This Friday, December 7^th, the EB 5 Regional Center Program comes up for renewal.

The EB 5 Program is little known, but popular way for foreign entrepreneurs and their immediate family to gain lawful permanent US residency in exchange for placing a minimum of $500,000 capital in an at-risk job-creating new commercial enterprise.

The program is far from perfect, but the upsides far outweigh the problems. Here’s why the EB 5 Regional Center Program should be here to stay:

1. As interest rates rise, it’s again proving to be a much-needed source of low-interest capital to boost the real estate development industry. EB 5 Regional Centers help developers by connecting them with interested foreign capital investors.
2. Unlike other visa programs, EB 5 requires each investor to be credited with the creation of 10 qualified full-time jobs for US workers. The H-1B visa, for example, takes jobs away from US workers in favor of lower-paid foreigners.
3. The majority of investment funds are utilized in targeted employment areas, or areas of high unemployment. Although opponents of the program often criticize target employment area investments for sending money to city downtowns, these funds undoubtably revitalize areas that are often in decay. The otherwise hard to acquire capital is used to boost the local economies and add much needed jobs.

Some downsides of the program could easily be fixed if the program was reformed:

1. Removing the per country visa cap would fix the growing backlog. Right now each country is can only receive 7% of the visas. This has caused countries, where EB 5 is popular, to suffer retrogression. Currently both Mainland China and Vietnam investors have to wait longer than investors from other countries due to the visa cap.
2. Changing the 10,000 visas issued to include only investors instead of investors and family. Only around 3,000 investors receive visas each year despite the 10,000 available visas simply due to the counting of family members in that total. Removing family members from the total would drastically increase the number of visas issued.
3. Adding more EB 5 processing professionals would not only speed up the lengthy process, but it could also add transparency to the program. The process also is not updated as often as it needs to be online, which can add stress to everyone involved in the EB 5 visa process.

Although the Trump administration has threatened to shutdown the government over border wall funding, the EB-5 industry expects to see the EB 5 Regional Center Program renewed along with the funding bill this Friday.

For more information about the EB 5 Program, send us a message.