For centuries, citizenship and nationality have been central to human identity. Bloodline and birthplace have long been deciding factors in permanent residency. While physical space still holds firm in shaping an individual’s identity, we are in for a demographic revolution with the rise of virtual citizenship.
Delving into Virtual Citizenship
An archetypal concept of the technology-driven 21st century, alongside innovations like blockchain and Bitcoin, e-citizenship promises citizenship in a given country without needing to be physically present. From another angle, it may be fair to say it offers a mental space within a country, transcending the limitations of physical boundaries.
If nationality is more of a physiological and emotional concept, citizenship is an organised endeavour toward a nation’s socio-political and economic settlement. But virtual citizenship breaks down national barriers to realise contemporary visions of global citizenship and a global marketplace. It is a commodity that can be bought online, in exchange for large financial or real estate investments in the concerned country.
Estonia’s e-Residency
The Republic of Estonia takes pride in being a pioneer in building a digital society for global citizens. The nation’s e-Residency model invites people to obtain virtual citizenship by issuing a transnational digital identity, thereby permitting them to open bank accounts, launch business ventures, sign documents, pay taxes, and access miscellaneous public e-services.
In simple terms, you get a virtual slice of Estonian territory to set up a business and gradually gain a firm entrepreneurial foothold in the European Union. He can access and establish all this without ever landing in Estonia or buying physical space there.
Read: 10 Countries To Get PR Visa Easily
Cyprus’ Golden Visa for Property Investment
Leveraging the advantage of trading across the European Union, an island country in the eastern Mediterranean is becoming a hot favourite among wealthy global investors and businessmen eyeing access to the EU.
The Republic of Cyprus issues golden visas for cash by setting a high passport price. This puts anyone from anywhere in the world in a position to buy Cypriot citizenship by investing in property in the country above the set price threshold. And mind you, the property need not exist physically; it could be a mere digital rendering on a website.
Although golden visas were first introduced in the Caribbean Islands to invest in swashbuckling properties under the Islands’ favourable tax regime, Cyprus’ strategic position has given it an edge for investors to buy their way into the country’s citizenship.
Positioned in a fashion to enable a watch over the Middle East and North Africa, the wealthy Russians and Chinese investors especially apply for Cyprus’ citizenship in order to make access to the European Union.
Virtual Citizenship and Syrian Refugees
A concept that began with commercial expansion and ambitious real estate projects is also indirectly offering solutions to the grave issues of refugees and migration. We are aware of the dilapidated conditions of the Syrian refugees in Jordan, denied of jobs.
Recently, the country set up a special economic zone, the King Hussein Bin Talal Development Area, near the mushrooming refugee camps, as part of the Jordan Compact between the Hashemite Kingdom and the European Union.
As per the pact, the special area is mandated to appoint Syrian refugees to the workforce in return for special trade levies, exemptions and access for European companies. So now, the multinational European giants operating in the area have access to cheap labour and are in a position to get the manufactured goods imported duty-free into Europe. However, the refugees are asked to stay confined to where they are.
To look at it from an economic rather than a socio-political point of view, the Syrian refugees are more like chess pieces in a globalised economic arrangement than citizens of a country. Interestingly, the same perspective holds for elite, citizenship-trading global citizens as well.
Greys of Digital citizenship
It isn’t that the concept and execution of virtual citizenship has seen all spring and no winters. There have been a few instances where it has gone awry as well.
The Portuguese Golden Visa Scandal
Portugal’s 500,000-euro golden visa scheme stalled due to corruption and money laundering at the bureaucratic and ministerial levels. As a result, four thousand international investors who had applied for the golden visa were forced into an excruciatingly long wait for their passports.
Many Chinese homeowners who had invested millions in the nation’s property market were forced to fly in and out of Portugal every two months to maintain short-term visas until they received the golden visa. Although the scheme was recently reinstated, visa backlogs are estimated to take almost five years to clear.
The Gulf Manoeuvre in Comoros
If the Portuguese golden visa scheme was skewed by political foul play, the scheme in the island country of Comoros in the Indian Ocean got entangled in murky political arrangements. On the advice of some Arab businessmen, the Comorian government decided to lift the archipelago nation’s impoverished economy by selling citizenship to wealthy foreign investors, especially from the Gulf States.
The strategy seemed to work as the nation began receiving huge payments from Gulf countries, particularly the United Arab Emirates, for citizenship. The nation could hardly decipher the strategy of some Gulf countries to procure Comorian citizenship as a means of shipping the stateless Bidoon out of their states.
Squeezed by international pressure to solve the statelessness of the citizenship-denied Bidoon, these Gulf countries were willing to pay handsome sums to acquire Comorian citizenship in bulk and rid themselves of the Bidoon. A section of the Bidoon population were tricked into signing the citizenship documents, while the rest had no other choice but to sign under pressure as their driving licenses and travel permits were held hostage.
Conclusion
The world population has been in constant motion ever since the Second World War. The political unrests, uprisings, civil wars, and even the climatic changes are going to increase the number of displaced and migrating people to a new level in the future.
And citizenship – the only organised socio-political and economic arrangement within the confines of nations and states, balancing rights with responsibilities – will come under immense pressure to acclimatise and adjust.
An ensuing discomfort and jostle in making these adjustments would be unsurprising. Under these circumstances, the concept of virtual citizenship could come to play a crucial role in bringing these uncomfortable shoves and jostles to a considerable settlement.
Nevertheless, let’s also not forget that this same scheme has been an accomplice in disempowering and ostracizing the stateless Bidoon as well as the Syrian refugees. Finally, whether a virtual concept of citizenship can ever dethrone the needs and demands of physical territory ownership is a question that is yet to find an answer.