Or just live like a European? The cost of a Latvian investment visa is something like the price of an average new car. It's obtainable to most anyone gainfully employed in skilled labor in the USA. Virtually anyone here that wants one can get it and move there.
Exactly. I think people think it means you get an EU passport immediately or something and can spend 364 days a year in any EU country?? You only get a Schengen visa and are restricted to 180 days total outside of Latvia, inside the Schengen. But you can do that without a Latvian residence permit...
AIUI it's 10 years to get an EU - sorry, Latvian - passport and for an individual year to count towards that you need 183+ days a year in Latvia
Other than years to citizenship, isn't that the same deal anywhere in EU?
The point is getting a residence permit in EU country is step 1, and step 1 is accessible to fairly average white collar US worker who wants to move to the EU.
Especially given that odds are better than 50% that you will find yourself in a new, larger Russia at some point in the next 5-10 years. Not cheering the prospect, but it seems like Putin knows the US won’t get involved in Europe anymore, and therefore Russian expansion into all former Soviet territory, at minimum, just makes sense.
Latvia is more likely to defend itself successfully than Ukraine, Latvia joined NATO in 2004, an aggression there spells the end of the whole Russian oil industry, and after that Russia's North Korea.
NATO is dead. Latvia, if defended, will be defended only by anemic EU forces. Trump has made clear that he views alliances as purely transactional, and he’s obviously correct that due to geography the US has nothing to fear from any non-nuclear scenario. Therefore, I doubt either Europe or America will honor Article 5 for the other anymore.
