See how UK residents successfully obtained US Green cards, and learn how to avoid the pitfalls that caused others to fail.

EB-5: Considerations

USCIS designated Regional Centers have been established in areas of the United States. Regional Centers should help minimize risk and smooth the application process for the foreign investor. Regional Centers that are inexperienced in working with government agencies and are structured to line the pockets of their founders and owners are also of great concern. Some Regional Centers, by their faulty design in failing to prioritize the investor needs and fulfilling EB-5 requirements, can result in investors failing to achieve their immigration or investment goals.

Many foreign investors feel that a Regional Center that is “approved” is all they should concern themselves with. Remember all Regional Centers are approved, thus, the designation as a Regional Center means nothing. The individual projects within the Regional Center must be approved. Additionally, Regional Centers with government names do not mean the government is responsible you back. As a matter of fact, what it does mean is another layer of bureaucracy that must be dealt with. Not one Regional Center with a State or city name has the structure that the government is responsible back the investor. The brutal fact is not all Regional Center projects begin to satisfy EB-5 guidelines, and as a potential investor, it is important to understand the attributes of a sound investment and the entity’s structure in order to satisfy the USCIS requirements for the permanent visa (green card).

Some past and current projects provide a good example of what can happen when investment details are overlooked and funds are mismanaged. Consider the Northern Beef Packers’ Meat Processing Plant project. Intended to process 1,500 cattle a day, this planned plant is more than two years overdue and still under construction. Weather and financing problems have plagued the project. As of April 2009, contractors’ liens for unpaid work were reportedly approaching $8 million.*

Another failed project is the EB-5 investment called Lake Delores. This project contained EB-5 investors. The investment partnership was formed and foreign national investors invested into the partnership. The partnership funds were placed into the investment with the owner of the land – the very same person who was promoting the project. This project is in the middle of nowhere. Investors were convinced by statistics of the traffic count between Los Angles, California and Las Vegas, Nevada. A situation where the investor should have asked many questions and made the EB-5 operators prove what they were saying. The project ultimately failed in creating the requisite jobs, in returning the original investor funds and also in obtaining the permant visa. The only ones to make out the “immigration consultants”, agents and the promoter-owner of the project.