sale of the Low property was paid to a company named Henley Estates, according to an invoice seen by the Financial Times. Henley Estates was acquired some months before by UK-based Henley & Partners, which describes itself as the “global leader in residence and citizenship planning”.
Henley & Partners told the FT that the payment was a fee from a Cypriot developer under a pre-existing agreement for Henley Estates to provide “marketing support services”, and the money did not originate from any entity linked to Mr Low or his associates.
Juerg Steffen, H&P chief executive, said the payment should nonetheless not have been taken, since his company had previously rejected Mr Low as a client following due diligence checks.
Mr Steffen said the case had helped trigger an overhaul of governance standards in the Henley companies. “Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” he said.
Source: ft.com
Published: 24 November 2019
Under a new rule published by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program had the following changes: click here to view
Source: regulations.gov
Published: 2019
French citizens can take satisfaction that their nationality has once again been ranked as the best in the world, while for citizens of the UK, the ramifications of a ‘hard’ Brexit could well sink the quality of their nationality from 8th globally, to 56th (the current position of China). This is according to the latest findings of the Kälin and Kochenov’s Quality of Nationality Index (QNI), which is the only ranking that objectively measures and ranks all the world’s nationalities as legal statuses.
Holding the top spot for eight consecutive years, France earned a score of 83.5% out of a possible 100% — less than one percentage point ahead of Germany and the Netherlands, which sit in joint-2nd place with 82.8%. While the difference between the quality of French and Dutch and German nationalities is relatively narrow, France’s comparative advantage lies in its greater settlement freedom (attributable mainly to the country’s former colonial empire).
In the top 10 on this year’s index, Denmark finds itself in 3rd place with a score of 81.7%, while Norway and Sweden hold joint-4th spot with 81.5%. Positions 5-10 are held by Iceland (81.4%), Finland (81.2%), Italy (80.7%), the UK (80.3%), Ireland (80.2%), and Spain (80.0%), in that order.
The US occupies 25th place on the QNI with a score of 70.0% — the country’s relatively poor standing is primarily due to its low settlement freedom compared to EU member states. China ranks 56th — a four-place improvement on last year, and the Russian Federation climbs up 2 positions to 62nd place. The UAE has attained its highest rank ever, securing 42nd place.
The bottom three nationalities on this year’s QNI are South Sudan (157th), Afghanistan (158th), and Somalia (159th), with respective scores of 15.9%, 15.4%, and 13.8%.
Brexit likely to sink quality of UK nationality
EU countries generally perform extremely well on the QNI, largely due to the liberal degree of settlement freedom permitted between member states, as well as the stand-out quality of many of the nationalities in and of themselves. However, the UK could become the exception to this rule, with its current 8th position potentially in jeopardy if it crashes out of the EU without a deal in place.
Prof. Dr. Dimitry Kochenov, a law professor and author of Citizenship (MIT Press, 2019) and Dr. Christian H Kaelin, Chairman of Henley & Partners and author of Ius Doni (Brill, 2019) are the co-creators of the Index. Prof. Kochenov explains: “The UK may be about to establish a world record in terms of profoundly undermining the quality of its nationality without going through any violent conflict.
Depending on the still-to-be determined outcome of Brexit, the UK could see itself falling from the elite group of ‘very high quality’ nationalities into the ‘high quality’ bracket. A truly ‘hard’ Brexit would result in the UK having a nationality that does not grant Brits settlement or work rights in any of the EU jurisdictions or Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland: a collection of the most highly developed places on earth, greatly diminishing the quality of its own nationality in an irrevocable manner: either you have such rights, or not – and in such a scenario UK citizens won’t have them.”
Although unlikely, in the worst-case scenario and depending on the economic downturn caused by Brexit, the UK could possibly fall even further and into the ‘medium quality’ tier alongside China and Russia.
Climbers and fallers on the QNI
Taking a retrospective look at the last five years, Timor-Leste (92nd) has been the highest climber on the QNI since 2014, rising 26 places and improving its value by 8.4% with a score of 33.1%. While Timor-Leste saw minor improvements in its Human Development and Peace and Stability scores, the country’s Travel Freedom score almost doubled between 2014 and 2018. Colombia (59th) has also made a significant gain of 19 places and 11.6% in value since 2014, with a current score of 43.3%. This is attributable to the increased economic integration of South American economies and its improved Travel Freedom score, which has doubled since 2014 following the visa-waiver agreement between Colombia and Europe’s Schengen Area countries in 2015.
Other notable risers over the last five years are the UAE (42nd with a score of 50.3%), which has ascended 14 places in the rankings, Moldova (73rd with a score of 38.6%), which has gained 9 places, and Croatia (24th with a score of 73.8%), which has improved its value by 19.6% and risen 5 places in the rankings — these countries having benefited from improved Travel Freedom scores. By contrast, the quality of the Qatari nationality has plummeted as a result of regional diplomatic conflicts, dropping by 25 places since 2014 to its current 78th position with a score of 37.1%. Libya, too, has dropped by 25 places in the last five years, now in 145th position and scoring just 21.7%. The Libyan nationality has seen a significant deterioration in its Peace and Stability score, and its Travel Freedom score has also decreased since 2014.
The inherent inequality of nationality
Dr. Kaelin says the index is highly relevant to both individuals and governments. “It’s clear that our nationalities have a direct impact on our opportunities and on our freedom to travel, do business, and live longer, healthier, and more rewarding lives. The reality that the QNI describes is, in many respects, unfair and regrettable: in the majority of circumstances, our nationality plays an important role in establishing a highly irrational ceiling for our aspirations.” Prof. Kochenov adds: “The QNI is a clear illustration of the simple fact that speaking of the different nationalities of the world as equal, or even comparable, is misleading. We see that some nationalities offer bundles of rights, while others, quite clearly, are painful liabilities, dragging down the holders.”
Source: henleyglobal.com
Published: 20 November 2019