If all goes to plan, Jae Kim, Annie Akin and their 4-year-old son will soon be residents of Portugal. By then, the San Francisco family will have had their birth certificates notarized, had European officials record their fingerprints and transferred half a million Euros into an international investment fund.
Kim and Akin are among a rising number of wealthy Californians using their capital to seek residency and citizenship outside the U.S.
It’s often called citizenship by investment, or a golden visa, and refers to a process in which individuals who invest a hefty amount of money into a country, either through buying property or direct investment, can more easily become permanent residents or citizens.
“Affluent families are starting to say, ‘Hey, this is actually really good to have alongside all of my investments. Why don’t I diversify where I can live?’” said Basil Mohr-Elzeki, a managing partner at Henley & Partners, a residency and citizenship firm with an office in Beverly Hills.
While no agency tracks these cases nationwide, three firms that help secure these kinds of residences said interest in so-called golden visas has skyrocketed in the past five years.
In that time, the number of Californians one firm has worked with grew from roughly three clients a year to more than a hundred. Firms say Californians now make up as many as one in five clients from around the globe seeking residency in another country, a statistic not entirely surprising since the state is home to a large number of the world’s wealthiest people.
The biggest motivator? A fear of political instability in the U.S.
“That’s 85% of my clients from America,” said Eric Major, head of Latitude, a citizenship by investment firm with U.S. offices in Denver, Miami and New York. Major estimates that the average net worth among his California clients hovers near $250 million — a million of which they’ll likely end up spending to get another passport.
“They’re wanting it for — what if the wheels fall off America? Then I need, just like World War II, a place to go,” he said.
The number of wealthy Californians scrambling to nab exit options has grown alongside the number of Americans in total, according to the citizenship-by-investment firms.
In 2019, Major said, fewer than 5% of his clients seeking residency and citizenship came from the U.S. Now, as the total number of his clients has grown, Americans make up three-fourths of his work.
Among those using their wealth to rack up passports is tech billionaire and former Californian Peter Thiel who, according to The New York Times, is pursuing citizenship in Argentina out of a concern for where the U.S. seems to be headed, including a tax on billionaires in California that will go to voters later this year.
Most wealthy Americans, and particularly Californians, are interested in residency in a European nation, which affords someone the ability to live or work in more than two dozen countries in the European Union. In Europe, the most popular residency programs, firms said, tend to be in Portugal and Malta.
A much less costly way to get European citizenship is by descent. Ireland and Italy, for example, offer citizenship to foreigners if they parents or grandparents that were born in or were citizens of those countries.
The U.S. has its own concierge residency program. In 2025, President Donald Trump introduced the Trump Gold Card, where after contributing $1 million, an applicant could receive residency. The program is currently being challenged in court.
Mohr-Elzeki said his clients from California are also interested in New Zealand, which offers a faster path to residency than many European countries.
In most cases, though, heads of these firms say their clients view any additional residency as a backup plan and don’t have concrete plans to move to these newly claimed nations. Many of these countries don’t require you to live there full-time in order to maintain permanent residency.
“This is a little bit like having an insurance policy,” said Paul Williams, CEO and founder of La Vida Golden Visas, a firm based in London. “You don’t know if your house is going to burn down or if a plane is going to crash into it, but you take out the policy just in case.”
That is true for Kim and Akin, who say they don’t have immediate plans to move to Portugal. But they fret about the future political stability of the U.S. still.
“We have some worry about that,” Akin said. “Our son being in future wars, things like that.”
They’ve also considered the fact that with residency or citizenship they could retire or Portugal or their son could attend a university in Europe, where tuition amounts to a fraction of U.S. costs.
“One of the best things money can buy you, generally speaking, is options,” said Kim, who works as an AI architect at Microsoft.
Interest in citizenship by investment surged in 2020, when wealthy people felt trapped by pandemic lockdowns and the restrictions countries put on nonresidents, according to heads of firms.
“I can’t take my private jet to London?” Major said, summing up the sentiment he heard from clients.
Around the same time, Major and Williams said they started hearing from Americans who wanted to pursue residency or citizenship elsewhere because they worried about the political future of their country — from both sides of the aisle.
“I have just as many disgruntled Republicans who are worried about another Biden, left-leaning, Sanders,” Major said. “It’s just as much this guy as the other guy.”
In 2024, when President Trump was elected a second time, interest shot up again, especially from Democrat-heavy states like California.
The amount of capital needed to obtain residency and eventual citizenship varies. New Zealand’s program requires an applicant invest at least NZD 5 million (about $3 million). into managed funds or businesses and can take as little as three years to qualify for permanent residency.
In Portugal, a typical route is for a family to invest 500,000 Euros in a capital venture or private equity fund, with the requirement that a little over half of the funds be invested in Portuguese businesses.
The government requires applicants to spend at least two weeks in Portugal for the first two years of their residency visa. Even with that, it can take up to five years to qualify for permanent residency and a decade or more to become a citizen, plus applicants must demonstrate some understanding of Portuguese.
Residency seekers can also start a business in the country and invest a smaller amount — about 175,000 Euros. That’s what Josh, a lawyer in San Diego, is doing. He’s seeking Portuguese residency and eventually citizenship for himself, his wife and two school-aged children.
“It’s mostly for the kids,” Josh said, explaining that a European passport could open up education and job opportunities for them. (The Times agreed to use only his first name because he worried his plans to seek residency outside the country might harm his business in the U.S.)
The family typically spends a little over a month each year in Europe, and having residency in a local country would make travel simpler and allow them to stay for longer periods of time.
“We love it over there,” Josh said. “It’s just a different lifestyle.”
As for Major, he wonders how another political sea change could affect his business.
“Is it just a blip?” he said. “That’s the story I can’t answer you.”
This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.
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