Passport Investment Eases Schengen Travel

According to the latest figures published by the European Commission, in 2017 a total of 16.1 million Schengen visa applications were submitted, yet only 14.6 million approved. When compared to the previous year’s figures, there was an increase of almost 1 million applications across the world.

Russia submitted the most applications at 3.8 million, followed closely by China at 2.5 million, both with a very a high success rate as less than 3% were rejected.

A number of other countries on the list who unfortunately had a high rejection rate were Nigeria who experienced a rejection rate of 52% and Algeria who had 279,740 visas rejected out of 779,152 (35%). Other countries experiencing a similar percentage of rejections were Pakistan, Senegal, Ghana, Syria and Iraq.

The report does not state official reasons for application rejections, but the results would suggest that countries in areas of conflict and poverty have experienced higher rejection rates, perhaps due to security reasons. This is why so many citizens of these areas are looking for a more permanent solution to enable them to travel more freely. Here at La Vida we have dealt with buyers from over 70 countries worldwide who have applied for second residency and citizenship programmes.  A large proportion of these have been from countries such as Nigeria, Pakistan and Iraq, correlating accordingly with the above figures of those rejected for a standard schengen visas.

We also process a large amount of applications from investors in countries where rejections rates for Schengen visas were low, such as Singapore and the USA. For most of these clients gaining a travel visa was not a problem, but the process of always re applying was inconvenient and a major incentive for them to find a more long term solution.

There are many reasons why people invest for a second residency and citizenship. A common motive seems to be to save time on visa applications and renewals. For those that travel regularly, having to renew a visa every few months can be time consuming, frustrating and costly. HNW’s are constantly looking for more permanent solutions whereby they can invest in a secure country which will gain them visa free travel as well as a number of other benefits. La Vida offers 15 different programmes which can assist with this.