Citizenship by Investment: Every Live Program, Real Costs, and What You Actually Get

You contribute capital to an approved vehicle, pass a due diligence check, and receive a passport, typically within 3 to 12 months with no prior residency requirement. The investment vehicle varies: non-refundable government fund donations, real estate purchases held for a minimum period, or approved business investments. Due diligence is the real gate. Programs run background checks through third-party firms and reject applicants with criminal records, sanctions exposure, or complex source-of-funds problems. Clean background and documented wealth make the process straightforward; complications at due diligence are rarely recoverable.

St. Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Lucia all offer passports starting between $100,000 and $150,000 for a single applicant via non-refundable fund donation. St. Kitts is the oldest program and carries the most recognized name; Grenada is unique in that its passport holders can apply for a US E-2 investor visa, which no other Caribbean CBI passport unlocks. Dominica consistently offers the lowest headline cost, around $100,000 donation for a single applicant, with processing in four to six months. For a full breakdown of Dominica's routes and real totals including fees, see Dominica Second Passport Requirements: Every Route, Real Costs, and What You Actually Need.

Malta offers the only remaining true citizenship by investment route inside the EU, requiring a non-refundable contribution of EUR 600,000 after 12 months of residency or EUR 750,000 after 36 months, plus a EUR 10,000 charitable donation and a real estate purchase or rental commitment. The passport gives visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to roughly 185 countries including the US and UK. Jordan and Turkey sit adjacent to Europe in terms of positioning: Turkey requires a minimum $400,000 real estate purchase and issues a passport in roughly three to six months, but Turkish passport holders still need visas for the US and Schengen zone. Vanuatu, though Pacific-based, often gets grouped here by consultants marketing to EU-facing clients; at around $130,000 it processes in under two months but offers weaker visa-free access than Caribbean peers.

Programs hire third-party firms such as Control Risks or Kroll to run background checks across criminal databases, sanctions lists, adverse media, and politically exposed person registers. Source of funds documentation is the second critical layer: programs want two to three years of tax returns, audited business financials, or clear asset sale records that explain where the investment capital came from. Applicants from high-risk nationalities face enhanced due diligence and sometimes automatic exclusion; Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Belarus nationals are currently excluded from most Caribbean and European programs by policy. A rejected application rarely gets a second review, so submitting a clean, complete file the first time is essential.

All major CBI programs allow a spouse and dependent children to be added to the application, usually for additional flat fees per person rather than a proportional increase in the main investment. In Antigua, for example, a family of four pays a single real estate purchase threshold with per-person government fees adding roughly $25,000 to $50,000 above the single-applicant base. Some programs extend eligibility to dependent parents or siblings above a certain age threshold for additional fees, which makes the program materially more valuable for applicants with family members holding weak passports. Adult children over the program's age cutoff, typically 18 to 30 depending on student or financial dependency status, may need to be treated as separate applicants.

The right program depends on what the passport is for. If the goal is US E-2 access, Grenada is the only Caribbean option. If the goal is EU visa-free travel with a credible passport, Malta is the only CBI route inside the bloc. If the goal is pure cost minimization for a backup travel document, Dominica or St. Lucia make the most sense. Tax positioning is a separate decision: Caribbean CBI passports do not in themselves create tax residency, and holding one does not reduce tax liability in your home country unless you also sever that residency properly. Pairing a new passport with actual residency relocation is what creates the full planning structure.