A curated feed of developments across investment migration: programme changes, policy news and notable coverage from industry and mainstream media, with our view on what each means for investors. Updated each weekday. Last updated 1 September 2026.
ECCIRA and the future of Caribbean citizenship by investment programmes
Five Eastern Caribbean states have now given legal effect to the agreement creating a single regional regulator, which will license agents, developers and due diligence providers and impose common screening standards, biometric enrolment, residence requirements, five-year passport validity and in-person passport collection across their programmes.
Our view: The compliance bar is rising across all five programmes at once, while the European Commission has separately asked those same states to phase their programmes out by June 2028, so an applicant today is buying both a stricter process and an unresolved question about visa-free access to Europe. Anyone weighing the Caribbean route should read the trade-offs first in our Caribbean citizenship by investment comparison.
Can you finance a golden visa investment?
A survey of how the main programmes treat borrowed money finds the UAE the most permissive after a February 2026 circular dropped the upfront payment rule and left eligibility resting on a Dubai Land Department certified value of AED 2 million, while Portugal and Greece bar borrowing the qualifying sum from a local bank and the Caribbean programmes shut financed deals out altogether.
Our view: The distinction that matters for Portugal is that the rule bans borrowing the minimum from a Portuguese bank rather than borrowing as such, so a documented loan raised outside Portugal is not caught by the wording, but the whole structure then stands or falls on the source of funds file. That file is the part investors underestimate, and our guide to the Portugal fund route sets out what it has to show.
Wealthy Chinese families turn back to Singapore as Beijing tightens offshore scrutiny
Family office advisers report renewed demand from affluent Chinese clients who had moved towards Hong Kong, Dubai and Tokyo, driven by new Beijing rules requiring disclosure of offshore trust structures, by regional conflict unsettling those who had chosen Dubai, and by Singapore easing some tax incentive conditions for single family offices from 1 August; enquiries for luxury Singapore property from Chinese buyers rose 35% in the first half of the year on Juwai IQI figures.
Our view: The theme worth taking from this is that these families are now buying predictability rather than a headline tax rate, and that a jurisdiction can lose favour on security perception alone, which is a risk that rarely appears in a programme comparison table. It is also a fair reminder that a move does not by itself end an obligation to the country you left, and our UAE and Portugal comparison sets out where each route genuinely differs on that.
UK confirms internal home inspections for the £2m council tax surcharge
Ministers have confirmed in written parliamentary answers that internal inspections will form part of identifying English homes worth £2 million or more under the High Value Council Tax Surcharge, which takes effect in April 2028 with annual charges of £2,500, £3,500, £5,000 and £7,500 across four bands, and penalties of up to £200 for obstructing a valuation officer and up to £500 for withholding information.
Our view: The sums are modest next to the cost of moving, so this is unlikely on its own to push anyone abroad, but it is another instance of the UK reaching further into how wealth is held rather than only how it is earned, and that pattern is what our UK clients tell us they are reacting to. If you are already weighing a change of tax residence rather than simply a change of address, our guide to UAE residency and tax residency sets out what actually has to change before a move counts.
Greek golden visa applications fall 39% as the backlog nearly halves
Greek Migration Ministry figures show 3,086 new golden visa applications in the first seven months of 2026 against 5,028 in the same period of 2025, while the pending caseload fell to 29,273 at the end of July from more than 52,000 at the start of 2025, and active investor permits rose to 34,278.
Our view: The fall in filings is mostly the €800,000 Attica threshold pricing out the buyers who used to drive volume, and the more useful number for anyone applying now is the backlog, because a programme that decides files faster than it receives them is one where a realistic timeline can finally be given. The catch is that most new demand is flowing into €250,000 commercial-to-residential conversions, which are exempt from the 120 square metre minimum and therefore tend to be small units bought for the permit rather than to live in, so judge the asset on its own merits. Our Greece Golden Visa guide covers the current tiers and what each route involves.
US court vacates the immigrant visa freeze covering ten citizenship by investment countries
A federal judge in the Southern District of New York struck down the State Department freeze on immigrant visas from 75 countries on 21 August, ending a seven month bar that had caught ten citizenship by investment jurisdictions including Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, with refusals resting solely on the policy now reopened.
Our view: This restores a route rather than settling the question, since the government may appeal to the Second Circuit or seek a stay, and separate measures aimed at visitor visas are still being prepared. The honest reading for anyone buying a Caribbean citizenship partly for US access is that the passport did not fail here, it was the single point of dependence that failed, which is the argument for treating a second citizenship as one part of a plan rather than the whole of it. Our Caribbean citizenship comparison sets out what each programme does and does not give you.
Kuwait bars naturalised citizens from voting or holding parliamentary office
Amiri Decree-Law 79 of 2026, issued on 23 August and in force on publication in the official gazette the following day, adds a paragraph to Article 7 of Kuwait’s 1959 Nationality Law barring anyone who acquired Kuwaiti nationality by naturalisation from voting, standing for election or being appointed to any representative body, removing a vote that had previously become available 30 years after naturalisation.
Our view: Kuwait runs no investment route, so no client of ours is directly affected, but the principle travels: a naturalised citizenship is held on terms the granting state can rewrite later, and here it did so by decree with immediate effect. Portugal’s investors met the same risk from a different direction when the naturalisation clock was doubled to ten years this year (what the 2026 nationality law means for golden visa holders), which is why how firmly a country entrenches citizenship rights deserves as much weight as how quickly it grants them.
Panama’s capital-based residence approvals fall 41% in the first half of 2026
Panama approved 1,546 capital-based residence permits for main applicants between January and June 2026 according to the Servicio Nacional de Migración, an annualised 3,092 that is 41% below 2025 and 46% below the 2024 record of 5,776, while approval rates held between 96% and 98%.
Our view: The decisions are not the bottleneck, the filings are, so this is a demand story rather than a tightening one, and the Friendly Nations Visa sitting close to its weakest year on record is the number worth watching. Thinning volumes are often what precedes a government revisiting a programme’s terms, which is a reason to be sceptical of any adviser presenting a quiet programme as a stable one.
Italy’s top court revives thousands of refused citizenship by descent claims
In judgment 24045/2026 of 26 July, the Court of Cassation sitting in its United Sections held that a child born abroad who was a dual citizen from birth did not lose Italian citizenship when the Italian parent naturalised elsewhere during the child’s minority, undoing the basis on which consulates and municipalities had refused or frozen applications since October 2024.
Our view: Anyone with an Italian parent or grandparent should establish whether they have a descent claim before paying for any investment route, because a recognised claim delivers the same EU citizenship at a fraction of the cost, and we would rather say so than sell around it. Where there is no eligible lineage, Italy’s paid route is the one to compare, and our Italy investor visa and flat tax guide sets out what it actually involves.
Grenada defers its 30-day residence requirement days before it was due to start
Grenada’s investment migration agency has told stakeholders that the 30-day residence obligation scheduled to commence on 31 August will not take effect then, because it is conditional on the new Eastern Caribbean regional regulator becoming operational and on a commencement date all five participating states must first agree.
Our view: Nothing changes for applicants today and the previous conditions still apply, but this is a deferral rather than a cancellation, and the amendment lets the minister apply the residence rules to files already pending once a date is fixed. Anyone comparing Caribbean options should assume a physical presence obligation is coming rather than hoping it is not, and our Caribbean citizenship by investment comparison sets out where each programme currently stands.
Montenegro’s closed citizenship programme rejected one application in five
A government status report dated 20 August shows that of the 1,113 applications filed before Montenegro’s December 2022 deadline, 869 were approved and 239 rejected as of 31 July 2026, a 21.5% refusal rate, with more than EUR 413 million raised in total and 99.8% of approved project capital going into tourism.
Our view: The rejection rate is attributed by one of the programme’s own licensed agents less to weak applicants than to Montenegro’s repeated changes of government, which is a useful reminder that political continuity in the host country is part of the risk an investor takes on. Five files were still undecided almost four years after the programme closed, and that is the detail worth carrying into any conversation about a programme said to be winding down in an orderly way.
New EU rule bars non-EU banks from serving EU residents without a local branch from 2027
From 11 January 2027, Article 21c of CRD VI (Directive (EU) 2024/1619) will stop banks based outside the European Economic Area from taking deposits from clients resident in the EEA unless they hold an authorised branch in that member state; residence rather than nationality decides who is caught, and 22 member states missed the January 2026 transposition deadline.
Our view: This is a practical cost of European residence that almost never comes up in a golden visa conversation, and it cuts the other way from the usual assumption: an investor who moves tax residence to Lisbon or Athens may find a Gulf or Asian bank unable to keep holding their deposits from 2027, while an EU citizen living in Dubai is unaffected. Worth raising with existing banks well before a move rather than after it, and it sharpens the EU versus non-EU trade-off we set out in our UAE and Portugal golden visa comparison.
Armenia to restrict fast-track descent citizenship after record 32,000 filings
Armenia’s interior ministry has said it will bring forward amendments narrowing the simplified naturalisation route for ethnic Armenians, which currently waives the three years of residence and the language and constitution tests ordinary applicants face, after filings rose from around 7,000 to 8,000 a year before 2022 to more than 32,000 in 2025, most of them from ethnic Armenians holding Russian passports.
Our view: A citizenship route that costs little and asks almost nothing of the applicant is usually the first thing a government tightens once volumes spike, so anyone weighing an ancestry claim alongside an investment route should treat today’s rules as a window rather than a fixture. Portugal is the closer example of the same pattern for our clients, where the naturalisation clock for golden visa holders doubled from five years to ten in 2026, and we set out what that means here.
Jordan naturalised 21 investors in the second quarter on US$33 million of investment
A statistical briefing to the Jordanian cabinet reported that 21 investors were naturalised in the second quarter of 2026 against investment of more than US$33 million in businesses employing 767 Jordanians, with six further investors granted residence permits and cumulative approvals under the citizenship by investment programme reaching 687.
Our view: The figures are a useful corrective to how large these programmes sound in marketing, because 687 approvals since inception is a very small programme, and Jordan ties citizenship to an operating business and local employment rather than a passive contribution, which is a materially different commitment. For clients who want a citizenship option that can be funded, processed and exited on a predictable basis, the Caribbean programmes remain the realistic comparison, which we set out here.
How golden visa programmes define a couple in 2026
IMI Daily has surveyed how residence and citizenship programmes treat partners who are not married, and finds three broad approaches: evidence of a shared life, a registered civil union or notarial agreement, or a marriage certificate and nothing else, with the five Caribbean citizenship programmes recognising only a legally married opposite-sex spouse.
Our view: The consequence is financial rather than symbolic, because in the Caribbean an unrecognised partner does not add a dependant to the file, they need a separate qualifying investment of their own, so a couple who cannot file on an accepted marriage certificate should price two applications from the start rather than discover it at submission. The Portugal point in the piece deserves separate attention: IMI reports that Law 61/2025 imposes a two-year residence wait before most permit holders can sponsor family from abroad and exempts golden visa holders while leaving D7 holders subject to it, which is one of the few respects in which the golden visa has become relatively stronger in a year when its naturalisation timeline doubled, and it is worth weighing alongside the rest of the trade-offs in our D7 and golden visa comparison.
The safest banking jurisdictions when your home government freezes assets
Two Russian decrees signed on 4 August 2026 pulled in opposite directions, releasing foreign nationals’ blocked deposits while freezing the assets, property dealings and passport renewals of Russians convicted in their absence, and IMI uses the contrast to sort jurisdictions by whether an account can be blocked on an official’s signature or only by a court.
Our view: Bank secrecy is largely gone, so the question that matters to a client is no longer who keeps a secret but who requires a judge before touching their money, and the same logic is the honest case for holding residence or citizenship outside the reach of a single state. The uncomfortable part is that the people most exposed to this are often the least able to act on it: Russian and Belarusian nationals are restricted or under processing suspension across most of the Caribbean programmes, as set out in our Caribbean citizenship by investment comparison.
New Zealand bars cross-jurisdiction borrowing for its NZ$5m investor visa
Immigration New Zealand published a package of Active Investor Plus changes on 13 August 2026 requiring that any borrowed funds come from the same country or jurisdiction as the assets supporting the application, adding tests on gifted capital, and dropping the requirement that managed fund agreements be non-revocable; the investment thresholds are untouched.
Our view: The price of the visa has not moved, but the range of people who can realistically fund one has narrowed, because borrowing in one jurisdiction against assets held in another is a common way these applications are structured. Anyone relying on borrowed or gifted capital should re-test their funding plan against the amended wording before committing, and note that Immigration New Zealand did not state a commencement date in the announcement itself even though its guidance pages already carry the new requirements.
Plan B passports are going middle class, golden visa firm data suggests
Consultation data shared with Business Insider by the Malta-based consultancy Immigrant Invest shows salaried professionals and retirees now make up 25% of its US enquiries, up from about 15% in 2025, with Caribbean citizenship programmes among the most requested routes and Henley and Partners separately reporting that American demand nearly doubled last year.
Our view: Read the numbers for what they are, one firm’s 450 consultation calls, and enquiries are not applications; the finding that does hold across sources is that American demand has become one of the industry’s largest segments, bought mostly as insurance by families with no immediate plan to move. The awkward detail is that the Caribbean programmes absorbing much of that demand are the same ones the EU has asked to wind down by June 2028, so anyone buying now should be clear about what each passport actually delivers: our Caribbean citizenship comparison sets that out programme by programme.
Saint Lucia’s CIP applications nearly halved as its denial rate hit a record
Saint Lucia’s Citizenship by Investment Unit received 2,957 applications in the year to 31 March 2025, down 47.6% on the year before, while decisions more than doubled to 2,633 and the denial rate climbed to 13.5%, the highest in the programme’s history, according to the unit’s newly published annual report.
Our view: Tighter vetting supports the programme’s credibility at a moment when the EU is scrutinising every Caribbean scheme, but the figures an adviser should weigh are the 5,541 files still awaiting a decision and a 16-month average wait for approvals; applicants who need certainty on timing should compare units before committing. Our Caribbean CBI comparison sets out how the five programmes differ in practice.
Colombia’s new president pledges to abolish the wealth tax
In his inaugural address on 7 August, President Abelardo De La Espriella said Colombia’s wealth tax will be eliminated as the centrepiece of a structural tax reform. The tax is set in statute by Law 2277 of 2022 and can only be repealed by Congress, so it remains fully in force: it applies to net assets of at least 72,000 UVT, about USD 1.2 million in 2026, at marginal rates of 0.5%, 1% and 1.5%, with the top rate scheduled to lapse after 2026.
Our view: This is a pledge, not a law, and no bill has been filed, so Latin American families who relocated partly because of the wealth tax should change nothing on the strength of an inaugural speech; the things to watch are a filed bill and a congressional vote, not the rhetoric. If you are weighing a change of tax residence rather than simply a second residency, our note on UAE residency and tax residency sets out why the two are not the same thing.
Grenada Bill Would Add a Residency Requirement, Possibly Retroactively
Grenada’s Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill 2026, taken up by the House of Representatives on 28 July and debated in the Senate on 31 July, would oblige citizens by investment to spend 30 days in the country within the first five calendar years after the certificate of citizenship is granted, countable across everyone named in the application, and would let the minister apply the requirement retroactively to pending applications at his or her discretion.
Our view: The bill is not law yet: commencement waits on an Order the minister must publish in the Gazette, and no such Order has appeared. The clause to watch is the retroactive one, because someone who files today on a no-residency understanding could find a presence obligation attached before a decision lands, which is the kind of mid-process change that has become normal across the Caribbean. Our Caribbean citizenship by investment comparison sets out where each programme currently stands on physical presence.
22 Countries Where Time Spent Abroad Can Cost You a Citizenship
A survey of 22 countries in which prolonged absence is by itself grounds to lose a nationality, whether it was acquired at birth, by naturalisation or by investment, with the loss happening automatically in nine of them and no notice served.
Our view: This matters most to clients who treat a second passport as a permanent asset that needs no maintenance. It is worth checking the retention rules of any nationality already held before adding another, because a presence obligation is far easier to plan around in advance than to remedy once a passport renewal has been refused.
Two US executive orders target birthright citizenship, including paid birth arrangements
Two orders signed on 6 August direct federal agencies to withhold recognition of citizenship from children born on US soil in defined categories where neither parent is a US citizen, among them cases where a parent paid to place the mother, or a surrogate, in the country to give birth; a second order hands the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security powers under the Immigration and Nationality Act to refuse visas, revoke them and impose entry bars for birth tourism. Agencies have 30 days to publish implementation guidance, and unlike the earlier order struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2026, this one spares only children with a US citizen parent rather than also those with a lawful permanent resident parent.
Our view: Neither order touches EB-5 or the Gold Card, so the direct effect on the investment migration routes our clients use is nil, and it is worth saying that plainly before the headline does the work. What matters is narrower and more awkward: the citizenship order names no effective date and no prospective-only limit, so whether it reaches children already born is unresolved on the face of the text, and it sets out no procedure for a family to contest an agency finding that a payment occurred. The change from lawful permanent resident to citizen is the quiet one, because it moves green card families inside the scope of an order their predecessor status kept them out of. Litigation is expected and none had been filed at the time of writing, so treat this as a position to watch through the courts rather than a settled rule, and note the general lesson for anyone assembling a multi-jurisdiction plan around a child’s nationality: a birthright acquired in one country is only as durable as that country’s willingness to keep recognising it.
Turkey revokes 6,134 citizenships granted through its investment programme
Turkey’s Interior Ministry said in a statement published on 4 August that it has cancelled or withdrawn the citizenship of 6,134 people who acquired it through the investment route, made up of 1,413 principal investors plus the spouses and children who took status through them; 1,150 investors were found by land registry and tax inspectors to have completed collusive or irregular property transactions, while 263 were flagged on public order and national security grounds after naturalisation, with no fraud alleged against that second group. Those affected revert to foreigner status and, where the decision requires it, have one year to sell their Turkish property or the Treasury sells it for them.
Our view: The number to sit with is not 6,134 but the ratio behind it, because 1,413 investors became 6,134 people: under Turkish law a cancellation reaches the spouse and children who derived status from the principal, and dependants are not assessed separately on their own conduct. That is the risk families rarely price. Turkey has since routed citizenship valuations through a single state-owned valuer and removed the paper certificate from the applicant’s hands, so the specific method used here is closed, and the conduct is credibly located in the programme’s cheapest, highest-volume years rather than in the file being opened today. Two honest caveats remain. The ministry did not date the cancelled files, which would have been an easy reassurance to give had the answer been comfortable, and there is no public denominator, so what share of the programme this represents is not knowable. The practical lesson generalises well beyond Turkey: where an intermediary arranges the valuation that proves your investment, you are relying on their file rather than your own, which is why we set out how to run due diligence on a fund before you subscribe before capital moves.
Bulgaria bill would require permanent residents to spend six months a year in the country
The Council of Ministers approved a bill on 27 July, registered in the National Assembly on 28 July, that would withdraw Bulgarian permanent residence from any foreign national who spent less than six months and one day in the country during the previous calendar year, replacing a rule that bit only after twelve consecutive months of absence from the European Union as a whole. Investment thresholds are unchanged in substance and simply restated in euro at the fixed conversion rate following Bulgaria’s adoption of the currency on 1 January, with BGN 1 million becoming EUR 511,291.88. The bill sets no commencement date and contains no transitional provision for existing permit holders.
Our view: Bulgaria has been marketed for years on three things together, immediate permanent residence, no obligation to live there, and naturalisation after five years, and this bill would remove the middle one, which is the one doing most of the selling. Be careful about how far that is taken today. It is a draft, it has not been through committee or either reading, text routinely changes on the way through, and advisers telling clients the programme is finished are ahead of the legislature. Two things are worth watching rather than acting on: whether committee stage grandfathers existing holders, since as drafted the measure reaches spouses of Bulgarian citizens and long-settled foreigners as well as investors and that breadth is the likeliest source of opposition, and whether any exemption for investment routes survives, because the new provision as tabled contains none. Anyone already close to five years and eligible to naturalise has a straightforward reason to move now, since losing the permit would reset the qualifying clock. More broadly, the presence requirement is the term that decides whether a residency route fits an actual life rather than a spreadsheet, and it is where European programmes differ most: ours is set out for the lightest of them in our Portugal Golden Visa guide.
US visa bond made permanent, with refundable bonds of up to USD 20,000 for 50 countries
The US State Department has confirmed that its visa bond pilot becomes a permanent programme, requiring B-1 and B-2 applicants who hold passports from 50 listed countries to post a refundable bond of USD 10,000, USD 15,000 or USD 20,000, with USD 15,000 the usual amount and the money returned on timely departure.
Our view: Three of the five Caribbean citizenship-by-investment countries are on the list, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Grenada, as is Vanuatu, while Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia are not. Most investors hold another passport and would travel on that instead, so the direct cost is usually limited, but it is a plain reminder that what a second citizenship is worth is decided by other governments and can be repriced at short notice, which is why we set out what Caribbean passports actually open rather than quoting a headline visa-free count.
Paraguay granted 29,765 residencies in the first half of 2026, up 81 per cent
Paraguay’s migration directorate approved 29,765 residencies between January and June 2026 against 16,456 in the same period of 2025, on 33,243 applications, with Brazilians accounting for 76 per cent of the total.
Our view: This is a high-volume, low-cost regional market rather than a comparable to the programmes our clients use, and most of the growth is Brazilians moving next door, so read it as evidence of where mobility demand is rising rather than as a shortlist candidate. It is still worth watching, because rapid growth in cheap permanent residence is the pattern that has preceded rule tightening in several other countries.
HMRC data shows UK non-dom numbers fell only 1 per cent before abolition
HMRC figures for the final full year of the non-dom regime show the population fell from 83,100 to 81,900, while the group paid GBP 9.7 billion in income, capital gains and employment taxes, up 9 per cent and the highest total in records going back to 2008.
Our view: The predicted exodus has not yet appeared in the official data, because these figures cover the year to April 2025, before the regime was abolished, and the government says reliable post-reform estimates will not be published until next year, so treat both the alarm and the reassurance with caution for now. The practical point for anyone weighing a move is that leaving the UK tax net turns on where you become resident and how your assets are held, not on holding a residence permit elsewhere: we set out what a UAE residence does and does not change in our guide to the UAE Golden Visa and tax.
Italy suspends Schengen free movement with Spain after Ceuta crossings
Italy’s Interior Ministry reinstated document checks at air and sea borders with Spain on 31 July, using Article 25a of the Schengen Borders Code, which allows a member state to reimpose internal controls for one month without prior notification and for no more than three months in total; the checks are described as targeted and selective on third-country nationals arriving from Spain, EU citizens are not affected, and the European Commission rejected the wider Italian call to suspend Spain from the Schengen Area, noting that no mechanism to do so exists. Commission records list eight Schengen states currently operating reintroduced internal controls: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden.
Our view: Schengen mobility is the benefit most often put at the top of the sales sheet for a European golden visa, and this is a reminder that it is a permission rather than a property right: a member state can reimpose checks at a month’s notice, and eight are doing so today. Note who the checks fall on, because it is the group our clients join. A Portuguese or Greek residence card holder is a third-country national, so they are on the side of the counter where documents get inspected, not the side that walks through. That is an argument for choosing a programme on the strength of its residence and naturalisation terms rather than on travel convenience, which is how we set out the trade-offs in our Portugal Golden Visa guide. What to watch is whether the one-month measure is extended towards the three-month ceiling, and whether other states copy it.
When a second citizenship makes travel harder instead of easier
An analysis of two United States rules that cut in opposite directions for holders of more than one nationality. Presidential Proclamation 10998, dated 16 December 2025 and in force from 1 January 2026, places nationals of Antigua and Barbuda and of Dominica under partial entry restrictions covering immigrant visas and the B-1, B-2, F, M and J categories, and names citizenship by investment granted without a residency requirement as the reason; a dual national who travels on a passport from a country the proclamation has not designated is exempt. The 2015 Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act works the other way, removing ESTA eligibility from citizens of visa-waiver countries who also hold Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, North Korean or Cuban nationality, including nationality acquired by descent and never used.
Our view: This is the detail that decides whether a Caribbean passport does what a buyer expects, and it is worth being blunt about it. If the main reason for buying is easier access to the United States, Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica currently do the opposite, and the exemption only rescues people who already hold a third, undesignated nationality, which is precisely the group with the least need for the passport. The second rule matters for a different reason: it follows the person rather than the document, so no purchase can remove it. Anyone whose plan rests on US access should establish which of these two rules applies to them before committing capital, not after. Our guide to Caribbean passport travel access sets out what these programmes do and do not deliver.
Britain’s sterling millionaire count falls 59 per cent in four years
The Adam Smith Institute’s tracker, updated on 28 July, puts the number of British residents holding at least GBP 1 million in individual net worth at 442,000, down from a peak of 1.07 million in 2021 and the lowest count since 2008, with falling real asset values, weak household saving and the emigration of wealthy residents named as the three drivers.
Our view: Read the number carefully before repeating it. The tracker measures net worth in constant 2025 prices, so a large part of that fall is pension pots and high-end London property revaluing downwards rather than people leaving, and emigration is the third factor the institute names, not the first. What the data does support is the direction of travel, and for British clients the honest question is not whether an exodus is under way but whether their own position has changed since the non-dom regime closed in April 2025.
US State Department weighs bonds of up to USD 100,000 on immigrant visas
The Wall Street Journal reported the internal discussions on 15 July and the department confirmed a review the next day; the regulation already on the books at 8 CFR 213.1(b) sets a floor of USD 1,000 and no ceiling, so a six-figure bond would need no fresh rulemaking, although nothing has reached the Federal Register and neither the visa categories nor the countries covered have been settled.
Our view: This runs alongside the DHS public charge rule we carried on 18 July, and the same reading holds: a bond is asked for only where an applicant would otherwise fail the public charge test, which is not the EB-5 or Gold Card profile. Consular guidance has long told officers to use bonds sparingly, so what to watch is whether that guidance is rewritten, not the headline figure.
Saint Lucia says Brussels now wants Caribbean citizenship programmes ended, not fixed
Deputy Prime Minister Ernest Hilaire, who holds Saint Lucia’s citizenship by investment portfolio, told reporters in Castries that his government had delivered the legislation, the value metrics and the regional regulator the European Commission asked for, and that what has changed since is the Commission’s objective rather than the programmes; separately, Dominica’s opposition Freedom Party put citizenship by investment at 56.7% of budgeted recurrent revenue for 2025/2026, leaving non-programme revenue of EC$456.2 million against recurrent spending of EC$679.9 million.
Our view: The Dominica figure is the most useful number published so far, because it explains why a negotiated phase-out is harder than it looks: a government cannot simply agree to remove more than half its recurrent revenue. One caution on the reasoning being used across the region. The Court of Justice ruling against Malta in April 2025 turned on a member state granting EU citizenship, which is a different legal question from whether the EU withdraws visa-free access from a third country, and treating the two as the same thing overstates how settled the Caribbean outcome is. The dates that actually matter are September, when Brussels expects reinforced vetting and the regional regulator becomes operational, and December, when the next visa suspension mechanism report is due.
Jamaica’s investor residency plan edges towards Parliament with terms still undisclosed
Draft amendments that would create a Jamaican economic residency programme for foreign investors are being vetted for submission to the legislation committee, according to the government’s latest Form 18-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, but the minimum investment, the job creation targets, the qualifying assets and the start date all remain unpublished more than four years after the original implementation target.
Our view: There is nothing here an investor can price yet, and the file has sat at roughly the same stage in successive filings since 2023, so this is one to watch rather than one to plan around. Worth noting too that it is permanent residency and not citizenship: naturalisation would still require five years of actual residence in Jamaica, a materially different proposition from the Caribbean citizenship programmes it will inevitably be compared with.
Vanuatu’s citizenship revenue hits a record two years after losing Schengen access
Vanuatu’s citizenship by investment programmes brought in VT11.4 billion, around USD 95.5 million, in the first half of 2026, roughly 39 per cent of government revenue excluding donor funds and a pace that would clear the 2020 annual record of USD 132.6 million, despite the EU removing the country’s visa-free Schengen access in December 2024.
Our view: The read-across being drawn is that demand shifts towards speed when European access disappears, which matters to the five Caribbean states the European Commission has asked to wind their programmes down by June 2028. Two cautions before anyone treats Vanuatu as the template: the IMF has questioned what these receipts actually measure, and a passport bought mainly for mobility is worth less to its holder once the mobility goes, whatever it does for the issuing treasury.
Nevis premier says reform was never going to save Caribbean citizenship programmes
Premier of Nevis Mark Brantley told his monthly press conference on 23 July that Caribbean governments misjudged the European Union, which he believes objects to citizenship by investment in principle rather than in practice, and he pointed to Malta and Vanuatu as the warnings the region failed to read.
Our view: This is the first time a sitting Eastern Caribbean leader has publicly conceded that further reform is unlikely to change Brussels’ position, which matters more than the rhetoric suggests. Applicants considering a Caribbean passport should treat the June 2028 phase-out date in the EU’s letter as the working planning assumption, factor in the interim safeguards due in September 2026, and be clear that visa-free Schengen access is the part of the proposition most exposed to change.
The birthright citizenships children can lose in early adulthood without realising
A cluster of countries, concentrated in Northern Europe and East Asia, treats nationality held from abroad as provisional, so children born with it can lose it automatically in early adulthood unless they register, demonstrate ties to the country, or both before a set birthday.
Our view: Families build multi-passport portfolios so the next generation inherits options, and retention rules are the quiet way those options disappear, usually with no notice from the government concerned and often with no route back. If your children hold a nationality by descent alongside a residency or citizenship you have acquired by investment, the retention conditions belong in the same file as the programme paperwork and should be diarised, not remembered.
China sets 20% personal income tax on offshore trusts, with a 90-day window to settle
The Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration released detailed rules on 24 July confirming that personal income tax of 20% applies to offshore trusts at the establishment, operating and liquidation stages, with retroactive enforcement reaching back three years and taxpayers given 90 days from 24 July 2026 to settle outstanding liabilities on distributions from 2025 and earlier.
Our view: This matters well beyond mainland families with Hong Kong structures. It is the clearest sign yet that offshore holding structures alone no longer deliver the privacy or the deferral they once did, and that the variable clients can still control is personal tax residency rather than where the assets sit. Anyone weighing a residence programme partly for tax reasons should be getting advice on the source-country exit position first and the destination second, because the sequencing is where the expensive mistakes happen. We are not tax advisers and the detail here needs a specialist.
Golden visa cities ranked as pure property: the Gulf leads, European favourites trail
IMI’s Global Property Scoreboard rates seven cities long associated with golden visa real estate on investment fundamentals alone, placing Abu Dhabi first and Dubai second while Lisbon, Madrid and Athens finish near the bottom on yields, costs and demand.
Our view: A useful corrective: the permit and the property are separate purchases, and the cities with the strongest residency stories are not always the strongest property markets. Anyone buying real estate for a residency route should judge the asset on its own merits, especially exit liquidity, rather than the visa attached to it.
Advisers say the easy era of citizenship by descent is over
IMI Daily’s weekly round-up collects adviser commentary from Mansion Global, Forbes and Fortune reporting that ancestry routes to EU passports now come with stricter language requirements, document checks stretching back generations and processing times running to five or six years.
Our view: Families with a European grandparent often assume the ancestry route is the cheap, quick option; increasingly it is neither. Descent is still worth exploring where the paper trail is strong, but anyone who needs certainty on timing should weigh it honestly against residency routes such as the Portugal golden visa before committing years to a queue.
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