by Neil Strauss
“That’s great. But what I’m really looking for is an expert or a lawyer who knows the rules for every country and can discuss the pros and cons of each one.”
She nodded as if she understood and then lifted the tablecloth, reached underneath, and pulled a big blue book from a large stack. When I saw the cover, I knew I had to own it:
This was my ticket out.
That night, as I ate alone and friendless on the hotel restaurant patio, I cracked open The Passport Book.
Travel documents have been around for centuries. At first, they were letters from an authority (a king, a priest, a pharaoh, a landowner) allowing the bearer to travel unobstructed. While some argue that travel documents provide freedom, others maintain they’ve historically been used for control. By selectively granting and withholding them, governments have been able to regulate who enters and leaves their country. In the United States, outside of brief periods during previous wars, it wasn’t until 1918, near the end of World War I, that the government began requiring everyone crossing the border to have a passport.
“Is that The Passport Book?” Someone was actually talking to me.
I looked up to see a thin man in baggy jeans and a short-sleeved green shirt. “Be careful with that,” he warned. “The information goes out-of-date pretty quickly.”
Without hesitation, I blurted the question I’d wanted to ask every single person at the conference. “Do you already have a second passport?”
“I was born in the UK, but I moved to New Zealand when I was ten, so I already have two passports. But actually”—a proud smile spread over his lips—“I don’t consider myself a citizen of any country.”
I knew what this meant, because I had already come across it in my research. I had just met my first PT.
“So you’re basically PT?” I asked.
“Since 2000,” he said, beaming. I couldn’t believe he was opening up to me.
Half a century ago, after serving in World War II, a newspaper publisher named Harry Schultz returned to America and was disappointed to find a nation of violent crime, high taxes, and frivolous lawsuits. So he sold his thirteen newspapers and decided to become not a citizen of America, but a citizen of the world. The name he gave to this idea was PT. The letters don’t stand for any two specific words, but they’re most often defined as perpetual tourist or permanent traveler.
The idea of PT is that, just as we shop at different stores in a mall to find various items we want, we can also shop in different countries to find the lifestyles, governments, careers, people, tax rates, and cultures that best suit us.
So why stay in America just because you were born here? There’s a great big world out there with a lot to offer. Just as every child must eventually grow up and leave home, just as our ancestors left the Old World in search of the new, just as the hero of every great myth journeys outside the familiar, so too must we venture outside our small reality and, rather than simply believing we’re living the best in the best of all possible countries, find out for ourselves.
During my months of fruitless searching for a passport mentor, I had e-mailed Schultz, who was in his eighties. He said he would answer my questions, but, because his eyesight was failing, asked that I fax them to him in very large type. A few months later, I received a response that was several pages long. Unfortunately, he must have answered someone else’s fax, because he’d responded to my questions about PT and citizenships with predictions for the gold, stock, and housing markets.
Although I didn’t get the advice I needed, I did receive some much-appreciated encouragement. “Govts cant save U,” he wrote at the end of the e-mail. “They aren’t on your side. U have to save yourself. Row your boat. Be your own country. Wave no flag but your own.”
I hoped I would still be that passionate when I was his age. Life is conveyed not just through a heartbeat and brain wave activity, but through an immeasurable spark that animates our faces, our conversations, our being. That spark may be the pursuit of love, success, excitement, validation, connection, happiness, learning, God, or freedom. Its fuel is hope. Without a belief in a better future, it dies. And, aside from an early death, my greatest fear is one day losing that spark, whether through gradual disillusionment or sudden calamity.
The PT at the hotel introduced himself as Greg and invited me to join him at his table. He had the spark. On a scale of one to ten, it was an eight. “I sold everything, paid my tax bill, and told the New Zealand government I was leaving the country,” he said, his cheeks flushed with pride.
I was surprised to hear this, because New Zealand seemed like the safest English-speaking country left. “What made you leave?”
“I found myself in a bad situation. I’d lost all my money, including my house. So my son and I moved into a friend’s home. I was about to start a day job teaching computer programming, but then I realized that the system was skewed against me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like America, New Zealand has a progressive tax system. The more you earn, the higher your tax rate is. I realized that my dreams of getting ahead were up against this system that was going to penalize me for being successful. So I decided I wasn’t going to stay there to be milked by the government. And I followed the PT course to remove myself legally from the system.”
Greg said he’d discovered the concept of PT after embarking on a libertarian reading jag. Ayn Rand’s classic tome on capitalism and individualism, Atlas Shrugged, had led him to former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne’s influential How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. From there, he’d picked up Sic Itur Ad Astra (This Is the Way to the Stars), a workbook by the astrophysicist Andrew J. Galambos on how to build a society based on personal freedom. And this had led him to the writings of a man known by the pseudonym W. G. Hill.
“Do you have to be a libertarian to be PT?” I asked. Where libertarians believe the best government is the one that governs least, I’d always believed the best government is the one that governs best.
“Not at all,” he replied, and then opened his computer and showed me a scanned copy of Hill’s book PT. In the introduction, Hill claims he was a millionaire whose conspicuous display of wealth led to problems from ex-wives, tax auditors, lawyers, and employees, all of whom wanted a piece of the pie. He was eventually imprisoned for fraud and his assets were seized. While trying to put his life back together, he ran across a pamphlet by Harry Schultz.
After reading it, Hill became excited by the prospect of, in his words, “a stress-free, healthy, prosperous life not limited by government interference, the threat of nuclear war, the reality of food and water contamination, litigation, domestic conflicts, taxation, persecution or harassment.”
The way to break free of nationality, according to Schultz’s pamphlet, was to follow the three-flag system. The three flags consist of having a second passport, a safe location for your assets in another country, and a legal address in a tax haven. To these, Hill added a fourth and fifth flag: an additional country as a business base and a number of what he called “playground countries” in which to spend leisure time.
“Seems complicated,” I told Greg. I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept, perhaps because I wasn’t really business savvy. My understanding of money was still primitive: You do work, you get paid for it, and you do your best to put some of that money in a bank.
“The core of PT,” Greg explained patiently, “is that if you’re prepared to decouple from your home country—which is quite an emotional thing for most people—and not spend more than a hundred and eighty days in more than one place, unless it’s a tax haven, you can legally step outside of the obligation to pay income tax. The various flags are designed as a practical way of doing that.”
Though I have my own problems with taxes—they’re too high, they’re painful to pay, and too much of the money goes to defense contractors rather than domestic improvements—I understand their necessity. Unlike Thoreau in Civil Disobedi
ence, I’m not going to just stop paying taxes and go to jail for it. If we weren’t giving the government money to protect us, then there would be other people demanding protection money instead. So why not just pay the government, which is at least accountable to a degree—unlike, say, the Mafia?
“It’s a lot of effort to escape from taxes,” I told him. “Couldn’t the same amount of work just be put into making more money to offset your tax liability?”
“I see.” I hoped I hadn’t already offended the only person who’d been nice to me here. “For me, I guess, the main advantage to being outside the system is not the money. It’s the independence and the freedom from bureaucracy. The first thing I did after I left New Zealand is I flew to Australia and went for a walk. I had the most amazing sense of freedom.” His cheeks filled with color again. Evidently, he hadn’t taken my skepticism personally. “I was really on cloud nine. I felt like I had been released from a sense of claustrophobia.”
That feeling I understood.
“You should get in touch with a guy called Grandpa in Monaco,” Greg suggested after I blitzed him with follow-up questions. “He’s the archetypal PT. He might be able to help you.”
Before retiring to my room, I asked him why everyone else at the conference was so reluctant to talk. “You have to be careful in this world,” he explained. “A lot of people get into PT because they’re hiding from the law. Others get into it so they can scam folks who are desperate for passports or anonymity. Even the honest people are, by nature, private and distrustful. So it’s a world of people trying to stay in the shadows. Good luck trying to get anyone else to talk.”
“Why were you so nice to me then?”
“Because I found the sixth flag.”
“What’s that?”
“Freedom from fear.”
As soon as I returned to my hotel room, I tore The Passport Book open again and skimmed the nationalization requirements for each country, hoping for an answer.
According to the author, several countries have loopholes that allow easier citizenships based on technicalities—for example, conceiving a child with a Brazilian woman, having a parent or grandparent who was a citizen of Ireland, proving a parent or grandparent was a German refugee during World War II, or having a Greek citizen for a father.
Unfortunately, I had no relatives who were Irish or Greek, none of my German relatives were refugees, and I hadn’t impregnated any Brazilian women lately.
The easiest option was Israel, which grants citizenships after ninety days of residency not just to all Jews but to anyone who converts to Judaism. However, not only would Israel be the worst place to live if a major war broke out in the Middle East, but military service is compulsory for both men and women there.
When I finished The Passport Book, I researched W. G. Hill online, then ordered electronic versions of three of his books.
To my disappointment, I discovered that the expression “In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes” is acutely true for Americans, making it nearly impossible to become a PT like Greg.
After a 1994 Forbes article titled “The New Refugees” exposed a cabal of billionaires like Kenneth Dart (whose father invented the Styrofoam coffee cup) and John Dorrance III (whose father invented condensed soup) that had expatriated to avoid taxes, Congress passed a law obligating most Americans who renounce their citizenship to continue to pay taxes for another ten years, regardless of whether they reenter the country or not.
Another loophole allowed Americans to obtain a second citizenship, become a consul in their new home country, and then claim diplomatic immunity from U.S. taxes. But the government had made that impossible as well. In his book, Hill suggested a few workarounds, but they entailed never coming back to America—or returning only under an alias. And I wasn’t ready to make that sacrifice.
All this research into escaping America was inadvertently making me appreciate it more. Not only was I unwilling to forsake the country permanently, but there wasn’t anywhere else I was willing to live full-time.
As the sun rose outside my hotel window, I fell asleep discouraged, my head flooded with inconclusive data. I felt like I was living in a house with no doors. I was happy there, but if a fire broke out, I’d be burned alive. I needed an emergency exit.
When I walked into the conference room late the next morning, a speaker was warning attendees that information on every bank transaction of more than $10,000 is sent to the U.S. Treasury to track potential financial crimes. I wondered how many people in the audience were actually wealthy enough to make all these asset protection and privacy efforts worth the effort. They seemed to be richer in fear than actual money.
In the back row sat my first hope for escape: a bald, well-dressed Panamanian named Ramsés Owens, Esq. I approached and asked him about the requirements for citizenship in his country. He informed me that it would take five years to get a passport, though I could get an investor visa to obtain instant residency by investing $100,000 in a Panamanian business.
I thanked him and moved on. I was hitting dead ends everywhere. Walking away from the seminar empty-handed would leave me with little option besides a tombstone passport.
On the other side of the room, Wendell Lawrence filled a folding chair. He was a big man, reminiscent of a slightly rounder and friendlier-looking Forest Whitaker. He wore a gray button-down shirt tucked into beige trousers pulled high on his waist. Yet he wore the outfit so cleanly and properly that it seemed not like he’d pulled his pants up too high, but as if everyone else had let theirs drop too low.
“Erika Nolan suggested talking to you,” I said, meekly introducing myself.
“Sit down,” he replied in a deep Caribbean accent.
I took a seat in the shadow of his bulk. Though he loomed over me, he wasn’t intimidating. He was inviting. I felt safe, perhaps because of the way his eyes glittered with almost paternal friendliness.
“So what can I do for you?”
“I wanted to see what steps I’d need to take to become a citizen of St. Kitts.”
“Ah,” he said, clapping his hands together. “You’ll love St. Kitts. It’s a small and beautiful island, with friendly people and real Caribbean culture. You should come for Carnival this year.”
He was like a living sales brochure. A very convincing one. He turned his seat to face mine and continued. “If you’re interested in living in St. Kitts, there are two ways to get citizenship. The fastest way is three months.”
It seemed too good to be true. There had to be a catch.
“As you may know”—I didn’t, of course—“the sugarcane industry on the island collapsed. This year, the last sugarcane plantation closed. So”—here was the catch—“by investing in industries that will provide jobs to out-of-work sugarcane employees, you’re granted citizenship instantly. The minimum investment used to be a hundred thousand dollars. But that just went up to two hundred thousand dollars.”
“How long does it take to get that investment back?”
Wendell let out a long laugh. “Oh, no. You don’t get the money back.”
“So it’s more like a donation.”
“There’s also another way,” he continued. “This is by investing in real estate. You must buy a piece of approved property that costs over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Can I live in it and sell it when I want?”
“It’s your home, but you have to keep it for at least five years to retain your citizenship.”
That sounded like a better deal—especially since wherever I went, I’d need a place to live anyway. To pay for it, I could always get a loan. This was back in the good old days, when mortgage companies gave interest-only loans to practically anyone who asked, no down payment necessary.
“How long does the citizenship process take?”
“It takes longer than the investment program. About six months.”
I wanted to punch my fist jubilantly into the air, but I tried to contain my exci
tement—not just out of decorum, but out of caution. I needed to talk to Wendell a little more and see if he and this program were for real.
With pride, he told me about the island’s high literacy rate. Its free medical care for children, senior citizens, and people with chronic diseases. Its public school system, which provides free textbooks and lunch for students, in addition to computer labs open to everyone on the island. And its status as a financial haven, with no income tax for citizens. My new PT friend, Greg, would approve.
Either Wendell was a genuinely good person with a heartfelt passion for his native country, or he was the best con artist in the room.
That night, I called Spencer and excitedly told him about the St. Kitts real-estate program.
“That seems like it could work,” he replied. He sounded pleased, though not as excited as I’d hoped, especially considering he hadn’t found any second citizenship options for himself yet. “It would be great if we both had places there. I’ll have my lawyer look into it.”
“Your lawyer’s an asshole.”
“All lawyers are assholes.”
Between the conference and my conversation with Greg, I had now fully come around to the idea that if anything went wrong in America, it would be nice to get out with not just my life but my bank account. So I asked Spencer what he’d done with his money.
“I flew out to Switzerland and met with the different banks,” he replied. “I wanted to ask about their history during World War II and find out if they gave back the gold deposits they held for people fleeing the Nazis. A lot of banks never returned the gold to the refugees or their families.” His thoroughness put the people at the Sovereign Society conference to shame. “I met with a number of different ones, did some research, and went with a private bank that mostly deals with B people. But I’d recommend AIG Private Bank for you.”