According to property consultancy Astons, searches for residence-through-investment programmes grew by as much as 378 per cent last year. The latest country to jump on the migration juggernaut is Maldives, where the government has pledged to introduce The Maldives Pearl Residence programme in April. The news comes in the wake of record tourism figures for the archipelago: 224,455 arrivals in December, adding up to a 10 per cent annual growth in arrivals.