Between Benefit and Abuse: Immigrant Investment Programs
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BETWEEN BENEFIT AND ABUSE: IMMIGRANT INVESTMENT
PROGRAMS
LEILA ADIM*
INTRODUCTION
During the last thirty years, an increasing number of countries have
introduced Immigrant Investment Programs (IIPs) in order to attract foreign
capital and boost national economies.I Canada, St. Kitts and Nevis, the United
States, and Dominica initially implemented IIPs in the late 1980s/early 1990s;
in the rest of the world, IIPs have been adopted only recently.2 In particular,
except for Ireland and the United Kingdom,3 European countries avoided the
introduction of similar programs for attracting foreign capital and, until the last
decade, admitted immigrant investors on a discretional basis.' However, the
recession in 2008 induced many states of the European Union (EU) to change
their approach toward immigrant investors and to regard IIPs as instruments for
emerging from the crisis.' Nowadays, these programs exist in almost half of the
continent and represent the gateway of entry for many wealthy foreign
individuals, but what is their overall impact at the domestic and at the global
level?
* Faculty of Law, University of Barcelona (SPAIN), ladimadi8@alumnes.ub.edu.
1. Judith Gold & Ahmed El-Ashram, A Passport of Convenience, FIN. & DEV., Dec. 2015,
at 48, 48-49.
2. Xin Xu, Ahmed El-Ashram & Judith Gold, Too Much of a Good Thing? Prudent
Management ofInflows Under Economic Citizenship Programs 4 (Int'l Monetary Fund, Working
Paper WP/15/93, May 2015), https://www.imf.org/extemal/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wpl593.pdf
[https://perma.cc/MKR7-LV4U].
3. Id.
4. SERGIO CARRERA, How MUCH DOES EU CITIZENSHIP COST? THE MALTESE
CITIZENSHIP-FOR-SALE AFFAIR: A BREAKTHROUGH FOR SINCERE COOPERATION IN CITIZENSHIP
OF THE UNION? I (CEPS Paper in Liberty & Sec. in Eur., No. 64, April 2014),
https://www.ceps.eu/system/files/LSE%20No%2064%20Price%20of/`20EU%20Citizenship%20
fmal2.pdf [https://perma.cc/PH5D-N6DH] (recognizing that EU Member States' discretion over
nationality laws has been reshaped).
5. MADELEINE SUMPTION & KATE HOOPER, MIGRATION POLICY INST., SELLING VISAS AND
CITIZENSHIP: POLICY QUESTIONS FROM THE GLOBAL BOOM IN INVESTOR IMMIGRATION 3 (2014);
Owen Parker, Commercializing Citizenship in Crisis EU: The Case of Immigrant Investor
Programmes, 55 J. COMMON MKT. STUD. 332, 332 (2017).
121](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/stlulj62&div=11&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Between Benefit and Abuse: Immigrant Investment Programs
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