EB5 investment visa.

voltrader66 said:
Hi marie52, thank you so much for all the information you have give me so far. I just wanted to ask how you went about choosing the Regional Center and the project? The immigration lawyers can help with the USCIS related paperwork but not give any advice on which regional centers are good/bad. Is that correct?
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Yes, as I understand it, that is correct. Our attorney told us to look around and we didn't find much. When we spoke to him about the AL he had already had experience with this company so we choose that one. They had a good track record and were on their 29th project so we felt ok about going with the next one they did.
 
Marie: Thanks for detailed reply. How did you do your search to find a investment project? Googled it or reference or there is some sort of broker (like real estate broker) who provide information what are available projects?

Once you get your permanent GC after 2 years or so, you can sell it some one. Can you sell your share to another GC seeker or GC seeker has to be involved from the beginning like you did?

Real estate projects are difficult to anticipate. I am sure when you made your investment, economy was roaring and now real estate esp. hotel business is in very difficult situation which rely very much on economy so point I am making is hotel industry might not turn around till 2010 or later depending upon situation.

Q. Is it really possible to sell your stake after 2 years at a profit? and is it easy to sell your stake as it is not hotel shares listed on stock market.
 
It was some time ago now and to be honest I don't really remember that much. I remember looking on Google and finding SODO. That is the expression for South Downtown Seattle and I think we went from there.

As we understand it we can sell it to anyone who wants to buy it. We are not aware of any covenants regarding who can buy.

The whole point of the investment visa is that is a risk, we are not overly concerned about any of this side of it, for us it was a means to an end in the form of a GC.

What with the recession its difficult to project what may happen. We are not likely to sell our share, for us it doesn't really matter if it makes money or not.

The EB5 was really the only visa that suited us, we want to go to the USA so it was almost all based on that. The way we see it, is that if it makes us some money however small or large that is a bonus. We liked the idea that our money could help others, and allow us to live in the US in the process.
We have a business in Missouri so we are not relying on the income from the project to support us.
 
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EB5 Proof of Jobs

After reading this press release and the results mentioned ( I cannot post the link as this is my first post in the forum).

You can read the release if you Google "prweb eb5"

Has anyone else had problems with the "Proof of Jobs" causing rejections or delays?

This question comes after reading this:

Approved Proof of Jobs Methodology - Investors should be very interested in the details of any EB-5 program and paramount to understanding EB-5 is proving new jobs. CMB combines investor capital with government funds and private capital to multiply the effects its investment capital has on job creation thus creating many more new jobs than required. Proof of jobs is the single leading cause of denial for potions under the EB-5 program. The problem with finding out that the jobs are not provable from an investor standpoint is that it is too late once they find out the jobs are not there! The investors are already in the investment irrevocably.

Thanks
 
RE : EB5 investment visa.

I think you have to expand 6-8 months and invest about something 500k In US.
I think it gonna very helpful to you.
best of Luck
 
marie52

Marie: How is your case going? What kind of RFE they are asking?

Regarding source of funding, what do you need to provide? Like tax returns and what else and for how many years?
 
Hi,

We had our interview last week, all good except they needed info about income and assets for the next 2 years as the investment cannot be relied upon and many put all their money into the investment, and have little left. The idea being to be sure that we won't become a public charge.


As regards source of funding, they wanted as much info as possible for as many years back as possible, house sales, tax returns, business accounts, bank statements, savings etc, a lot of paperwork. We had 6 years worth. (the more the merrier, many visa's are delayed because of lack of info about money more than anything else, or so we have heard, better to have too much than not enough.

Now we are waiting for the I-601 waiver for vaccination exemption, which the Embassy files once they have all the relevant paperwork. We have no idea how long that will take, we have heard it could be months, but fair to say, we are getting there slowly.
 
marie52 said:
We have just had our application approved pending medical and interview at the USA Embassy in London. Has anyone on here been through this procedure? would be interested to hear others experiences of this. Not sure what to expect.

Sorry if I have put this in the wrong place, not familiar with forum procedure.
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Hi Marie

You should go on the DV lottery forum and ask the guys there as I reckon the process is the same. I had the interview and medical and all went smoothly. I have also posted my experience on that forum so check it out. Lots of other peoples experiences are listed there, I found the forum extremely helpful so good luck. Funny, I was going to go down the same route as you are undertaking but I was surprised and won the lottery.
 
Hi, yes i suspect it is, we are now at the end of the process but reading others experiences is always interesting. thank you.
 
Immigration by Investment (EB-5)

Dear Sir/Madam,
I believe you are looking for a way to get a visa that enables you to live in United States. We are developer in Southern California with commercial developments in Southern California. Our developments are approved and qualified by United States of Immigration Service (regional center) to provide immigration by investment. Please contact me in order i can provide you with more detail information. My contact information as follows:

Name: Michael Lu
Tel: 626-275-4368
Fax: 626-275-4369
Email: mail@ark-tech.net

Looking forward to talk with you.

Sincerely,

Michael Lu
 
Hi, yes we are still around.
Our I-601 was approved last thursday. YAY!!!! Although we did not know this until Sunday evening.
Now we just have to send off our passports to the Embassy for the visa to go in.
Then we just have to go.....we are in a state of shock actually, like its not real, after all this time.
 
Hi and thank you, we are very excited. Yes, we have a small holiday resort in Shell Knob Missouri and hope to relocate within the next couple of months, earlier if all goes well.
lots to do of course, but we cannot wait. Thank you all for your help and support, these forums are great.
 
Congrats Marie:

In which state or region are you moving to? How is your EB5 commercial project. These days all kind of commercial projects are facing tough times esp. hotel industry.
 
marie52 said:
Yes, we invested almost a year ago now, with American Life in the Seattle Marriott Courtyard project. You get interest on the money while its in the bank but once they start spending on the builiding it obviously goes down until you get to the point the tenant is in, then we get an income based on the profit.
This project is due to finish next year. It is the biggest one AL have done so far, amost 150 investors, mostly from Japan and China.
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hi, i'm Taiwanese resident and just called American life representative in Taiwan about cost to apply for eb5 green card and she quoted me as belows:

investment funds 500,000

syndication fee 35,000
legal service fee 15,000
immigration consulting service 10,000
total for extra cost: 60,000

just wondering if those fee are reasonable?

Thanks much.
 
Well, I don't think they are reasonable fees, but that is about what we paid in the UK. Sounds about the going rate.
 
opticoco said:
hi, i'm Taiwanese resident and just called American life representative in Taiwan about cost to apply for eb5 green card and she quoted me as belows:

investment funds 500,000

syndication fee 35,000
legal service fee 15,000
immigration consulting service 10,000
total for extra cost: 60,000

just wondering if those fee are reasonable?

Thanks much.
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I have some concerns. If you read news, commercial real estate is in trouble esp. private ones because they might have difficulty raising new capital, or issue new shares compare to public trade real estate (REITS). Do these EB5 investment projects use mark to market accounting? Most (if not all) real estate have declined in value and some are still declining so are they selling you these EB5 investments at the same price as was last year or when a project was started or do they adjust what these properties will worth now in an open market? and who does this appraisal about worth of these projects?

Syndication fees or referral fees are beyond my understanding. If you have a broker and broker inspected or has knowledge of various of EB5 projects then recommended you a project to invest then it makes sense to pay that person/agency referral fees but if you are approaching directly to that firm who has EB5 project then why any one should pay that fees?

I just don't understand how they can tell you legal fees? Legal fees are between you and your lawyer. I think it is up to you which lawyer you should use and how much fees would be? Are they telling you rough estimate of legal costs or are they telling you these would be the costs? Are they also telling you which lawyer to use as well?

So please consult a lawyer if you really want to know what is best or what kind of fees are reasonable as at least I don't know have personal experience with any one those.
 
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With American Life you have to use a lawyer appointed to the company. They will advise you of who is available to help. We used an attorney in the UK who wasn't appointed, as we did not know this, and when we tried to submit, it had to go to another attorney that was approved, delaying our application by months. There was no other way of doing it, so we went with it. It worked out ok in the end.
 
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