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Greek Visas Luring Foreign Investors

visaEager to show foreign investors that Greece is business-friendly and willing to cut through bureaucratic obstacles, a government plan to offer short-term residency permits to entrepreneurs from China, Russia and Arab states is already paying dividends.
Chinese business executives are especially keen on coming after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ visit there this month where he offered to roll out the red carpet if they would take a chance on his debt-crushed country during an enduring economic crisis.
Less than two weeks after Samaras told a business conference in Shanghai that Chinese entrepreneurs investing more than 250,000 euros ($323,300) in real estate in Greece would get a five-year residence permit, the first major deal has been struck between a Greek real estate firm and a Chinese brokerage, the newspaper Kathimerini reported as an example.
Foreign investors, particularly the Chinese, are said to be eager to acquire residence permits in Greece as this would secure them easy access to the other 24 countries in the passport-free Schengen area.
Russian investors reportedly are already hunting real estate opportunities – particularly in summer homes – in Halkidiki, the Peloponnese and the Aegean islands.
The European Commission said that it’s up to individual countries whether to grant residence permits to non-EU citizens, although some concerns have expressed about security worries.
People who don’t have business deals to offer, including American citizens working in Greece, have to queue up every six months to renew residency permits and can be deported if they don’t have one, while unskilled illegal immigrants often are not.
 

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