Introduction - Our Law Firm gets numerous inquiries from clients around the world for second passports and second citizenships. Generally these programs require one to have a substantial sum of money that can be invested. The Panama Instant Passport program requires one to place about $175,000 in the bank in Panama for five years in return for $750.00 a month in bank interest paid monthly and a five-year passport, which includes a five-year residency. Not everyone has this much money to invest, even though they can decline to renew the program after five years and just take their money back making the program practically free.

The concerns with this program are what if the program is not available in five years? What if the program requires more money at the end of five years to renew? Will I need to present another passport to renew this passport at the end of five years or can I renew based on the Panama Passport? We do not know what the renewal requirements will be in five years. This has caused us to come up with alternative measures for those wanting to leave their home country and start all over with a new residency, citizenship, passport, driver license, bank account and Visa card. This is essentially a new start.

South American Passport Free Travel - In the European Union one can travel around the various countries based on a National Citizenship or Permanent Residency Identity Card. This eliminates the need for a passport unless one is going to travel on an airplane or out of the EU. Some air travel may be possible without a passport in the EU. What most do not know if that South America is also operating this way.

Why South America - A number of reasons. The real estate is most affordable. The medical is great and cheap with insurance available for most. Hospitals may be better than what you are used to. Doctors make house calls. Dentistry is affordable for almost all. Food is basically pure as in organic and cheap. Cars cost about the same. Governments are stable, some more than others but homeless people; people living in cars, etc are absent for the most part. A live in maid runs $120 to $250 a month. A full time driver runs $150 to $325 a month. Crime is lower than North America or Europe. Gun ownership is real easy in some countries. Prescriptions can generally be bought without a prescription with few exceptions like heavy pain and sleeping pills. Most of these countries we deal with will not tax money coming in from outside of their country. Some have some form of bank secrecy. Freedom is high; taxes are for most of you going to non-existent in the new country. These countries have criminalized businesses and the governments tend to focus on real crimes. South America by and large has poor relations with many of the high tax, privacy invasive countries. South America is even starting its own IMF and World Bank called Bank Sur, Bank of the South. Actually it is already open. South America is the place to go for a fresh start. It has everything you have now and then some. You will probably live calmer and better.

Differences between The European Union and South America - Some of you may think well why don?t I go to the EU for a residency. Most of what the client is trying to get away from is going to be present in the EU and even more so. There is a severe loss of privacy. Bank secrecy and corporate secrecy is generally just a memory. Taxes have reached the 80% mark in some of the European countries, admittedly there are some social services available but for you in the high-income brackets this sort of taxation would be torturous. Plan on offshore income being taxed and at high rates. Plan on really invasive filing requirements. Plan on paying high VAT rates in addition to other taxes, think 25%. Real estate prices are going to be at least four times higher than South America and in some cases much more than that. Lawyers can run wild there since actions concerning events in one country can be collected in any of the EU countries. Forget asset protection in the EU. The cost of living is generally higher than from where you came from. Weather conditions are generally not tropical or even semi-tropical but they are good for snow skiing and ice-skating. Crime is present in significant levels. I do understand that not all countries have all these factors in play at the same time.

Andes Community of Nations - This is essentially a trade block in South America consisting of: Bolivia, Columbia, Peru and Ecuador. These countries allow cross border travel if one has a residency ID card from any of these countries and they also extend the privilege to those holding a residency ID card from any Mercosur country including associate members. (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela).

Mercosur - Mersocur is another trade block in South America that allows those holding resident ID cards to cross borders without a passport. Mercosur consists of Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela.

South America Passport Free Travel - This means that one can travel passport free in these 10 countries - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Columbia, Peru and Ecuador.

Residency Advantages - Getting a residency ID card from some of these countries is a process that requires as little as 30 days. Usually a temporary card is issued which becomes permanent in about six months. It is usually required to get a letter with the temporary card stating that the permanent card has been applied for to enable cross border travel with the temporary residency card. This is easy to obtain. Getting a Passport is generally time consuming the exception being the Panama Instant Passport Program, which requires 60 days. Many of the economic Citizenship programs take six months or longer to get a passport and the investment required is usually in excess of $350,000 and this is not money that you get back someday like the Panama Instant Passport Program.

Residency Country Time Requirements in Country- Generally it requires about 30 days initially to apply when you must remain in the country. Please bear in mind this can vary from country to country. Usually you will need to return for a few weeks to pick up the permanent residency card. You should plan on spending several weeks a year in the country until you get your passport. Down the road two to five years later.

Getting to a Passport - It can vary from country to country. The least amount of time is one has to have a permanent residency for two years and in other countries it is three years or five years. REMEMBER you can always obtain the Panama Passport, which is good for five years in sixty days. Then you have a five-year passport, which will carry you over until the South American country issues you a passport.

Time Spent in the Other Participating Countries - You would be allowed to stay for very long periods of time, months if not years. You would be free to come and go just by presenting your ID card. You could live in any of the other listed countries, working would be a different matter that would need to be addressed on a country by country basis with legal counsel in the country since there could be a lot of variables involved.

Banking as a Resident - Once you have your permanent residency card which takes about six months, opening a bank account in the country without being required to show your old country passport will not be hard at all. When the residency is temporary the bank will want a passport from somewhere. When you have your permanent resident card opening bank accounts should be easy without you needing to present your passport at the bank registering the account to a citizen of whatever country your passport is from. It helps to get a drivers license in the country which is generally a matter of just showing your existing one. You should be prepared with a local address and telephone when opening a bank account with just your residency ID.

Civil Collections in your New Country - Generally any existing civil debts should not follow you to your new country. We do always suggest banking in Panama through a Panama Private Interest Foundation or anonymous bearer share Panama Corporation. The Panama Foundation has superb asset protection features. The banks in Panama are world class, which is probably not going to be the case in the country granting you the residency. Panama has no tax treaty or civil judgment collection treaty with any other country. What would be advisable is to bank in Panama and transfer money to live on several times a year to your new resident country if you chose to reside there year round. In any event civil judgments, lawsuits etc. following you to your new residency country would be extremely unlikely. How would the creditor know where you are, you are banking with an anonymous foundation in Panama aren?t you. These countries are not tolerant of cross border civil processes.

Which Country - We work with several of the 10 countries and can vary the country to suit the needs of the client. Some clients want a country to live in cheaply, safely, with good food, weather and medical. Some want more of a metropolis type environment with lots of nightlife. Some seek beaches. Some want snow skiing. Talk to us; tell us what you need, that?s what we are here for.

Uruguay - This is our favorite. It is the easiest most direct way to get this residency for cross border travel. There are several easy to meet the residency requirements. You can start a business in a duty free trade zone and employ yourself. You can show proof of income like bank statements, this is not retirement income just any income like self-employment income, rental house income, investment income etc. You can buy or rent a house. You can deposit money in the bank ($5000.00). Easy to qualify with several different options available.

General Requirements - You will need a police clearance letter. You will need to undergo a thorough physical in Uruguay. You will need a passport, birth certificate and marriage certificate. You will need birth certificates for minor children and spouse. You will need to be able to obtain a Visa to travel to Uruguay.

Name Changes - We do not get involved with name changes. If you really want to draw attention to yourself this is the way to do it. This is the biggest red flag you can wave. Numerous agencies and governments around the world pick up name changes. If you need a name change consider applying after you have your permanent residency for some time not as a new applicant, but again we do not get involved in name changes so you would down the road need to do it yourself or retain a local attorney for assistance.

Police Records - If you have a police record you may be eligible to apply. It would depend on a number of variables such as the time the offense occurred, the sentence, the offense and the country. Things that would be difficult to get approved would be criminal sentences with more than one year in prison, convictions for drugs, money laundering, weapons trafficking, terrorism, sexual offenses involving force or minors, and crimes of violence. Feel free to discuss this with us if you like. No one knows what will happen until the complete application is presented to the immigration authorities and a decision is made. We cannot ask them for an opinion without them seeing the full application. A criminal record could result in a denial of the application.

Will You Appear Personally in the Immigration Office - The answer is yes. They will fingerprint and photograph you. They will check with Interpol. You will have a local attorney with you who speaks English and Spanish so no translation worries. Your Residency ID card will be picked up by you and the local attorney at the immigration offices. You will be posing for the photo at the immigration office. These are above board programs that all run through the immigration department of the country. It will all be done in a large official government building in the country.

Extradition Considerations - If you are under arrest, under indictment or criminal charges, out on bail or bond, or already convicted and trying to flee before reporting for sentencing these programs are NOT for you. We cannot help you at all in any way shape or form. You would fail the police records check and Interpol would flag you. This would result in you being turned over to the authorities in the country the offense was from. You would only have tourist status in the country you were applying in, since the application would not yet be approved and tourists get no special considerations under these circumstances. No UN country wants to provide safe harbor to fleeing or wanted criminals. If one country did it then many would do it and then a cross border crime wave would be the result. This does not happen.

Extradition exclusions or protections generally apply only to a citizen or permanent resident AND they must have had that status BEFORE the time the crime was committed. There are usually exemptions for drugs as well so narcotics cases may be extraditable. When the country denies extradition it usually offers to prosecute the person for the crime in his or her own country using their own justice system. This is often a farce since the other country will have to mobilize lawyers to prepare for the trail and attend it, plus bringing in witnesses and evidence to that country. Even then the courts or jury may be most reluctant to hand down a guilty verdict. In any event extradition requests are based on treaties called Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties between countries. So one must read the individual treaty the two countries in question have signed to begin to understand some of the factors that come to bear. Then comes the publicity, severity of the crime and so forth, which seem to also at times work their way into things one way or another. Some of these treaties have an element of dual criminality in them. This generally means that the crime in question must be a crime in both countries. This prevents things like religious, political and racial discrimination from being prosecuted that the person would not be subject to in their own country. Remember if the crime occurred before the residency or citizenship was granted it generally leaves the door open for extradition, but again this too is not an absolute. We do not specialize in extradition cases nor do we take them.

Costs - This is going to vary from country to country. Plan on a fee of $14,000 for Uruguay. You would have additional fees for certifying documents, photos, travel, housing, filing fees (generally nominal under $500) and so forth. These extra costs are usually not a major consideration.

Most people don't use all the features of their software. We tend to pinpoint the most helpful and stick with them.

Here are five features in Microsoft Word that could save you time and money.

Create and Design Your Company's Letterhead, Templates and More

Every business needs an official letterhead. You don't have to buy it. If you know what you want you can create it in Word and save it as a template to

use time after time.

A letterhead doesn't have to be complicated. It can be as simple as the company name, address and telephone number. Word provides lots of fonts,

and you can change the size and style.

You may want to add art. You can scan in your logo and use it. Or alternatively make use of Microsoft Office's Clipart Gallery. There you'll find

thousands of royalty-free images available to users of (http://www.microsoft.com/india/smallbusiness/office2003.mspx-Microsoft Office.

)

Microsoft also offers free templates for letters, labels and forms. They can be found in the Template Gallery.

Send the Same Letter to Many People Without Addressing Each Separately

Word's Mail Merge makes it easy to send the same letter to lots of different people.

It uses a list of names and addresses from a table. You can create the table in Word, Access (a Microsoft database program) or even Outlook. All are

part of Microsoft Office .

This works best with planning. You have many options; this example uses Excel but there are other ways to achieve the same thing.

Start by writing your letter. The same letter goes to everyone; you can't do much customisation. When you write it, leave space for the person's

address and the salutation.

When setting up Excel , you need the person's name and address. You'll also need a salutation field. If Rocky Jones is one of the people receiving the

letter, you might want the salutation to be Dear Rocky. If your relationship with Dr. Rocky Jones is more formal, the salutation might be Dear Dr. Jones. So

the names in the Salutation column would be "Rocky" or "Dr. Jones."

Now open your letter. Go to Tools > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge Wizard . Follow the instructions on screen. You can

also make things easier by addressing envelopes and labels with Mail Merge.

Add a Watermark to a Document so Everyone Knows it's a Draft

If you are circulating a proposal to your staff, you don't want it mistaken for the finished product. A good way to avoid that is a watermark that says

"Draft".

A watermark is clearly visible on the document but does not damage the legibility of the writing. You can use text or a picture, black and white or

colour.

To use a watermark, go to Format > Background > Printed Watermark . Make your selections and click OK. If you expect to

use a watermark regularly, create a template (see above).

Be careful not to go overboard. There's a fine line between cool and irritating. If the watermark makes a document hard to read then people just won't

bother.

Keep an Eye on Changes that People are Making to Documents

When a document is returned to you, it can be difficult to see changes made by others. Word will highlight them so you can see what's been altered.

Here are the instructions for Word 2002/ 2003:

• First, open the newer Word document.

• Click Tools > Compare and Merge Documents .

• Browse to the original Word document.

• Click it once to highlight it.

• In the lower right corner, click the drop-down box and select "Merge Into Current Document."

For Word 97 and Word 2000:

• Click Tools .

• Go to Track Changes .

• Click Compare Document .

• Find the original Word document and click it once so it is highlighted.

• Click Open .

Sometimes developing a document is so arduous that we lose sight of what we're trying to do. Looking back at older versions can help.

That's easy to do in Word. Click File > Versions . Select "Automatically save a version on close." Every time you close the

document, that version will be saved.

When you want to look at an old version, follow the same path. All of the versions will be listed in the box. The most recent will be on top. Highlight the

version you want and click Open.

You can turn off this "versioning" feature by clearing the check mark from "Automatically save a version on close." Or, you can delete individual

versions. Just highlight the ones you want to lose and click delete.

A lot of people make a living by writing articles on the internet, and there are a lot of sites and portals where a writers’ article is published and displayed. For experienced writers, the art of article spinning is a must-have attribute.

Article spinning is the method of taking one article and creating several different unique version of it through the use of special tags. Search engines regard each version of a submitted article as a unique article, and when submitted to article directories, it is imperative to have unique articles so that they are each indexed.

The term article cloning, which is also called or referred to as article spinning, or article rewriting, is a unique way of taking an original article and changing it so that it seems like a new article. This method or process is not really a bad thing if it is done by the original author or a public domain article rewritten manually, but could become muddled if done using an article cloning program.

Currently, there are several article cloning programs available, and according to article spinning analysts, they pretty much do the same thing, which is turn a good article into a bad one. However, some programs do work properly and effectively.

So exactly just what does an article cloner or spinner do?. Most cloners or spinners have options to replace certain words with comparable words that may, or may not mean the same thing, add blocks of text at the beginning, middle and end of existing articles and move blocks of text around. Article spinners may indicate that the replacement word list for the specific software used was not as good or effective as theirs.

However, most professional spinners would note that it would not matter which version of cloning software you use, it’s how you do the writing or spinning yourself. According to experts, nearly all words have many different meanings and can mean different things in whatever context they are used. Computers just aren't smart enough to know which meaning of the word or context the author is using it in, and because of this, the articles becomes mostly muddled or lack direction.

Observers also add that after cloning the article you are left with two choices, either to submit it as it is, or go thru the article and fix everything. Neither is a good idea if you consider that by cloning, then fixing the article, you've wasted more time than if you had simply written a new article. However, with the entry of new computer programs, articles can be spun effectively, spooled, or re-written automatically using good software.

But if you create a well-written article to begin with, and then use the software correctly as a guide or reference, the software can re-write it into hundreds or even thousands of unique, high quality pieces that you would be confident enough to put your name on. And additionally, they will be more than unique enough to avoid the duplicate content filters that abound.

If a writer wants to be successful, he or she should be able to get his or her well-written article onto hundreds or even thousands of other websites. To be profitable in writing articles for the internet, one needs to create uniquely written articles for each website, and get paid good sums for it.

If you are a student, travel a lot or living abroad and you would like to always keep in touch with family and friends, there will be no better way but to give them a call. How enjoyable it is for you to hear their voices and share things with them.

If you want to keep in touch and to do long distance calls, prepaid calling cards are the answers. With the use of prepaid calling card, you can save money and can cut your phone bills in half and it can help you track your calls.

Indeed, using prepaid calling cards have lots advantages. In using prepaid calling card, you can stay with your budget. You also won’t be stressed out in thinking about the money you owe a company. With prepaid calling card, you can say goodbye with monthly bills and worries about the money that you need to pay for company for your accumulating outstanding balance.

There are so many prepaid calling cards in the market nowadays. But you do not have to simply buy one and use it without actually knowing the information about the prepaid calling card. There are some prepaid calling cards that come up with very cheap rates but you will be surprise with the surcharges and taxes midway. Many customers were lured with cheap prepaid calling cards, so be careful, do not let this happen to you too.

So how can you find the right prepaid calling card that can give you convenience and satisfaction? So just read on in order to have the answer.

If you do not want to waste your money in checking out the right prepaid calling card that can suit your needs, you can ask for referrals or recommendations from family and friends. Of course, these people will very much willing to help you out; they are open to criticism and also in giving you the best one for you.

You can also try to do simple research in finding it for your own you can use the internet in finding the right prepaid calling card. The best thing to do is to find a reliable company or site first. You can check out its reliability if the company or site can give you the necessary information or details about the prepaid calling card.

As soon as you find the right company or site, you can start searching for prepaid calling card. So if you are eyeing for a particular prepaid calling card, you can make an assessment in order to check out if it is the right one.

You can also try out the prepaid calling card by buying a small amount and find it for yourself if it is a good one, if it can give you the satisfaction and convenience you need.

If you could only give some of your time and effort in finding the right one, soon you can conveniently make calls any time and any where with the use of your prepaid calling card.

Buying a Franchise Business is not a get rich quick scheme. You have found the right opportunity, analysed the viability of the business, met the franchisor and signed the franchise agreement. Now the hard work begins.

The first year of managing your franchise business is often the hardest. This is when you will learn the core skills that are required to making your business opportunity successful. In the process you will also find out more about your own strengths and weaknesses.

Before you start any business the first question you should ask yourself is are you prepared for hard work? Unlike employment, you will have to be ready to deal with problems when and wherever they arise.

Are you ready to learn new skills? The franchisor will have provided you with initial training that all the franchisees need. Usually your training does not end there. Once you start running your business you will uncover gaps in your skills which need further training. It is imperative that you plug these gaps as soon as possible.

Remember that the franchisor wants you to succeed. Bearing this in mind it is important that you discuss your successes & problems with them on an ongoing basis. This will help to keep communication lines open and help you to deal with problems as they arise.

Keep in touch with other franchisees so that you can benefit from their knowledge which has been acquired through actually running the business. They will help you to avoid a lot of standard mistakes and guide you through most of the common problems that arise when running your business for the first time. It is generally a good idea to have a franchise buddy who has been running the franchise for many years as well as keeping in close touch with somebody who started just the same time as you.

You should make regular adjustments to your business plan as live numbers take over from projections. This will help you to budget accordingly. Keeping tight controls over your outlays is just as important as monitoring and enhancing sales.

Once you have started making money a new process begins. Now you have to decide how you want to proceed. Is it easier to increase business with your current franchise or is it now the time that you thought about buying another franchise?

Do your employees need further training? Well trained workers are the key to growing your business. Who knows, once you have well trained staff, you might not be needed at all to manage your business! One very important point to bear in mind is that if a member of staff is not right for the job, then it is important that you replace them immediately. You do not want to waste any time training the wrong people.

If you are happy with your current level of earnings then it is perhaps better to focus on managing your business more professionally so that you eke out the last bit of profit from the venture. Systemize everything that needs doing more than once and then?

Learn to delegate. I repeat, learn to delegate. Most new business owners are uncomfortable with giving orders. This is now your business and you are in charge. Your staff will respect you more if you manage your business correctly.

If you follow the above principals then you should be on the path to having a really successful business.