At JH Marlin Law ( we rarely recommend to clients the Vanuatu citizenship by investment program. Vanuatu is located in the south pacific and is the only citizenship program in the asia-pacific sphere. Vanuatu is a tax favourable country, people are friendly and the program is known to have a relatively quick processing time. However, there are more negatives which have been revealed over the past few years.The investment starts at US$130,000 for a single applicant and US$180,000 for a family of four plus additional fees. While it is known to be one of the quicker routes to obtain a second passport through citizenship by investment, its citizenship by investment programme has been in decline over the past few years. Vanuatu recently lost visa free access to the Schengen area because it did not do proper due diligence checks on applicants to the program. Many people that had a criminal record did the Vanuatu citizenship program and were accepted getting a passport. Given that people that do not have a clean background have the passport it is possible as a holder of a Vanuatu passport that you will be subject to more scrutiny at borders as well as lose more visa free access to countries in the future. According to various passport rankings which rank the different passports around the world according to different criteria such as visa free travel amongst other factors are increasingly giving a lower ranking to the Vanuatu passport.

There are many alternative citizenship by investment programs at a similar price point that offer a higher visa free travel and have a better reputation. For example, there are the Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St.Lucia and St.Kitts & Nevis programs that are relatively around the same price point and that offer a lot more visa free travel and a passport with a better reputation. Slightly more expensive programs include Turkey citizenship by investment, Montenegro citizenship by investment followed by Malta citizenship by investment which is more expensive.

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