[ Offshore Tax ] The Grenada passport as a strategy for accessing the USA

Derren Joseph:

Another question that I get asked as recently as yesterday actually, for entry moving to the US, some people live in jurisdictions and they have a passport that isn’t is unable to benefit from the E2 treatment and so easier access to the US. So, one of the popular ways from like a citizenship and residency planning perspective is the Grenada passport. It’s a Caribbean Island for those who are unfamiliar. So the Caribbean island of Grenada, and apparently you get the opportunity to access the US. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Michael DYE:

YeS, absolutely. So this is a strategy that it’s gotten actually pretty popular over the last couple of years, and then the pandemic, I think actually pushed a lot of people to explore other residencies, for a million different reasons. So yes, this strategy, it’s exactly what you mentioned. So there is a special visa in the United States, it’s called an E2 Treaty Investor visa, and it’s a visa that’s based on a treaty of trade and commerce between the United States and another country. And there’s about 80 countries that can utilise these visas. For example, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand. Now as a new country, Israel’s a newer country. So all around the world, there’s about 80 of them, but actually kind of intriguingly enough. Some of the big countries don’t have access to this like Brazil, Russia, China, India. So these countries, and then many others in Asia and elsewhere in the middle east, it’s been very popular in Vietnam to do this. And, and other countries, what they do is they get residency or they get a passport from another country that does have easy to access. And the easiest way to do this is the country that you actually just mentioned there. And Grenada, there are other countries where you can do this. Some people choose Turkey, others have selected other countries, but Grenada actually offers the best strategy. And so what the individual would do is that they would go through the Grenada citizenship program, become a Grenada citizen, get that Grenada passport, and then use the Grenada passport to apply for an E two visa. And the E two visa is a five-year multiple entry visa that allows you to invest in your own business or in the United States. It can be any type of business. The investment just has to be substantial And so the government doesn’t say what that means. They don’t give a minimum number. I would recommend that you, you would always invest at least a hundred thousand on up. We have investors who have invested less than that, but most of the investments are around one 50 to two 50, something like that. And again, in any type of business at all, we have investments in retail outlets, consulting businesses, you name it. Restaurants is very popular for you to small hotels, motels, things like that. And, and it’s great because it’s it’s, as I mentioned, it’s, five-year multiple entry and you can continue to renew that visa indefinitely, as long as your business keeps going. So it basically can act, it acts a lot like a green card and in many ways, and, and you can come into the U S as much as you like, or as little as you like. So if you only want to spend three months a year in the U S it’s perfectly fine. If you want to spend all 12, that’s perfectly fine too. So I’m very flexible visa, and it actually does allow for the spouse to get their own work authorization to work anywhere.

Derren Joseph:

Wow. Okay. And what’s the processing time for that visa?

MICHAEL DYE:

So another good point about the is that the whole process is handled at the US embassy or the consulate. So you don’t need to file forms inside the United States with the various us government agencies everything’s handled at the consulate. Generally speaking, I would say, you need to plan for at least one to two months to get everything together, your investment documents, all of that, get it to the embassy. The embassies are getting faster. Now with reviewing cases, the pandemic did slow things down a bit, but we’re able to get cases in, in various posts around the world, get them all through within three to five months. So yeah, it can happen pretty quickly and you can also request for an expedite.

DERREN JOSEPH:

Wow. Okay. So you mentioned like at least a 100K, but then you mentioned in terms of the industries consulting. So I would imagine that consulting doesn’t really have like a lot of investment. So if it is, you have a consulting business already, let’s say in Singapore, and you want to migrate that business, and it may be mobile depending on what you do. Maybe it’s on zoom, I dunno. And you want to migrate that to the US can that work in a situation like that?

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