Welcome mat out for millionaire immigrants worldwide

With all the debate over immigration in the United States and Europe, one group of immigrants is getting a red- carpet welcome around the world: millionaires.

Last year, a record 82,000 millionaires moved to another country, according to a new study. While their numbers are a small fraction of the world’s migratory population, and of the world’s millionaires, wealthy people are being courted and cosseted by host countries like never before.

The growing contrast between migrants who are poor and those who are wealthy reveals a less- noticed form of global inequality, as well as an acceleration of a new culture of the rootless, borderless rich.

“The wealthy today don’t have a country,” said Reaz H. Jafri, a New York-based partner at Withers Worldwide, a law firm that helps wealthy clients move and relocate around the world. “They don’t view their success as being related or dependent on a single country, but on their own business strategies. It’s amazing to me how many of the very wealthy are going totally mobile.”

The rich have always been a restless class, moving with the seasons or the social circuit. But the current wave of millionaire migrations seems to have reached a new level, with wealthy families changing citizenship, sending their children overseas or moving permanently to the nation of their choice.

Rather than fleeing economic ruin or conflict, millionaire migrants are shopping the world for the best schools, financial safety and lifestyle. Technology, coupled with the rise of global markets and global investors, has given rise to multinational millionaires who increasingly have no nation.

According to New World Wealth, a market research firm based i n Johannesburg, South Africa, the number of millionaires moving to another country jumped 28 per cent in 2016 from the previous year, reaching the highest level the firm has found in its four years of measuring. Millionaire migration has grown 60 per cent since 2013, the firm’s findings show, and there are no signs that it is slowing.

Andrew Amoils, head of research at New World Wealth, said he expected the ranks of millionaires on the move to top 100,000 within the next two to three years.

That’s still a small slice of the world’s estimated 13.6 million millionaires, defined as those having at least US$1 million in assets ( minus liabilities), not including their primary residence.

New World Wealth’s data includes only millionaires who have physically moved to a country for a period of at least six months. It uses surveys, real-estate data and research with relocation firms and other specialists for its estimates.

The map of migration is also changing rapidly. Australia is the world’s top destination for millionaires, beating the United States for the second straight year, according to New World Wealth. An estimated 11,000 millionaires moved to Australia in 2016, compared with the 10,000 who moved to the United States.

Canada ranked t hird, with 8,000, followed by the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand.

As for countries that millionaires are fleeing, France tops the list, with 12,000 moving out during 2016. China ranked second, with 9,000, followed by Brazil, India and Turkey.

Amoils said Australia was especially attractive to Chinese millionaires, given its relative proximity, its choice of private schools, clean environment and political and economic stability. Australia, like many countries, has also created money- for- visa programs to make it easier for rich immigrants to move in and become citizens.

The other top destinations, Canada and the United States, also have generous visa programs for the wealthy. America’s EB- 5 program requires a US$ 500,000 investment, although there are proposals in Congress to raise that to over US$1 million.

Immigration experts say the biggest long-term shift in the reasons the wealthy migrate is the waning importance of taxes. For decades, the rich sought tax havens to maximize their wealth. Now they seek stable countries with financial systems that can protect their fortunes, even if income taxes are high.