Recently by Simon Black: This Is Why We Internationalize. This Is Why We Have a Plan.
I wanted to dedicate today’s Q&A to a topic that we have been receiving a huge volume of questions about lately: passports. This subject is becoming quite popular as the developed world continues to deteriorate, and I wanted to shed some light on the issue based on my own extensive personal experiences:
First, Phillip asks, “Simon, what is the point of having a second passport? There are a lot of websites talking about it, but nobody ever says why.”
Great question. A second passport is a really useful insurance policy in the event of things like social unrest, political turmoil, major lawsuit, economic collapse, etc.
To give you an example, some friends of mine in Cairo earlier this week told me that when the revolution started, they really wanted to get out of dodge. Unfortunately the only countries available to them were places like Syria… frying pan, fire.
Ironically, the top countries on their wish list were Malaysia, New Zealand, and Finland. I asked them, “What about the United States? Or the UK?” They shrugged. “Eh…”
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If they’d had a decent second passport, they could have watched the turmoil on their television instead of out the living room window. But instead, they had to hunker down when the bullets were flying.
A second passport is ultimate protection in times of calamity… safe passage when black swan events take place. These days when you can’t bet on any certainty past the end of your nose, a second passport is even more valuable.
Even if you’re not facing imminent peril, a second passport has a lot of useful functions. It can help you establish bank and brokerage accounts overseas (especially if you only have the dreaded US passport), and it also helps you keep a low profile while traveling should the need arise.
As I’m fond of saying, nobody ever hijacks an airplane and threatens to kill all the Lithuanians.
Problem is, there is little accurate information out there about how to actually obtain a second passport. The ‘industry’ (if you could call it that) is fraught with snake oil salesmen who claim that they can ‘get’ you a passport in places like the Dominican Republic or Panama, as if passports are served up on a menu.
There are also droves of ‘experts’ who have no earthly idea what they’re talking about; they dish out internationalization advice from North America and make up for their lack of knowledge and personal experience by asking Google for the answer.
This just isn’t the sort of information you’re going to find in Wikipedia. Bottom line- tread carefully.
