Comment by sevenless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sevenless | Hacker News Reader

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Is there a guide to multiple citizenship power leveling anywhere?

Edit: A bit of munging from the web page later...

For Americans and British/Western Europe, the passports you want are Burkina Faso, Benin and Senegal. They will bring your passport power level up by 13 points to 168 (American) and 170 (UK) and give you visa free access to Cote Divoire (Ivory Coast), Mali, Iran, Congo, Niger, Benin, Nigeria, Liberia, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Chad, Ghana. In reality these countries may not allow dual citizenship! Benin and Burkina Faso however do recognize dual citizenship while Senegal does not. (http://www.multiplecitizenship.com/worldsummary.html)

The highest power level you can have as a dual citizen is 170. Any combination of these three African countries and Western European nations will achieve this. So the most powerful dual citizens are mostly West African migrants.

Now for triple citizens, the highest possible power is a whopping 178. There are a few combinations that do this, involving those 3 African countries, plus Russian Federation, Singapore, Japan and Turkey. For example, Turkey/Japan/Senegal, Burkina Faso/Russia/Singapore, Japan/Benin/Turkey. So it looks like the path to ultimate power is sadly blocked for those of us in the USA and Europe, and in fact, the most powerful dual citizens cannot become the most powerful triple citizens. On the other hand, Senegal/United States of America/Malaysia will get you 177, nearly as good.

yeah, they are called 'second passport' guides.

assuming marriage is unfavorable and you don't want to pretend to be jewish, there are a couple of treaties you can take advantage of, typically old imperialist countries have guilt trips with their former south american or african colonies and have an easy citizenship path for citizens in those former colonies. But then those former colonies have really malleable government officials so you can get one passport and upgrade to EU, in theory.

then next way that is less theoretical requires money, liquid, cash.

Malta is in the EU and lets you buy an EU citizenship and passport. Takes one year, it isn't that expensive though. ~500,000 euros. Any homeowner in the bay area could do it. The majority of the cost is a real estate or bond investment, so you actually still have your principle.

Many first world countries like the US have pay for citizenship programs if you are wealthy and have liquid assets. Malta's is most analogous to the US' EB-5 citizenship investment program, except you get free trade and travel with a bunch of other countries (like if you really wanted to take advantage of Germany's laws or the UK's laws for your next domicile or company)

St. Kitts and Nevis is a federation in the Caribbean, they offer the same thing for like $250,000. The US State Department cautions investment with that country because of some favorable expropriation laws that government granted itself, but it is no different than civil asset forfeiture in almost any US state. The key point in St. Kitts and Nevis being a federation, like the United States, is that Nevis itself is a semi-autonomous state, like North Carolina would be. And has duplicate laws and officials that fly far under the radar for most international purposes. So, just keep that in mind if you ever need to get crafty.

It's worth noting that this Passport Index is maintained by Arton Capital which is in the business of facilitating these citizenship purchase arrangements and has a whole guide about it comparing all the countries that allow it: http://www.artoncapital.com/

Awesome, thanks!

> it isn't that expensive though. ~500,000 euros. Any homeowner in the bay area could do it.

I'm not sure whether to roll my eyes at over half a million dollars being "not that expensive" or the assertion that any Bay Area homeowner has that much liquidity to just toss at a Maltese passport. Unless you're suggesting selling the house to do it.

home equity line of credit

the primary distinction I was hoping to make was that you didn't need to be an international spy or an oil baron to achieve the levels of wealth necessary to get these things.

Er, you should revisit what having that much spending power, even via a HELOC, would place one in terms of percentile. Your oil baron suddenly isn't far off since that graph is somewhat exponential.

Most area homeowners I know are driving Civics or Jettas and worrying about property tax assessments, so. The comment was just silly in terms of perspective and was silly to come across in a thread that already discussed privilege (for lack of a better word, I know it's loaded).

A HELOC is a monumentally terrible idea for the situation, by the way.

Ok. The bay area comment wasn't the only inflammatory hyberbole I wrote so I will gladly concede that I wrote something incongruent with all perspectives.

Alright?

Even then, you have to contend with American taxes and USD-to-Euro conversion fees. The idea that 500,000 Euros is inexpensive for anyone who's less than a multimillionaire is ridiculous.

There aren't many fees for a usd to euro conversions at those amounts. One wire transfer for $50 and a point zero of a percent spread if that.

> old imperialist countries have guilt trips with their former south american or african colonies and have an easy citizenship path for citizens in those former colonies

haha, no - nothing about guilt. They only offer citizenship paths only to 3rd-/4th-generation descendants of emigrees. Allowing the natives of former colonies to easily gain citizenship in the old country is simply not tenable, old chap, they need to have the right pedigree. tut-tut.

This is a lie in the Spanish case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_nationality_law#Spanis...

I have Australia/Tunisia/USA, but I haven't looked up the total number of countries I can enter visa-free. Tunisia gives me visa-free entry to Turkey and a few African countries, but not much else.

I'm looking to emigrate to a European country once I finish my studies in the hopes of getting a 4th passport - anyone know if that's possible in the EU? I know that Sweden, my top choice, only allows dual citizenship. South Korea looks quite attractive given that I'm in the field of electronics, but language looks like a barrier.

As I understand it, countries tend to either allow multiple citizenships or one citizenship - if they let you have two, then you can go and and get 17 as far as they care. So Sweden is probably fine, although you should check with them. My sister has US/Australia/UK and my brother is on track to have UK/Australia/France now that Brexit makes it worth his while to apply for the French.

Don't make the mistake that got Swedish ice hockey player Ulf Samuelsson ejected from the 1998 olympics as he had received a US citizenship and should have surrendered his Swedish citizenship [0]. Though I see they allow dual citizenship since 2003.

Check the specific rules. For instance I know Norway don't allow dual citizenship, with one exception if parents are from different countries. Hence my kids have Norwegian and British passports.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulf_Samuelsson#International_p...

Re: Japan/Singapore/Senegal and 2 other passports - in theory a great idea but those 3 countries do not allow dual citizenship.

As far as dual citizenship (with the greatest amount of travel) is concerned, anyone of the G7 country passport (minus Japan) and one other should be fine. Best I could think of is US/Germany/UK/etc. + Chile (visa free throughout S. America, Europe including Russia, India). For visa-free travel to China, if your nationality & business qualifies, you can apply for an APEC business travel card.

The guide you posted is a bit dated – Czech Republic recognizes dual citizenship since 2014 and the guide doesn't say so (I know this because I'm hopefully getting a second citizenship in a year or so).

Singapore doesn't allow double citizenship though, except for children under the age of 18. So in your example the power level would drop at that age.

How do you calculate the power ranking of a dual passport holder?

The same way the web site does. The number of countries a person holding both passports could visit visa-free.

It did not realize the website already calculated that number.

My combined number is 159, an increase of only 3 from my third ranked passport.

I counted it myself too until I realized the website provided that.

My second citizenship adds 6 countries to my first, for a total of 163. These 6 include Yemen, Syria, Rwanda, Mali, Guinea and my second country itself, so I guess at the moment it probably only counts as a +4, really.

However, if I were to travel to one of those countries, I think I'd rather apply for a visa with my European passport, to make sure I can request assistance from the consulate should anything happen.

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