Usually this gets you residency for some years conditional on the investment staying within the country, and potentially a path to citizenship after some years of living in the country.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat...
These days they are trying to clean up the mess they created a few years but it did help to keep the economy afloat when they were doing economically ridiculous but ideologically and politically motivated things.
and when I told them I didn't have facebook they looked at me like I was mad. They asked "why not" and I told them I was ideologically opposed to it, because I believe it encourages narcissism. They acted like I was a criminal.
I found this enourmously funny and kept laughing at them insisting there was something suspicious about me not having a facebook account, which of course made me look even more guilty in their eyes.
In the end they got frustrated and just let me through, but there was an underlying and quite theatening tone which I felt was like a presumption of guilt, I laughed at the time at the absurdity of the situation, just because I wasnt expecting it, but on deeper reflection its pretty disturbing.
Give me your tired, your rich,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe freeA country offering a passport is hoping the applicant will spend their money in the country: however most wealthy applicants are capitalists that want to grow their wealth not shrink it. Therefore applicants would choose qualifying investments that don't cost them money (and thus don't increase income for the country). In theory angel/VC investors could grow the pie, but I'm skeptical.
From what I have seen the investment schemes have significant loopholes - almost as if the schemes are just shams with lies that appease voters.
It would be interesting to see an analysis of whether the schemes are net positive for countries.