Fearing a Trump win? You could flee.
Eric Major is having a good year. A good decade, really. And it may be about to get much, much better.
But all the success makes him nervous.
Major is the founder and executive chairman of the London-and-Dubaibased firm Latitude, which helps clients obtain residencies and citizenships from around the world. Right now, Americans are his top clients, and they’re looking to acquire long-term access to places like the Caribbean, Greece, and Portugal.
The Trump era — and COVID — has ushered in a wave of Americans seeking a Plan B, a place where they can escape from potential chaos. And former president Trump’s strength in the polls — he’s ahead of President Biden in most swing states, according to recent polling — has prompted wealthy, leftleaning Americans to start thinking about escape hatches.
“If the world is at such a place where the United States is having these kinds of issues, then we’re entering into a very concerning chapter of human history,” says Major, who’s Canadian.
“They have these concerns. They’re thinking about their kids. And they’re thinking: Where’s that safe haven I could bring them, if everything goes pear-shaped?”
Though Boston is the 25th-largest city in the country, he notes that it’s a top-five American market for folks looking to move abroad, and he has personally been involved in a few local cases. He says his firm works with “some very influential people in the state of Massachusetts — and that whole Boston/Harvard/MIT world.”
Polls show that — at least for some groups of Americans — the desire to leave the United States has skyrocketed. During the Obama administration, for example, about 10 percent of women said they “would like to move to another country permanently,” according to Gallup. That was essentially unchanged from the George W. Bush administration, when 11 percent said they wanted to leave. But during the Trump administration, 20 percent of women expressed a desire to permanently decamp. For the poorest 20 percent of Americans, the numbers zoomed from 13 percent under Obama to 30 percent under Trump.
One of Major’s Boston-area clients
told me that Trump’s election in 2016 was painful for her to watch. “Leading into the election, I was telling everyone they should worry more,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she wants to keep her assets private. She works in the pharmaceutical industry and moved to the area in 2021.
She says that everyone she knows who could get a second citizenship by marriage or ancestry did. Poland, Ireland, Italy, and other countries allow “citizenship-by-descent” programs, if your documentation meets their specifications. She hoped to apply through Poland’s program but didn’t have enough documentation. So she went a different route.
She has now obtained a socalled Golden Visa to Portugal, which required her to invest $200,000 in the country (through, essentially, a managed mutual fund). Under the regulations when she applied, she says, she only has to spend two weeks in the country every two years. After five years, she can apply for citizenship, as long as she has learned Portuguese. Obtaining this passport, she notes, “is a long-term backup and retirement plan for me.” She plans to continue living in the United States for the time being, unless the political situation becomes untenable.
Why plow hundreds of thousands of dollars into foreign investments, just to have a Plan B? “I am afraid this would be our last democratic election,” she says. “I’m afraid Putin would have a free hand. Pretty dark fears, obviously. But I think it makes sense after Jan. 6.”
Indeed, Americans’ views have shifted considerably in the past few years.
Nearly a decade ago, when Kristin Surak first started studying the worldwide market for citizenships and residencies — which she chronicles in her recent book “The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires” — she encountered few Americans seeking an escape hatch abroad.
But Surak, an associate professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, has since followed the rise of a group that became known as “Armageddon Americans.”
“Gradually, with the hyperpoliticization of American elections,” notes Surak, people were worried about “what would happen if “a ‘communist’ like Biden got elected or a ‘fascist’ like Trump got elected. And they were looking for exit options.”
Major confirms that, though most of the folks motivated by politics dislike Trump, a decent chunk of his clients — perhaps 30 percent — worry that America is becoming too left-leaning.
COVID also supercharged Americans’ interest in getting out of the country. Some thought restrictions in the United States were far too harsh. Others thought they were far too loose. And still others chafed at the fact that even with “their beautiful blue passport with the golden eagle on the front... they suddenly couldn’t go to a lot of countries. Especially in Europe,” says Surak.
Major notes that a couple of decades ago, Americans made up a small proportion of his clients. Then he began to see lots of Americans with both status and money. “It’s mostly guys who have Wikipedia pages, meaning they’re the top, top guys in the United States. Which... makes me nervous because those guys are always ahead of the curve.”
As Surak notes in her book, PayPal founder Peter Thiel became a dual US-New Zealand citizen after spending less than two weeks — and a lot of money — in New Zealand. Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap, became a French citizen by — conveniently — going through the formalities at the French consulate in Los Angeles. Now, Thiel and Spiegel will always have another citizenship to fall back on, a country to escape to if the going gets rough in the United States.
But the clientele for residencies and citizenships has been shifting, Major notes; it’s now accessible and interesting to the “mass affluent.” And once larger pools of people start considering this option — and I personally know a couple of families that have availed themselves of it — it may increasingly seem like a possibility.
For someone who has spent much of his career helping those in politically unstable situations — particularly the Chinese — transport themselves and their families to other countries, Major is surprised that he’s now dealing with so many Americans.
“There’s no more patriotic bunch than Americans, so it’s a very big decision for many of them to actually reach out to a group like us. Because it’s the last thing they would have wanted to do. Right?”
For those who decide they do want to open international doors, options might include investing in Portugal or Spain or gaining citizenship in Turkey or the Caribbean. In Spain, Major says, you have to invest in a property that’s at least 500,000 Euros to become a resident — though Spain recently announced it will soon stop offering residency in exchange for purchasing real estate. In Greece, if you’re willing to look in more remote locations, you can buy a home for as little as 250,000 Euros.
All of these options take time, paperwork, and (of course) cash. Major says his firm’s fees range from $10,000 to $30,000 for Portugal or the Caribbean, but they can top $80,000 for a citizenship application to Malta or Austria.
Both Major and Surak point out that many Americans never actually avail themselves of their backup plan — they have jobs, family, and other deep connections to the United States — but they want the flexibility.
If Trump wins in November, I asked Major, what does he think will happen? Simple, he answered. “I’ll have the business year of my career.”