How To Travel Visa Free in 2024

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RIF Trust on the Importance of Visa-Free Travel

Mimoun Assraoui, our Chief Executive Officer at RIF Trust, is an acclaimed authority in the world of Residency and Citizenship by Investment. He has years of experience advising HNWIs how investing in a new residency or second citizenship allows them to travel visa free. Residency by Investment programmes are one route, Citizenship by Investment programmes another.

This article will explain the concept of visa-free countries, reveal how you can minimize your travel visa needs with Residency by Investment, and show you how Citizenship by Investment cuts down your travel visa applications.

“Our clients are entrepreneurs,” Mimoun outlines, “who want to enhance their business travel options.” “Yet our clients also want to enjoy better leisure travel opportunities with their family.”

The RIF Trust CEO sums you his objectives of enabling our clients to travel visa free: “The beauty of European Residency by Investment programmes is that you can use your EU resident card to enter any of the 29 countries comprising the Schengen Area. With a Citizenship by Investment programme, you can secure a stronger passport that facilitates travel to more visa-free destinations.”

What Are Visa-Free Countries?

Essentially, there are 2 definitions of what constitutes a visa-free country or destination. The first is that possessing a certain residency card or passport means you don’t have to worry about securing a visa in advance of travelling to a specific country/destination.

However, our Passport Index introduces another. Given the ease you can apply for an eVisa in advance or receive a Visa on Arrival to particular places, we include these in our tally of visa-free countries.

Let’s take the world’s leading travel document, the Spanish passport, as an example. Now, we describe this passport as granting you access to 183 visa-free countries.

However, if we follow the strictest, first definition of what constitutes a visa-free destination, the actual number is 126. It’s made up to 183 by including the 31 visa-on-arrival countries such as Indonesia, Kuwait, and Qatar, and the 26 eVisa destinations like Australia, Canada, and the United States.

How to Minimize Your Travel Visa Needs With Residency by Investment

As our CEO Mimoun Assraoui explained earlier, you begin to minimize your travel visa needs immediately with European Residency by Investment. That’s because the EU residency you receive from these golden visas is a golden ticket to travel freely around the 29-country-strong Schengen Zone.

This is the case whether you invest in a Greek Golden Visa, Portuguese Golden Visa, or Spanish Golden Visa. A UAE Golden Visa has its own residence card perks, namely visa-free access to 18 destinations.

Another way that Residency by Investment allows you to travel visa free is through naturalization. Spend 7 years in Greece, 5 in Portugal, and 10 (2 if you’re from LATAM or the Philippines) in Spain to qualify for a Greek passport, Portuguese passport, or the aforementioned Spanish passport.

You can also naturalize via 2 North American Residency by Investment programmes. The Canadian Start-up Visa is a stepping stone to a Canadian passport, enabling you to travel visa free to 177 countries after 5 years of residency. Similarly, following 5 years of residency as an US EB-5 Visa holder makes you eligible for an United States of America passport.

There’s one more Residency by Investment route to naturalization. This is available through the UK Innovator Founder Visa. You qualify for British citizenship and a United Kingdom passport when you complete 5 years as a resident in the UK.

If you want to focus on how to travel visa free within Europe, you might want to look into the Malta Permanent Residence Programme (MPRP). Here, the minimum investment requirement is €100,000. There’s immediate Schengen Zone access but you will remain a Permanent Resident in Malta with no way of becoming a Maltese citizen.

How Citizenship by Investment Cuts Down Your Travel Visa Applications

There is no naturalization period to factor in when you invest in a second citizenship. The Eastern Caribbean offers the greatest density of Citizenship by Investment programmes. Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lucia all offer a warm welcome to economic citizens.

With an Antigua and Barbuda passport, you can travel visa free to 162 destinations. A Dominica passport guarantees you entry to 156 visa-free countries, and a Grenada passport access to 160.  With a St Kitts and Nevis passport you can travel visa free to 166 countries and with a St Lucia passport to 159.

Unlike with MPRP, the Maltese Exceptional Investor Naturalization (MEIN) is a direct investment in citizenship. You need to invest at least €600,000. As a result, you reduce your travel visa dependency by securing a Maltese passport.

There are 2 other Citizenship by Investment programmes to consider. Turkish Citizenship by Investment is a $400,000 investment which leads to the Turkish passport and the chance to travel visa free to 137 countries. Vanuatu Citizenship by Investment is a $130,000 path to a Vanuatu passport and visa-free access to 117 destinations.

Begin Your Visa-Free Journey Today

There’s no time like the present to discover how you can lessen your reliance on a travel visa in your business and travel leisure planning. The chance to enhance your global mobility is one of the biggest benefits of Residency and Citizenship by Investment.

As we have outlined, Residency by Investment alone gives you travel freedom, whether it’s through the Schengen Area in Europe or countries visitable with a UAE Residence Visa.

This RIF Trust article also describes how investing short term in a residency can lead to citizenship in the long term. This is via naturalization. Citizenship by Investment is a faster, direct way to gain greater passport power and our Passport Index allows you to go compare how your current travel document rates alongside the world’s leading passports.

Our expert staff can highlight further advantages and explain all the conditions you need to meet across our broad range of Residency and Citizenship by Investment programmes. There’s a programme out there that specifically matches what you and your family are looking for.

So, contact us now, and we’ll show you how to start the process to visa-free travel through the various Residency and Citizenship by Investment options.