Hours before the 2026 World Cup final in July, Samuel L. Jackson posted an Instagram story asking Black fans to withhold their support from Argentina, a country the post described as historically among the most racist in the world. Argentina’s President Javier Milei blamed his domestic opposition, which he said had “validated the woke movement that is now accusing us of being racist,” and later told a radio station that the U.S. Democratic Party and the governments of Brazil and Mexico had paid for the backlash, a claim researchers said lacked public evidence.
Ten weeks after the World Cup final, Milei’s economy minister stood before investors in Paris and put a price on Argentine citizenship. For a nonrefundable $350,000, a foreign buyer with traceable money and a clean record will soon be able to carry the same passport as Lionel Messi. Industry experts who spoke with the Associated Press said Americans have joined the second-passport market in growing numbers since the pandemic, looking for a foothold abroad as geopolitical uncertainty mounts.
How Argentina’s $350,000 Citizenship Program Works
Economy Minister Luis Caputo unveiled the plan on October 2 and said applications should open before the end of the year. Buyers will choose between a nonrefundable $350,000 contribution to the national Treasury and an $800,000 purchase of a new government bond held for seven years, with a family of four expected to pay $500,000 under the contribution route. Caputo sold the document on its reach, telling investors that “the Argentine passport is highly valued, accepted in more than 140 countries.”
Intelligence and financial oversight agencies will vet each applicant’s criminal record and the origin of their funds, he said. A 2025 amendment to the citizenship law already lets qualifying investors apply regardless of how long they have lived in Argentina, while ordinary applicants need two years of continuous legal residence. With nearly $25 billion in foreign-currency debt payments coming due in 2027, Argentina’s Treasury is counting on the program, which a consortium of advising firms estimates could raise up to $2.5 billion.
Caputo traced the idea to Milei’s July 2024 visit to Sun Valley, Idaho, where tech executives asked him about acquiring citizenship. The Buenos Aires Times reported that Argentina will become the largest country in the world to sell passports and that the plan is likely to meet resistance from Milei’s opponents before the presidential election.
Argentina’s History With Race And Its Black Population
In 1810, Black residents made up about 30% of Buenos Aires’ population, and the constitution adopted four decades later still includes Article 25, which instructs the federal government to encourage European immigration. Federico Pita, founder of the advocacy group Diáspora Africana de la Argentina, wrote in Al Jazeera in June that the national story of Argentines who “descended from the ships” shaped school lessons and public policy while pushing Afro-descendant and Indigenous people to the margins.
The national census went more than a century without counting Black residents. When a self-identification question reached every household in 2022, 302,936 people said they were Afro-descendant or had Black or African ancestors. Activists who fought for that count watched the Milei government dissolve INADI, the national institute against discrimination and racism, in 2024, and Pita notes the closure also ended the Commission for the Historical Recognition of the Afro-Argentine Community.
In March, Argentina joined the United States and Israel as the only three countries to vote against a UN resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity. Soccer has kept the subject in international headlines since 2024, when FIFA opened an investigation after a video showed Argentine players singing a racist and homophobic chant about France’s team. This summer, Amnesty International Argentina acknowledged racism in the country while objecting to critics who reduced it to a stereotype.
Is Argentina A Good Second-Passport Option For Black Americans?
An American buyer would gain fewer new travel destinations than Caputo’s “140 countries” pitch implies. The U.S. passport already ranks among the world’s strongest, so the larger benefit of Argentine citizenship is the right to live and work in Argentina and easier access to residence elsewhere in Mercosur. Argentine nationals may obtain temporary residence in another Mercosur member state based on their nationality. Once resident, they may work there and receive equal treatment in areas including labor rights and social protections. U.S. citizens also remain generally subject to U.S. income tax on worldwide income while living abroad, although foreign income exclusions and tax credits may apply.
Black American students who have spent semesters in Buenos Aires describe being noticed constantly. A student writing for the Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA), a nonprofit study-abroad organization, said a man she met assumed she was an immigrant because so few Black women live downtown. Another student, blogging for IES Abroad, a nonprofit study-abroad organization that runs programs in Buenos Aires, found a Black American-owned restaurant whose owner connected him with a circle of Black Americans living in the city. A University of Buenos Aires survey found that 35% of Argentines reported discrimination in the previous year, with immigrants from other Latin American countries reporting the highest rates.
Applicants who choose the $350,000 contribution to Argentina’s Treasury cannot recover it. At the same time, those who take the bond route tie up $800,000 for seven years in the debt of a country the Associated Press notes has a history of defaults and runaway inflation. Those costs buy a second citizenship and expanded regional residence options. Still, Black Americans considering life in Argentina also have to weigh what Black residents and visitors have reported about living there.
