In October 2026 Argentina's economy minister put a price on citizenship: USD 350,000 to the national treasury, or USD 800,000 in a seven-year bond. In the terms reported so far, the buyer does not have to live in Argentina.
What the buyer gets is a passport that enters about 169 countries without a visa, including the 29 countries of the Schengen area.
Argentina sets the price and keeps the money. Who pays?
Every country decides for itself whom it makes a citizen. But the passport's value is not set in Buenos Aires: an Argentine can spend ninety days in Schengen without a visa because European governments decided to trust whoever Argentina makes a citizen — trust given to a country whose new citizens had lived there for years, not to a price list.
Argentina says a new agency will vet applicants with its intelligence and financial-intelligence services. But the country doing the checking is the country being paid. In 2020 Al Jazeera reporters posed as a buyer with a criminal record and filmed senior Cypriot politicians offering to help; an official inquiry later found more than half of Cyprus's investor passports should never have been granted. The EU found Vanuatu had granted citizenship to people on Interpol lists, with an extremely low rejection rate.
Inside the EU, the Court of Justice ruled in April 2025 that Union citizenship cannot be the result of a commercial transaction; Malta changed its law that July. Outside the EU, the only lever is the visa-free deal itself. With Vanuatu the EU first suspended visa-free entry only for passports issued since 2015, then for everyone, and in December 2024 put Vanuatu on the visa list. The UK imposed visas on Vanuatu and Dominica in 2023. Since November 2025, running such a scheme is by itself a ground to suspend visa-free travel.
One part is Argentina's to give — the right to live there and consular protection. The other is borrowed — doors other countries open because they trust Argentina's citizens. And a citizen gets the vote: in June 2026 Argentina's national electoral court struck down the emergency decree that had moved the power to grant citizenship from judges to the immigration office, because citizenship carries the right to vote and the constitution does not allow a decree to decide that. Three months later the passport scheme was announced anyway.
A rule from above. A shared court decides that citizenship cannot be bought (Malta, 2025). Price: it only reaches countries that accept a shared court, and limits who a country may make its citizens.
The gatekeeper's lever. Suspend visa-free travel for any country that sells (EU rule since 2025). Price: a whole population pays for its government's decision, and only Europe's door closes.
Sellers police themselves. Five Caribbean sellers agreed a USD 200,000 minimum price in 2024. Price: a shared minimum protects the sellers' income more than anyone's border; the checker is still the one being paid.
Sell less: a golden visa. A residence permit for investors instead of a passport. Portugal dropped its property route in 2023 and Spain abolished its scheme in 2025 after the money was blamed for housing costs. Price: rent for the people who already live there.
A passport is a key to doors other people built, and to a ballot box at home. The question is who should decide when a key opens someone else's door, and who pays when it opens for the wrong person.
Who should decide whether citizenship — and the vote that comes with it — can be bought: a decree, a law, or a judge?