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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

> I wouldn't even consider it without fluency in Italian.

For the affluent, obtaining a second passport though e.g. citzenship-by-investment programs is all done through intermediaries. You pay a law firm a few tens of thousands of euro and they take care of everything – the only action required from you is going to an office to pick up your passport at the very end of the process. Since these affluent individuals are so used to relying on expert assistance, no knowledge of the local language is ever really necessary.

For less affluent people, especially those obtaining citizenship through ancestry, there are sometimes requirements to prove a B1 command of the local language, so in that case actually learning the language is a must.

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I think GP isn't talking about the passport acquisition process but really the experience of living there. The culture shock is real and you're in for a rough surprise if you think Europe is anything like the US. For starters, you're going to find your that the role of English as a lingua franca is largely overstated. Depending on your personality, you may not completely adapt and end up going back home.

Yes, but the experience of living there might be very different for the highly affluent people who can invest over a million euro in a citizenship-by-investment program. Many of them don't do their own shopping or will ever deal directly with a plumber or electrician – that is all taken care off by hired staff. Opportunities for culture shock are limited because they have little exposure to the overall local culture, instead they live in a cosmopolitan bubble with people of similar wealth.

It's still not that easy. Many citizenship-by-investment options are on a level of buying a very fancy house. Yes, those people are relatively rich, but not "surround yourself with English-speaking house-help" rich. If they want to move for the retirement, it may still be a hard social experience.

True. However, often affluent people using citizenship-by-investment programs in e.g. Malta, Greece or Bulgaria have no intention of ever actually living in that country. They simply want a passport of an EU country so that they can freely move to any other EU country, and in that other EU country they may already speak a local language or be confident of their ability to do most things in English.

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