Where Billionaires Are Getting Second Passports, Residences

Forget breaking glass. In case of an emergency, billionaires will be beelining for their backup country.

Ultrawealthy Americans are increasingly securing a plan B (or C or D) by obtaining alternate citizenships and residence programs, be it as a hedge against another pandemic, a nuclear war, or geopolitical upheaval. Think of it as very expensive insurance or portfolio diversification.

Peter Thiel is the latest example. The billionaire PayPal and Palantir cofounder temporarily relocated to Argentina, The New York Times reported last week.

“It sounds melodramatic until you’ve sat through the off‑the‑record dinner conversations: nuclear escalation, AI going sideways, and generalized civil unrest in the Northern Hemisphere,” Charlie Garcia, the founder of centimillionaire membership club R360, said. “For that crowd, the Southern Cone looks like a literal and figurative safe distance.”

A 2025 UBS survey of 87 billionaire clients found that 36% of them have relocated at least once, while a further 9% are considering doing so, and an April 2026 report from wealth intelligence firm Altrata found that billionaires and centimillionaires “no longer rely on a single system, market, or passport.”

While Russians and Chinese used to dominate the market for second passports, Americans have taken their place.

In 2025, Henley and Partners, a global residence and citizenship planning firm, saw a 99% year-over-year increase in applications from Americans interested in alternative residence — which gives noncitizens broad freedom to move to another country — and citizenship. While that group includes members of the upper middle class, a large number of Henley and Partners’ clientele are ultrarich, with net worths in the eight figures or more.

“A contingency plan is quite expensive,” Basil Mohr-Elzeki, who leads Henley and Partners’ America office, told Business Insider.

Plus, these contingency plans aren’t exactly a way to save money, he said. While tax policy is much talked about, it’s less of a driver for rich Americans, who foot a US income tax bill wherever they live.

Growing political polarization, memories of pandemic-era travel restrictions, and a swing toward anti-billionaire sentiment have all contributed to the boom.

Winston Chesterfield, the founder of Barton, a London consulting firm focused on luxury and the wealthy, pointed to resentments “bubbling beneath the surface.”

“People saying billionaires shouldn’t exist,” he told Business Insider. “If you are at that level, you’d be looking at these kinds of things, saying, ‘Do you know what? I’ve got to have multiple plans for the future because I simply don’t know where I might be able to exist in the future.'”

Don’t expect the wealthy to rush to Buenos Aires, like Thiel, en masse, wealth and relocation advisors told Business Insider. The country’s economy remains volatile, and there are few straightforward paths to citizenship and permanent residence that don’t involve relocation.

For Thiel, Argentina is one of many options; he holds citizenship in the US and New Zealand, and has reportedly applied for a Maltese passport. Argentina, with its new president, Javier Milei, could be his latest pet interest.

“He does do this sort of thing all the time,” Chesterfield said of Thiel. “He goes around buying different places, different plan Bs all over the place.”

Europe, rather, remains the most popular option for US citizens. More than half of the US applications for foreign citizenship or residence programs that Henley has processed this year have been for European programs.

“European residency programs continue to attract strong interest, particularly from American investors drawn to the strong travel rights and the promise of a luxurious lifestyle on the continent,” Armand Arton, the CEO of Arton Capitol, told Business Insider.

Others look to the Caribbean, home to some of the world’s easiest routes to citizenship and, by extension, a coveted second passport.

And the ideal is all of the above.

“The ultrarich typically do more programs to have more of a broader diversification of residencies and citizenships globally,” Mohr-Elzeki said. “

Here are five places where wealthy Americans are looking for a fallback plan.