The way Uruguay's president-elect sees it, his government will face a couple of problems: too few residents and too little investment. Well, why not make the country so attractive to well-heeled foreigners that they'll pack up and move there, solving both with one blow?

"It seems to me that it's generally accepted that Uruguay would benefit from 100,000 or 200,000 more people," Luis Lacalle Pou said in a national radio interview last week, explaining changes he wants to make in tax-residency rules in the nation of 3.5 million. 

Countries from Portugal to Spain to Greece have gone down this road, aiming to woo the wealthy with relatively loose requirements for official residency status. In Portugal, for example, you can invest as little as EUR350,000 ($385,595) in property to qualify.

In Uruguay right now, a foreigner's path to tax residency includes spending more than 183 days a year there as well as purchasing real estate worth more than $1.8 million or investing more than $5.4 million in a business. Lacalle Pou, who will take office March 1 and end 15 years of rule by leftists, hasn't said how low he wants to go.