Citizenship As An Asset

If you’re born in Pakistan (or similar places) even to a rich family, you were born a million dollar poorer to new borns in the developed countries. The reason why I say that is because in order to acquire one of those citizenships such as North American or European, you would need to invest over a million dollars to even qualify to start the residency process, after which in most cases you would still need to spend a certain amount of time inside that country to qualify for citizenship.

If you choose to instead acquire through the pathway processes such as going as as a student or as a skilled worker immigrant, you’d still need to spend many years in the country, paying thousands of dollars in taxes on your income and bearing other costs such as academic costs and higher cost of living in order to acquire such a citizenship. It will still cost you a few hundred thousand dollars.

You were not just born poorer, your freedom was taken away from you at the time of your birth. It was decided when you were born, that you are going to have travel restrictions. That you will not qualify to participate in global trade. That you won’t have access to tools needed to do so such as Stripe or PayPal etc.

Over my life, I was lucky to meet hundreds of smart people who were able to take control of their lives in their own hands. They were able to circumvent many restrictions imposed on them. They were able to get access to many of these tools and were able to get successful in the end.

However there’s no easy fix to avoiding the travel restrictions and I think for those who can, should make their best effort in order to acquire the asset that we call citizenship. It is an incredible asset in a way that it not only enables you, but is transferable to everyone in your future generations. It will ensure that your children and their children are not born poorer or with conditions that worked against them.

You can continue to live in your native country, there’s nothing that stops you from doing so, but have a secondary citizenship is something that we all should seriously consider.