Passports for Sale: How (Un)Meritocratic Are Citizenship by Investment Programmes?

Abstract

In recent years, citizenship by investment (CBI) and residency by investment (RBI) programmes have been burgeoning throughout the world, including in a range of European States. At first sight, such programmes are blatantly anti-meritocratic: they hinge on a person’s wealth, and not on her skills, potential, and intrinsic qualities. Yet upon a closer look, the public discourse that surrounds CBI and RBI is influenced by the same meritocratic conceptions as those that have been driving domestic citizenship and immigration law in the past decades. In this article, I take a step back from existing debates about CBI to argue that the concept of meritocracy is key to understanding, supporting, but also challenging contemporary immigration and citizenship law, including CBI. First, I analyse the merits—if I may say so—of the concept of meritocracy. I then show the limitations of using meritocratic arguments to justify the existence of CBI schemes.

Queue‐jumping arguments

“…Does a potential refugee receive service in accordance with the impartial and impersonal criterion of how long they have waited?… In other words, is Australian immigration policy towards refugees characterized by an impartial waiting procedure that asylum seekers should join?” (Gelber 2003, 26). Others think the queue‐jumping argument should focus on immigrants who receive special consideration by virtue of wealth and status: “One may wonder why the same rhetoric of ‘queue‐jumping’ is not prominent when it comes to the migration of ‘elite’ (and, allegedly, ‘meritorious’) individuals, be they wealthy or high‐skilled, who are fast‐tracked instead of having to go through a standard application procedure” (Ammann 2020, 329–30). Still others argue that queue‐jumping should often be regarded as permissible, that is, that “[q]ueue‐jumping in the situation in which asylum seekers find themselves is a fitting moral and practical response” (Ozolins 2004, 9).…”