National Public Radio

One of our EB5 clients, Brian Thompson, was recently featured on (NPR) Public Radio – Below is a transcript from part of the interview with him which was covered on the Morning Edition.

“News of job creation programs has been widely reported lately, but there’s one program that many people have never heard about: Under U.S. immigration law, foreigners can invest in an American business and, in exchange, receive a green card.

This has long been a small, obscure program, but as domestic sources of financing have dried up, the number of EB-5 visas issued this way has tripled in the past year.

For investor Brian Thompson and his wife the motivation was to leave England for a place with better weather. A few years ago they put $500,000 into the redevelopment of a Seattle warehouse that is being turned into a hotel. Once it opens Thompson hopes to make his money back and then some. But the immigrant investor program requires a certain degree of risk, and if the business venture falls through, so do the green cards.

That would be the worst-case scenario,” Thompson says. “We’d be stuck in England, left without the pot of money that we’d worked all our lives for.

But so far the hotel project is on track. And since you don’t have to live where you put your money, Thompson and his wife are happily retired in Florida.

Half a million dollars is the minimum required — an investment in a more competitive area must be $1 million — and across the country, government-approved consultants have popped up to help match this foreign money with American companies.

Immigration attorneys say a big motivation for many investors is to educate their children in the U.S., since a participant’s entire immediate family also qualifies for a green card”.

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