Wealthy Americans are increasingly looking to obtain a second citizenship to protect themselves from future financial hardships, according to a global law firm that specializes in investment migration and citizenship consulting.
The firm, Henley & Partners, told CNBC that many of their high-net-worth clients are looking to build “passport portfolios” in case they feel the need to leave their home country. According to Dominic Volek, executive and group head of private clients at Henley, the motivation behind seeking second citizenship is to “hedge against levels of volatility and uncertainty.”
“The U.S. is still a great country, it’s still an amazing passport,” Volek told CNBC in a report published Wednesday morning. “But if I’m wealthy, I would like to hedge against levels of volatility and uncertainty.”
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“The idea of diversification is well understood by wealthy individuals around what they invest,” he added. “It makes no sense to have one country of citizenship and residence when I have the ability to actually diversify that aspect of my life as well.”
According to Henley & Partners’ passport index, which ranks the world’s passports based on the number of destinations its holders can access without a visa, the U.S. passport is currently tied for sixth, with Americans being able to access 189 countries visa-free.
Holders of the top-ranked passports a tie between—France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore and Spain—can travel to 194 countries without obtaining a visa prior.
The push to seek a second citizenship is not only seen among wealthier Americans. Jennifer Stevens, executive editor at International Living, told Scripps News last month that more and more citizens were looking to obtain documents that would allow them to live outside the U.S., whether it be a passport or a residency permit.
“I would say that we are seeing from kind of all sides people who are just concerned about the future in the U.S.,” Stevens said. “And so they are investigating their options and discovering what our members have, kind of known for a long time, which is that there are great places to live overseas where the cost of living is lower and the weather is good year-round, and the pace of life tends to be a little slower.”
Newsweek reached out to Henley & Partners and International Living via email for additional comment on Wednesday.
A survey by Monmouth University Polling Institute released last month found that over a third of Americans would like to live in another country. The poll, based on responses of 902 Americans, showed a massive increase from a similar poll conducted by Gallup in 2019, in which 16 percent of Americans surveyed in 2017 and 2018 said they would like to permanently move to another country.
The director of Monmouth’s polling institute, Patrick Murray, previously told Newsweek that while he couldn’t be certain exactly when the number of Americans who wanted to flee the country had jumped, “I’d be willing to bet that the partisan [political] rancor of the past few years has played a significant role in the heightened desire to emigrate.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.