Jad, a Lebanese executive who works in Dubai, lost hope of returning to his country due to the economic collapse and was tired of waiting for visas for his business trips, so he paid $135,000 to buy a foreign passport.
One month later, he received a parcel containing his and his wife’s passports issued by Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean.
Gad and his wife can now travel to more than 150 countries, including Europe, without the need to obtain entry visas.
The new document is a qualitative leap in Gad’s life, as the Henley Passport Index ranked the Lebanese passport among the worst in the world in terms of ease of obtaining visas. Also, it has become almost impossible today to renew the passport due to stock exhaustion and lack of funding, in a country that has been witnessing a severe economic crisis since the fall of 2019.
“Three years ago, I would never have imagined that I would be able to buy a passport. But now, due to the situation in Lebanon and because we can afford it, we have finally done so,” says Jad, who asked not to use his last name to preserve his privacy.
Saint Kitts and Nevis, with a population of just 55,000, launched its passport sale program just one year after gaining independence in 1983. Its passport is ranked 25th in the world, according to the Henley Index, which ranks nuts according to the accessibility they provide to holders.
Nationality purchase programs attract wealthy people from countries experiencing crises or economic sanctions, such as Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and finally Lebanon.
Today, many wealthy Lebanese, most of whom work or invest in Gulf or African countries, are rushing to buy passports or obtain residency in foreign countries, after they lost hope that Lebanon would exit anytime close to the stormy economic collapse.
The collapse caused a massive wave of migration. For several months, the queues that were beginning to form at dawn in front of the General Security stations, which announced last month that they had stopped issuing passports, did not subside because the stockpile was nearing expiration.
“It’s the solution”
And requests to buy passports are increasing, especially to the Caribbean islands, because those who wish can obtain them within a few months for a sum of money without even having to visit their new country.
Gad recounts that when he traveled to Paris for the first time with his new document, “the staff at the airport looked at my passport and told me I came from a (beautiful country).”
“But I’ve never really been there,” he adds.
And not only Gad, but his friends are also shopping for “island passports”, and some of them are looking into the possibility of investing in European countries such as Greece and Portugal in exchange for permanent residence.
“What is happening is not just a general trend, but it is the solution,” says Gad.
As long as the Lebanese in the Gulf countries in particular, numbering nearly 350,000, including 100,000 in the Emirates, they are stuck amid diplomatic and political tensions that raise their fear of losing a way of life they used to.
And last year, Gulf countries, led by Saudi Arabia, recalled their ambassadors from Lebanon for more than five months, against the background of statements by a minister who criticized the military intervention led by Riyadh in Yemen.
Kuwait decided at the time to “get tough” in granting visas to the Lebanese, which raised the expatriates’ fear that other countries would resort to the same step.
“All this made me think that there is a problem and I don’t want to jeopardize my work in the Gulf,” said Marielle Bou Harb, a 35-year-old Lebanese businessman in Dubai.
And last year Marielli bought four passports from Saint Kitts for him, his wife and their two children, after he was tempted by an offer to deduct $50,000 from the cost due to the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic on the island, which depends mainly on tourism services.
One passport usually costs $150,000, which is paid as a donation to the Sustainable Growth Fund in a country that installed its first traffic lights in its capital in 2018.
Other islands in the Caribbean also sell their passports, such as Grenada, Antigua, Barbuda and Dominica.
“They are buying their freedom”
As for Lebanon, where more than eighty percent of the population is below the poverty line, only a few can purchase foreign passports.
During the past two years, the work of companies specialized in providing advice in the field of passports has flourished, and their advertisements have increased, whether through billboards, even inside the airport, or phone messages.
In 2020, Ziad Karkaji turned his real estate company into Global Pass, a passport consultancy. “Our business has grown by at least forty percent between 2020 and 2021,” he says.
As a result of the economic collapse and then the explosion of the Port of Beirut in 2020, the number of Lebanese clients increased by five times for the Swiss consulting company Legacy, in which Jose Charo works.
The Lebanese now constitute a quarter of the customers of the company, which Charo runs its branch in Beirut.
And if the customer wants a solution that will allow him to easily obtain an investor visa in the United States, according to Sharow, it is better to obtain the citizenship of Grenada.
As for those wishing to retire or settle abroad, Charo advises them to invest about a quarter of a million dollars in exchange for permanent residence in Greece or Portugal.
“This sector will continue to thrive, unfortunately for the country but fortunately for us,” he says. He adds that the Lebanese are “buying their freedom”.