Podcast: Pandemic’s Lessons for IM Programs and the Impact of a North Macedonian CIP

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For investment migration, 2020 was a year of both setbacks and of considerable advances. While the pandemic brought record global awareness of the usefulness of alternative citizenships and residencies, it also made putting investment migration plans into practice far more difficult.

Some programs have seen record application volume while others have seen it collapse. Service providers speak of a sharp rise in demand, but also difficulty in catering to it.

In this second episode of our new podcast, the Mobility Standard, we discuss how different investment migration programs performed in 2020, and ask which lessons may be gleaned from those observations.

We’ll try to explain the divergence in performance during the pandemic between Greece and Portugal, and why the Caribbean was able to carry on with business as usual. We want to know whether there is something besides the pandemic that explains the sharp decline in EB-5 applications over the last year, and also try to map out the regional center program’s future beyond its June 30th expiry date.

Ahmad wants Stephane Tajick, our guest in this episode and the designated Canadian, to explain why Canada, an ostensibly immigrant-loving country, keeps making it harder to immigrate.

We want to know if 2020’s reportedly sharp rise in inquiries will translate into actual applications in 2021, and also try to understand which markets will be the biggest sources of investors in the next few years.

Finally, we have to talk a little bit about the biggest news story this week; the heralded opening of a North Macedonian CIP, and what effect that will have on the competitive balance of European CIPs.

Timestamps:

• 02:16: What explains the sharp divergence in performance between the Greek and Portuguese golden visas in 2020?
• 07:36: Why were applications and approvals for the Caribbean CIPs relatively unaffected by the pandemic?
• 11:31: What, except the pandemic, explains the sharp downturn in applications and approvals for the US EB-5 program in 2020?
• 13:00: Moment of Truth for the EB-5 program. What happens after June 30th?
• 19:46: Why does “immigrant-loving” country Canada keep making it harder for people to immigrate?
• 24:43: Many firms have reported tremendous increases in the number of inquiries about investment migration programs in 2020 but, so far, this hasn’t translated into a corresponding increase in applications. What’s behind this schism?
• 32:03: Which are the next big source markets for investment migration?
• 36:52: A small crisis in the Vietnamese investment migration market
• 39:06: Which programs will absorb the strong demand that existed for the now-closed Cyprus CIP?
• 44:57: How will the increasingly likely prospect of a North Macedonian CIP affect the competitive position of other CIPs in Europe and the Caribbean?