I Bought a $150,000 Passport that can Travel the World

Hello, we are still in Paris, as you can see by the giant antenna behind me. But this video has actually been three years in the making. It's heartbreaking and wildly inspiring to see Ammar go through this journey. And actually, unbeknownst to you, you're actually very involved in this story. But before we go into that, I just wanted to let you know that today is the launch of our first holiday drop, Create the Spark. Starting this month, Seek Discomfort is going to transition to being a carbon positive company, which means that we offset more CO2 than we produce. There are obviously additional steps that we can take and that we are planning on taking in the future, but we are so proud of this positive evolution to be more mindful of our planet as we pursue our dreams of spreading Seek Discomfort into a worldwide message. All right, back to the video. All right, so if you are a male in Egypt and you have a brother like I do, then it's mandatory for you to sign yourself up for military draft. And you have to continue doing so until you turn 30 years old. It's been four years since I made that video and my life has changed in ways that I could have never imagined. Over and over and over again. I literally can't believe I'm alive. And while my life was great in the moments I chose to share with you all in our videos, a whole lot was happening behind the scenes. While I do believe that my decision to leave Egypt and pursue my dreams was the right one to make and one that had the support of those around me, I was not prepared for the way it would continue to impact me in the years to come. Shortly after having said my goodbyes to my family, uncertain of when I would get to see them next, just a few months after, I found myself stuck at a crossroads once again. Since then, I've had to live in a constant fear of what was to come, between a broken relationship with my dad that wasn't getting any better and a ticking time bomb in the form of an expiration date in my Egyptian passport. An expired passport or running out of pages in it before I could return to Egypt would pose a massive threat on the life that I've worked so hard to build with Yesnir. The stress that he has over his passport potentially being lost, and then he has to go back to Egypt and do military service. Yes theory just completely ends, pretty much. My connection to my roots and the great history it grows from has always been the driving force behind my big dreams. As this connection faded over the time I was unable to go back home, my overall wellbeing suffered. I felt isolated from my own culture as well as the rest of the world. This is what the world looks like when my best friends decide to travel with American, French and Swedish passports. And this is what it looks like for me. Permissions required to go everywhere, endless visa appointments, stacks of documents to prove I was worthy of traveling, never ending stress and anxiety. At this point, if you've been watching Yes Theory for the past few years, then you would have noticed that I've missed the majority of the episodes that we filmed outside of the US. Well, that was rarely my choice. I wanted nothing more than to be traveling with my best friends, telling stories and connecting with people from all corners of the world. I need to prove a thousand things just so that I can move, just so I can go anywhere. And it's always such a condescending attitude, like no matter how nice and warm and like complete I have everything, it's always just met with such skepticism. I never considered that there could be another reality for me where I could just book a plane ticket on any given day and go wherever the adventure was calling. But one day at the end of 2018, I was presented with an opportunity that could finally liberate me from the restrictions imposed by my passport. And even more importantly, one that could allow me to travel back to Egypt sooner than 30 years old. I met our travel hacker, Guillaume, in Switzerland at an airport. It was our first time meeting. And he said, Ammar, have you ever thought of applying for another citizenship? And he proceeded to send me a list of all these countries that have opened their borders to entrepreneurs and business people from all over the world to invest in the infrastructure or the economy of that country or real estate. And then in exchange, get a passport in return. After going through the list of countries that offered citizenship by investment, I landed on Sankits and Nevis, an island country located in the Caribbean, about a three hour flight away from Miami. To get a citizenship there, you either make a donation of $150,000 or an investment of three to $400,000. This grants you a citizenship in Sankits and provides a passport that can access 155 countries visa-free. Though I wasn't in a financial position to make that commitment in 2019 quite yet, I managed to save up over the next two years. And with the help of Yes Theory splitting the cost, in 2021, I was able to make the final payment and complete my application. Last week, I got my approval for my Sankits citizenship and I'm now asked to pay the rest of what's due for my citizenship application, which is $92,500. I already paid $27,500. This is the biggest payment of my life and I can't think of a better thing for it to be more than my freedom. I don't own a car, I don't own a house, but now I own a new passport, which is, to me, way more important. Tuffy, can we afford this? This is our accountant. He's on the phone right now. All right. It's a little bit tricky financially. YouTube AdSense didn't send us our money last month. No sponsors have paid us yet. So, all right, let's drain this bank account. Dude, this is insane. We've been trying to do this for two years. I've been trying to do this my whole life. Make this repeating, wire? No. Are you sure you wanna send this wire? Never been more sure. Congratulations, it's the best investment you ever made. Thank you. I fully and wholeheartedly believe in that. Love you guys. Love you too, Daphne. Much love. Oh my God, dude. It's all done. I paid the final thing that I had to pay, and let's make some money so we can pay our employees. I mean, pay you guys, but. What the f***? Hopefully yesterday works out, huh? Chill out. So, I just got some of the biggest news of my life. I got an email saying that my citizenship application has been approved. I'm gonna tell the boys, because it's been two years in the making now. Gather around, gather around. Guess who just became a dual citizen? Yeah, national anthem for some kids, cute. Happy birthday to you. Two months later, Ammar found himself in illegal no-man's land. His US visa expired, so he had to leave the country, but his new passport wouldn't arrive in Dubai for pickup for another six weeks. So, first joining us in Europe, he now had to leave again, still waiting for his passport to arrive. To come to Europe, I had to submit my tax returns. I had to submit bank statements from the past six months. It's literally the most invasive process. They end up giving me a single entry and only a visa for 26 days. So, this is the last time I ever apply for a European visa. How are you feeling? A little anxious, to be honest. I'm leaving Europe with the plan to come back, but I don't know how that's gonna happen, because my visa expires tomorrow. One last time. I did it. I hope they let me in. Okay, so here's the situation. I can only enter this country if I have a valid US visa. The US visa and my passport is expired, but I have an extension notice. That I'm hoping they will have sent me. The anxiety every time I'm at a passport control like this, it's through the roof. This is the extension, the notice of the extension. All good? I just got sent out of the line to extra checks for my visa. I was just asked to go to the police desk, which is not really good news. I just got sent to another passport control. Hopefully it works out. This is so freaking nerve-wracking, because right now there's not a whole lot of places that I can go to, and I can't go back to Egypt. Thank you very much. That was so freaking nerve-wracking. Okay, we made it through. The last time had to be very dramatic. Look at you, oh my God. I was so stressed. Alhamdulillah, we made it though. We made it. We're here, it's all behind us. A few weeks later, he finally made it to Dubai, where he was told his passport would arrive within the next week. We just exited Dubai airport, and it feels pretty surreal that in the next five days I'll be receiving my new passport, and it will basically give me an entirely new life. I think actually the passport is more about me being able to go back to Egypt than it being about travel. There's billions of people around the world that apply for visas. Like, I don't want this to feel like, oh, I'm just complaining that I have to go get visas. That's the reality for so many people, and it's really about not wanting to spend three more years not going back home, and I missed my sister's wedding. I missed my nephew's birth. I don't want to miss my brother's wedding, and I don't want to miss any more things. I want to be able to be back. I want to be able to connect with my culture again. I want to be able to connect with my people, to redefine what home is for me. It's been a wild, just four years from the moment I left Egypt, thinking that I wouldn't be back for seven more years, to it being now, and it's been four, and hopefully, inshallah, very soon, I'll be able to go back. I leave this room, with this passport, and come back with you. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Welcome. Thank you very much. Hi, nice to meet you. I can't believe this right now. It's been in the making for so long. No way. What do I start with? Look at that. This is my certificate that I am a citizen of St. Kitts, right? Citizenship certificate, signed by the prime minister. This is crazy. Oh, my God. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Abu Kala! Thank you! I'm about to leave Dubai with one passport, and enter Europe with my new identity. It hasn't hit me yet, but I think the moment when I'm gonna get stamped is gonna be when I actually feel, like, the sense of freedom that I've craved for so long. I'm more excited to get on the plane. Paris! Hello. I'm going to my best friend's house. He lives in Paris. Thank you. Oh, my God. That was it? Where are you going? My best friend's house? And then he just stamped me in. What? That was the shortest it's ever taken me to enter a country. It was a total of, like, seven seconds. Yes, baby! Hey, look, he just stamped it right away. That's it? That's it. To just not walk up in fear, and not be afraid every time. This is way more emotional than I thought. What? I'm in Europe. Oh, my God. Ammar has passed the border for the first time on his new passport! I see them! Welcome to Thailand! Yeah! Yeah, let me see this f***ing thing. Yeah. Wow, it's a nice passport, too. His colors are amazing. Yeah. These tough times that Ammar has gone through, and that as friends, we have naturally been immensely involved in alongside him, have been a huge part of our story and weekly lives since we started Yes Theory. Not being able to bring him alongside us on many trips has truly been heartbreaking time after time. More importantly, seeing him not be able to go back to his home country of Egypt with his family has been the hardest part. Making the decision to spend $120,000 on this passport is not an easy one, however. I think there is a distorted view of how much money creators on YouTube make, as we see some drive Lamborghinis and buy giant mansions. Our reality is a whole lot different. We've chosen to invest a lot of what we earned back into Yes Theory and seek discomfort since the very beginning of our journey together. We care about nothing more than taking our team, the message, and the stories we share with you to new heights year after year. The $60,000 that Yes Theory contributed to Ammar's new passport came straight from the Seek Discomfort drop we had back then, meaning that it came straight from you. You helped Ammar earn his freedom by being able to afford this, and as a result, you've changed his life and ours. So thank you. Finally, today is the launch of our first holiday drop, Create the Spark, where we tell the story of why we chose the spark to be the icon of the brand and why particularly there's three of them. We hope that you check out seekdiscomfort.com after you finish watching this video. There's a gift with purchase with each of the upcoming three drops over the next three weeks. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for creating a massive new spark in Ammar's life and allowing us all to travel together freely for the first time ever. Also, if you wanna see the surprise that Tommy and I organized for Ammar when he first arrived in Paris, please head to the Seek Discomfort channel linked below and check out the video we just posted on there. Thank you for watching. We'll see you very soon.