EB-5 Investment Visa Green Card

If you want permanent residence status in the U.S.A. you may want to consider the US immigrant investor visa known as the EB5. This visa allows an immigrant, their spouse and children under 21 to immigrate to the US if they invest $500,000 in what is termed by the U.S. Government, an approved regional center. These centers are authorized to operate immigrant investor programs and are required to create 10 jobs per investor, that’s often where your problems may begin!
 
Finding detailed, impartial information on the advantages and disadvantages associated with the different regional center programs approved by the US Government can be extremely difficult. making a bad decision can lead to the loss of some or all of your $500,000 investment and potentially deportation. However, on the plus side many applicants have chosen appropriate regional center programs and now live in the USA, with their families, as permanent residents or, if they choose so, after five years as US citizens. Alternative visas such as the E2 and H1B do not provide that all important permanent residence status.
 
Although there are three critical stages in the EB-5 visa process many considering this visa only concentrate on the first stage, i.e. obtaining the visa (referred to as I-526 approval), but fail to focus enough attention on the other two stages which are - condition removal after 2 years, referred to as I-829 approval, (this necessitate evidence of job creation plus the investment allocated as agreed) and the eventual return of their $500,000 capital investment. Potential EB-5 investors may be particularly vulnerable when they do not speak English and/or are wholly reliant on sales agents and regional center representatives for impartial advice.
 
One problem is that much of the information on which regional center program is most suited to your specific requirements, has been provided by one of two sources-

1. The regional centers themselves, who obviously have a vested interest and are unlikely to point out the negatives issues associated with their own programs. 

2. Attorneys: The focus of a number of the leading EB-5 attorneys is on the legal process (as it should be) of the visa application, rather than the positives and negatives of the Regional Center programs which most will not have visited. There is also a view that Attorneys may have a conflict of interest in the event they receive a fee from a regional center while also handling your visa application.  This does not make it easy for those of you considering the immigration investor visa that need answers to such important questions such as:- 

What are the positives and negatives of different centers?
 

• How do they compare?
• Which centers have had refusals?
• Which have returned clients money and which have not?
• Where have there been litigation, investigations and or fraud?

In other words, where is information available from your consumer viewpoint?

Whether you are looking at the investment Green Card visa from thousands of miles away and looking to relocate to America to work, run a business, study or retire or indeed are currently living in the States but realize you cannot maintain residency on your current visa, you will need unbiased facts from specialists who have worked with many different immigrant families, have visited the majority of the proven centers, and have identified the positive and negative aspects.

It is absolutely vital, if you are considering using the immigrant investor route to live in the USA, that you are given the fullest picture of the various regional center alternatives, most importantly all the positives and negatives.
The recently published book “Green Card via the Red Carpet” written by two experts, who themselves are first generation immigrants, highlights issues with the EB5 immigrant investor visa, these will be of interest to anyone considering the EB5 visa for their green card.

The partners of WhichEB5 are unusual in that they actually visit the various approved EB5 regional center programs multiple times, they research evidence from local newspapers and trade magazines, identify positive and negative aspects of different programs, highlight issues where there had been fraud, police investigations, where capital had been repaid, where it had not, and I-829 refusals, plus which attorneys have significant expertise in this complex field.