A rising number of wealthy Californians are using golden visa programs to secure residency outside the United States, driven chiefly by fear of domestic political instability, the Los Angeles Times reports — even as one of Europe’s most popular destination programs, Greece’s, shows its application backlog easing for the first time in months.
The US Side: A Fivefold-Plus Jump in Five Years
The Los Angeles Times traces the trend through one San Francisco family — Jae Kim, Annie Akin and their four-year-old son — now most of the way through securing Portuguese residency, having notarized birth certificates, had their fingerprints recorded by European officials, and transferred €500,000 into an international investment fund. “Affluent families are starting to say, ‘Hey, this is actually really good to have alongside all of my investments. Why don’t I diversify where I can live?'” said Basil Mohr-Elzeki, a managing partner at Henley & Partners in Beverly Hills. One firm told the paper the number of Californian clients it has worked with grew from roughly three a year to more than a hundred over five years, with Californians now making up as much as one in five of its clients worldwide — a single firm’s figures, not a national count, but directionally consistent with what agencies describe as a five-year surge.
Portugal is a common destination in these cases specifically because of its capital-investment route, which the LA Times places at roughly €500,000 — the exact sum the profiled family wired.
The Supply Side: Greece’s Queue Is Shrinking, With Caveats
Greece’s own golden visa program offers a live supply-side check on that demand story. The country’s pending application queue fell to 33,051 at the end of May 2026, down 2,618 (7.3%) from 35,669 at the end of March, according to Greece’s Ministry of Migration and Asylum data reported by Movingto via AOL. The decline spanned both categories: investor files fell 8.2% to 9,210, and family-member files — which still make up about 72% of the total queue — fell 7% to 23,841. New applications have also slowed sharply: initial investor applications fell from 9,382 in 2024 to 7,025 in 2025, a 25.1% annual decline, with 2,137 filed in the first five months of 2026. Investment thresholds now stand at €800,000 in Attica, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and larger islands, €400,000 elsewhere, and a €250,000 route for specified property conversions and heritage-building restorations.
Movingto’s own reporting is careful not to overclaim: a shrinking queue does not mean faster processing, since the ministry publishes aggregate stock and monthly decision counts rather than tracking the same applications from filing to decision, and a prior Bank of Greece study found threshold changes shift where investment clusters geographically rather than explaining swings in overall application volume.
Zagdim’s View — Read these two data points together, not separately: US-side demand for a residency “Plan B” is described as rising sharply, while Greece — one of the most-cited destination programs — is simultaneously seeing new applications fall and its backlog shrink, which is consistent with tighter 2026 investment thresholds cooling inflow as much as with faster processing. Anyone shopping golden-visa options should treat the “surging demand” and “shrinking queue” as two separate, partially offsetting trends, not one story. Data and events in this piece are current as of 15 August 2026.
References
Los Angeles Times (via Magzter) – Rich Californians seek residency outside U.S. / AOL (Movingto) – Greece cut its Golden Visa queue by 7% in two months
