How the second passport market actually works

Investment migration is a small, concentrated industry, and understanding its structure explains most of what an applicant encounters.

The supply side

• A handful of selling states. Five Caribbean programmes, Vanuatu, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Nauru and a small number of others for citizenship; a longer list for residence.
• For several of them the programme is a material share of government revenue, which explains both their defensiveness and their vulnerability to external pressure.
• Due diligence is outsourced to a small number of specialist firms used across programmes, which is why a refusal in one is visible to others.

The distribution side

• Licensed agents, a limited number per programme, who alone may file.
• Promoters and sub-agents, unlimited, who introduce clients and take a share.
• Referrers — wealth managers, lawyers, property brokers — at the outer layer.
• Conferences and publications funded by the industry, which is where most of the public commentary about it originates.

What that structure produces

• A large marketing spend relative to the number of transactions, which is why the advertising is inescapable.
• Advice that follows commission, because nobody at the outer layers is paid for recommending the ancestry route or for saying no.
• Price opacity. Government fees are published and identical; everything above them is the chain, and it is negotiable.
• Concentration risk for the states. A programme that funds a budget is a programme that will be defended and, when pressure comes, repriced rather than closed.

Using the structure

• Deal with a licensed agent, verified on the programme's own list.
• Ask what the government fees are and treat the difference as the negotiable part.
• Buy independent advice separately, from someone paid by you.
• Treat industry commentary as what it is — informed, useful, and produced by people whose income depends on the category continuing.