In Latvia you either have to buy a property worth more than 250kEUR, invest more than 35kEUR in a business or deposit more than 280k.

From my standpoint, the biggest risk is a certain neighbour country with historical appetite for "preserving it's territorial interests".

Yep. Want to become resident in the UK? Agree to invest £1m and a "Tier 1" visa is yours: https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-investor. The US has a similar programme to sell Immigrant Investor Visas: https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/immigrate/Immigran....

2m for a limited time visa. 5m if you want to settle

And I personally there is nothing wrong with being able to buy a visa. Many people in a country don't pay few taxes in their life. So when someone comes and invests a good amount, it is ok to honor this with visa or passport. Would just be cool if every country would allow easier immigration for ordinary people, too.

No, it's not okay, it reduces citizenship and community to a dollar value, which is just more neoliberalism. It doesn't pay the government anything either - for eb5 investor commonly makes a profit, and only has to employ ten Americans at full time minimum wage (not much tax there). The immigrants income is usually left back home (mainly China) and they don't declare it in the US since it's out of reach of the IRS. Mainly they send the spouse and kids to use top public schools and down the line they get social security and Medicare too. It's a complete scam

I suspect that there's some potential for abuse under both the UK and US systems, but there are some safeguards:

1) US citizens are taxed on global income forever. (Perhaps it's hard for the IRS to enforce for people whose assets are in countries that don't share information with the US, but it's not impossible.)

2) UK tier-1 investor visa holders must be outside the UK for fewer than 180 days per year, which means they must be in the UK for 185 or 186 days per year, which means they would be subject to tax on their global income during that period. (But of course once they become British Citizens, they could ensure they stay in the UK for fewer than 183 days per year, meaning they'd only pay tax on their local income (which could be zero)).

So you would rather not let them create the 10 jobs (which, compared to many other countries, is quite much)? I mean, they do not only have to "create" them and leave empty, they have to find real working people for them. So even if they were minimum wage, I guess American software architects would not take them. At least in the job market, those "evil" investors have to be somehow competitive (you get what you pay for). And what about those who create a bigger business with bigger salaries? Should they all stay in the home country?

I think Singapore gives you permanent resident status just for buying a house there! Of course, buying property in Singapore is no small feat for most people.

There is always an old trick of setting up a company and hiring yourself as qualified worker, then getting PR status in few years.

In Singapore that still requires large capital investment in your company.