It's astonishing there's no bare bones citizen by investment scheme in sub Saharan Africa. Given the corruption and access to Rwanda and Kenya it seems like an obvious easy money printer.
I'd live in Rwanda or Kenya over ~2/3rds of other countries. Certainly over anywhere in the Middle East, North Africa, the nation of South Africa, Central America, etc.
Everyone I know that's gone absolutely loves it, and every Kenyan I've worked with has been a lovely person.
There's a shitty "meme" that Africa is just a huge, hot version of Detroit or St. Louis or other Black American city. It's absolutely not, those classes of areas have remarkably different issues.
You sound like someone who has never been in northern africa or central america. Plenty of areas there that are clean, urbanist, and wealthy, way more than in Kenya or Rwanda.
You could do a lot worse than Rwanda if you were fleeing Russia or the West Bank or something. Usually CBI are investment only in name, they're seen as a total loss.
Rwanda has an HDI of 0.545 and this is suspect as well because they have been found to be fudging poverty and GDP metrics
Even Gaza under occupation had a HDI of 0.699 (roughly comparable to Vietnam). The West Bank regions are roughly comparable to neighboring Jordan around 0.710-0.730.
Even most Pakistanis, Afghans, and Syrians have better options in their home country from an economic standpoint.
Russia itself has almost reached a threshold around "Developed" with an HDI around 0.824.
I never meant to imply Rwanda is better than the aforementioned on a general level. When you are legitimately fleeing rather than economically migrating though that typically means your individual HDI of sorts was already near zero. It doesn't make much sense to use population HDI of origin for such persons.
I've been helping a couple Afghan translators stuck in Afghanistan to get their families into the US. They are all staying put in Kabul or Ghazni until the US processes their visa, and are looking at Pakistan, Saudi, and India as backups in case they need to book it and leave.
They sure as hell aren't going to uproot their lives to end up in another country at a similar developmental level but with no safety net in the form of family if network nor enough relevant jobs nor the relevant language skills
On top of that, there are waaaay better options in general. If you're in WB and want to flee, it's relatively easy to go to Jordan. As a Gazan it is obviously difficult right now with the war, but even before that Gazans who would emigrate abroad (as refugees or immigrants) had a path in Jordan (27% of Jordan is Palestinian), Saudi (1% of Saudi is Palestinian), Qatar (5% of Qatar is Palestinian), and Egypt, which isn't as great as Europe but is definitely better and easier to survive in than Rwanda
It's the same reason Australia opened camps for asylees in Papua New Guinea and Narau - by building a hell on earth they are showing you shouldn't even try apply for asylum.
There are 55k Palestinians diaspora in Yemen and that has an even worse HDI than Rwanda. The number of fallacies you've presented I'm starting to lose track. You've used anecdote of an afghan family, general population HDI of origin to measure subpopulations fleeing, you said "not really" to a statement that you could do worse but then did the opposite and instead argued that there were other better possible choices (I never denied this).
It's baffling that you're so dismissive some could use the option, particularly when circumstances and wealth and connections often dictate where you can flee. Low HDI Comoros (now discontinued ) and Vanuatu have CBI programs that have sold tens of thousands of passports to stateless and others in bad situations in the third world ( most of whom have no chance at US visa), despite in theory with the right means other options being better.
The market case is well established, frankly I suspect it's only a matter of time until these incentives open up such doors again in these regions.
> It's baffling that you're so dismissive some could use the option
Because it's direct fork of Australia's "Pacific Solution". Look at the data from that - asylum applications DROPPED as asylees from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, etc simply decided to return to their home country (even it was dangerous like Afghanistan during the surge or Sri Lanka towards the end of the civil war) instead of waiting indefinitely for processing.
Also, I don't think you've ever travelled to actual developing countries or have a background with them. Going from one undeveloped country to another makes absolutely no sense. Stuff is still fucked in developing country B as it is in developing country A. Developing countries simply do not have the resources to adequately manage a population of refugees.
Put yourself in the shoes of a refugee from Aleppo - do you want to go from Aleppo to some random country in Africa with a GDP per Capita of $800 that is probably falsified [0], isn't fully English speaking yet, and is still overwhelmingly agricultural (aka you will be working in a field for less than $2 a day) [1], minimum wage is $2 a MONTH [1], or would you rather just go across the border to Türkiye where median incomes are $400/month, there is a semi-functioning healthcare system, and there are half decent universities so your kids will absolutely have a shot of emigrating to the first world.
> Vanuatu have CBI programs that have sold tens of thousands of passports to stateless and others in bad situations in the third world
You are talking out of your ass.
Vanuatu's CBI program gives you visa free access to Ireland and used to have visa free access to the UK until a couple months ago when they shut down that loophole.
It also requires you to spend $130,000 and have a bank account with at least $250,000. A stateless individual, migrant worker, or refugee does not have half a million dollars to spend on a random citizenship! If they did they would already have an easy time emigrating to a first world country above board.
It's a program used to get a backdoor into Ireland and formerly the UK.
Also, based on your comment history, you look like someone who's education about the world came from Reddit and Youtube. Learn to read real sources (books, NYT, Financial Times, The Economist, Nikkei, NBER papers, etc).
>Also, I don't think you've ever travelled to actual developing countries or have a background with them. Going from one undeveloped country to another makes absolutely no sense. Stuff is still fucked in developing country B as it is in developing country A. Developing countries simply do not have the resources to adequately manage a population of refugees.
>Put yourself in the shoes of a refugee from Aleppo - do you want to go from Aleppo to some random country in Africa with a GDP per Capita of $800 that is probably falsified [0], isn't fully English speaking yet, and is still overwhelmingly agricultural (aka you will be working in a field for less than $2 a day) [1], or would you rather just go across the border to Türkiye where median incomes are $400/month, there is a semi-functioning healthcare system, and there are half decent universities so your kids will absolutely have a shot of emigrating to the first world.
Awesome you brought those points up. I lived in Syria. Rojava to be exact. I also fought in their militia the YPG. It's awesome you dismissively bring up Turkey, where the Kurds I fought alongside would have been imprisoned or killed -- but yeah just go to Turkey!
>A stateless individual, migrant worker, or refugee does not have half a million dollars to spend on a random citizenship! If they did they would already have an easy time emigrating to a first world country above board.
Not sure if you're serious but this is a real problem for stateless people and Vanuatu, Dominica etc have developed due diligence methods specifically for their stateless CBI clients. Stateless or refugee does not mean they have to be poor. In many cases gaining nationality even a low HDI one is a huge step up in access to global markets and KYC/AML.
>Because it's direct fork of Australia's "Pacific Solution". Look at the data from that - asylum applications DROPPED as asylees from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, etc simply decided to return to their home country (even it was dangerous like Afghanistan during the surge or Sri Lanka towards the end of the civil war) instead of waiting indefinitely for processing.
Bait and switch (from the viewpoint of asylee) is a bit different here. It's one thing to enter another country as a citizen, quite different than aiming for AUS and ending up in PNG without citizenship and maybe not even work authorization. That's much worse psychologically to many than roughly knowing what you're getting and having citizen footing.
>"Legal gray area"
Lol the US fought alongside YPG. DHS, CBP, and probably others have known for the better part of a decade I was in the YPG. They know who i am, where I've been, where I live and they've interrogated many times at port of entry. Nice scare tactics but I'm gonna guess after a decade of no US YPG getting prosecuted for a non-crime this is a dead issue.
> Not sure if you're serious but this is a real problem for stateless people and Vanuatu
You still need to pay $130,000-170,000 to the Vantanu government and have a minimum of $250,000 in the bank. Most people living in the OECD do not have that much money in the bank, let alone people in the developing world.
> I lived in Syria. Rojava to be exact. I also fought in their militia the YPG
Honestly, I highly doubt it. You are an account with less than 100 karma created 17 days ago. I do not think you are of MENA origin and you definetly do not sound it.
In another post you said you were homeless. I legitimately think you are a strawman account.
Based on information from your account you seem to live in Poland, but might be an American citizen.
> where the Kurds I fought alongside would have been imprisoned or killed
Yes, because if you actually were with the YPG you were in an organization that still supports the PKK and Ocalan to this day (an organization that is a proscribed terrorist group in the United States and EU).
Also if you are a US or western citizen who did this with one of their foreign legions, you need to talk to a lawyer right now. You are in a legal grey area.
Can you name a single American prosecuted for fighting for the YPG? Yes my passport was flagged and I was harassed for years but I think you're uninformed on this issue. I have openly been living an admitted to DHS ex-YPG for nearly a decade. It's not illegal and although Turkey may consider the YPG as PKK the DoJ does not.
I sleep without a care in the world on this issue, if they jailed me I would simply smile knowing I fought for something I believed in.
Making corruption official is problematic. First off, making the practice official makes pricing a lot more transparent. If a country just outright says "no-questions-asked visas for $1000, citizenship for $10,000" then that also means the immigration control officer can't demand $2000 bribes to someone who can't meet the official immigration rules.
Furthermore, one of the advantages of widespread corruption is that everyone has to do it, which means everyone can be prosecuted for it. You could, say, require political candidates to pay million-dollar bribes, and then if those candidates actually get popular enough to threaten your power, prosecute them for bribing themselves onto the ballot. If everyone's a criminal, it doesn't mean the crime isn't a crime. It means you can strip people of their rights at any time without question.
If corruption were made official, this goes away. Someone who bought a golden visa or passport can't be prosecuted if the procedure for buying it was on the books and above-board - even if it's priced like some kind of "Sybil-resistant" anarchocapitalist cryptocurrency hellscape of humans-as-piles-of-money.
That's hilarious considering neither Mexico nor US checks passports when you walk into Mexico in CA/az west except maybe San Ysidro crossing. She literally could have walked across and nobody would know, instead she did the dumbest thing possible of buying a one way last minute air ticket on a flagged passport. That would have triggered some cursory check for anybody let alone Holmes.
Why would they need go to a country subject to treaties. Unrecognized territories like transnistria (weev!),rojava,Somaliland,Ambazonia, western Sahara, Palestine (before invasion), fractions of Myanmar, idlib, rebel held congo fractions, etc. Basically no diplomatic relations and they will likely not eject someone seen locally as supporting their cause.
Its a big world out there and a shockingly large portion is free of recognized government control. In such places you pretty much live by your own bootstraps rather than what some far away western country says, at least on the individual level.
What really really shocks me though is that SBF didn't just jump on a yacht out right after the failure as he easily could have done. If he had sailed to the right part of Latam or West Africa he'd have a decent chance at not getting caught.
He doesn't speak the language, had a highly recognizable face and is perceived to have money. Sounds like a recipe for a bad time in the rougher places of the world.
Not sure I'd want to live in Ambazonia but they speak English and would likely not have many that recognize his face. It also would have been easily accessible by yacht transatlantic from the Bahamas into a difficult to patrol estuary. But this is all pure fantasy, I understand why he didn't do that.
In any unrecognized territory, you risk becoming a pawn in exchange for a prisoner release. And pray that the unrecognized territory continues to exist as is.
There's no riskless path remaining after you've defrauded billions of dollars. Iirc the white girl who bombed the subway in london is thought to be still hiding in such a territory like two decades later.
Is that because they want to be in prison, or because they're fuckups who think they can get away with violating the terms of their probation but get caught?
France has an US citizen in custody for killing an abortion doctor in the US. Can't extradite him because that would be accessory to death penalty, which a European treaty forbids, I don't remember if the US sent the file to procecute him in France.
I don't think France is under embargo.
US diplomatic assurances aren't considered reliable (e.g. [1], also you can look up the case of David Mendoza). My understanding is that the State Department makes the promises, and then the Justice Department's policy is to assume that since their department didn't make the assurances, that the assurances that were made don't actually apply to them.
Specifically, it's that due the structure of the US government, it's nigh-impossible for the US to make binding agreements at all, especially in one-off cases like this. Our diplomatic representatives are under the Executive branch, which is subject to change every 4 years, and successors have no obligation to uphold agreements that their predecessors made. The power to actually make law that binds American citizens falls to Congress under the Legislative branch, which has to pass law making any agreement the diplomats make legally binding internally, which they may or may not do, and the diplomats negotiating such terms have no power to sway that one way or another. Then the actual execution of the agreement would fall to the courts, which could potentially find a deal that managed to be negotiated by the diplomats and legislated by congress contradictory to the Constitution, and nullify it.
Add on top of this the difficulty the US has passing any legislation whatsoever, and you've got a whole mess on your hands.
And I almost forgot that the accused would likely be facing charges in an individual state, which adds another layer to the mess, wherein the state likely has the sovereignty to execute one of its residents regardless of any international agreements that the Executive branch of the federal government makes.
Your and other comments below are fascinating, but she was already sentenced to life instead of death, and after her jailbreak was granted asylum as a free woman in Cuba
Hmm seems possible although unlikely. Last time we had more than a decade of free trade with Cuba we had quite the incentive to support Batista and various us interest dictators. The embargo probably helps keep certain interests out of their hair.
The Uber driver is basically a business owner fulfilling contracts to customers brokered through an online clearinghouse. They're hyper capitalists exploiting regulatory advantages over taxi drivers then sad face at the downsides to that.
> The Uber driver is basically a business owner fulfilling contracts to customers brokered through an online clearinghouse. They're hyper capitalists exploiting regulatory advantages over taxi drivers then sad face at the downsides to that.
No they are not, otherwise they could freely set the fare and the market would decide the final price, not Uber or Lyft. Clearly that's not the case here.
I would argue Lyft/Uber are merely shitty brokers. You can definitely contract with a broker to use take it or leave it price fixing, it's just not a quality I would particularly desire.
Labor laws say you can't declare the drivers to be corporate entities. Presumably because employers would use that as a way to circumvent employment law.
Uber explicitly lets you drive under an EIN/LLC. If you want to IC it you can as well.
You ( not you you but you hypothetical driver) may consider yourself as an employee but it would be if your own company, or self employed. Not Uber's employee except in a few jurisdictions. If you want employee protections by all means drive under your LLC for Uber and declare yourself an employee of your contracted self owned LLC... It sounds doable but IANAL.
SUV OGs were body on frame. Enclosed trucks basically.
Soccer moms and dads driving to the grocery and back with their three spawn though have more market share. So they sell you a unibody oversized car that would be absolutely destroyed if used as the OG truck frame vehicles, and the soccer dad can pretend his oversized car is some off-road hauling machine.
