by Michael Karam
I was having dinner in Beirut with a young Lebanese couple.
He had Canadian citizenship from his father, who had studied in Montreal
in the ‘70s. She was able to claim the Portuguese nationality from her
maternal grandmother. Their kids would be Portuguese, being ineligible
for Canadian citizenship, as successive generations cannot be born
outside Canada to a foreign mother.
The Lebanese know their way
around nationality rules and any loopholes. Just ask those West African
expats with British Protected Persons status and their dependents who
pounced on full UK citizenship after the Nationality, Immigration and
Asylum Act was passed in 2002, without having set foot in Great Britain
or in many cases were unable to speak a word of English.
The
Lebanese love, or should I say, need, a foreign passport. The Lebanese
one has been ranked by Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index “a
global ranking of countries based on the freedom of travel for their
citizens,” among the top 10 worst passports to own because of visa
restriction issues.
My wife will gladly testify to this. In 2010,
we were invited to a wedding in Ireland. Being a Lebanese passport
holder, she needed a visa. No biggie, we thought. Just go to the Irish
embassy or consulate. The only problem was the nearest one was in
Damascus, so she was forced to travel to Syria to submit her application
at the Irish consulate, a process that took her passport to the nearest
Irish embassy, which was in Cairo. Had the Irish Honorary Consul not
been the brother of a family friend (the Finnish Honorary Consul as it
happened) and been able to deliver her passport and visa to Beirut, she
would have had to return to Damascus to pick it up personally.
And
if you’re thinking “well, OK but Ireland is a relatively obscure
country”, let us not forget that in the years after the 1975-90 civil
war, those Lebanese wishing to travel to the not-so-obscure US, had to
make a similar journey across the border into Syria, where they were
subjected to a stringent interview. My wife did it twice. No surprise
she can’t wait to qualify for a UK passport in a little over a year.
Twenty-five
years on, the Lebanese still have to queue. They are still asked to
verify with whom they are staying; how long they have been employed in
their current job and how much money they have in their bank account.
The notion of just getting on a plane for a mini-break, a luxury
afforded the citizens of all First World nations, is a luxury.
So
it is not surprising that we will explore any avenue to join what we see
as an elite club. During the civil war, more than a few of my 21 first
cousins appealed to the Swedish government to consider their application
for citizenship on account of their Swedish grandmother. Others, like
another family friend who has put a sizeable chunk of cash in Bulgaria,
will look for investment opportunities in the most unlikely places.
The
Iraqis, whose country has been up against it since the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein in 2003, have been eyeing up investment opportunities in
Antigua and Barbuda, where the government recently cleared the way for
them to acquire nationality of the tiny Caribbean island (population
81,000) under the Citizenship by Investment Program.
Not everyone
is happy. The island’s opposition United Progressive Party and its
leader, Harold Lovell, is up in arms, protesting against the
government’s policies, in particular plans to open an embassy in Baghdad
and the planned appointment of an Iraqi as Antigua’s ambassador to
Iraq. Mr Lovell was also critical of the admittedly curious Sweet Homes
project in Ajman, which also offers A&B citizenship to those who buy
property in the emirate’s Uptown project.
“This administration
does not have the judgment, sobriety of thought to be able to discern
those persons and those policies that will benefit the country,” Mr
Lovell told Antigua’s Daily Observer.
Still,
not all Lebanese would be thrilled at the idea of belonging to one of
the most beautiful countries in the world – Antigua has a beach for
every day of the year. A rich “Canadian” friend once told me she was
seriously unimpressed with her second nationality. “I don’t see why I
couldn’t have got a British or French passport,” she moaned. “Have you
seen who Canadians are letting in these days? Seriously.”
Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton.
