Say you are a smart Indian who just landed his first high TC job in the Bay on H1B. You go save money and buy a 1.5M or so house somewhere (probably Fremont). You focus on paying it and with your high TC job you can do so under 10years (depending on the stock direction and speed even less). Now you take a secured 1M loan against the house, and you invest through an EB-5 visa. Depending on your skill and risk profile you could buy a franchise and hire 10 part time citizens, including a manager to take care of the business, but there are also fully self managed crowd-sourced real estate deals for EB-5. You also keep your day job. Magically, you have your green card right away and a business that may help you achieve FIRE much earlier. With your day job and any returns on the business you slowly payoff your loan. If you want you are already free to change day jobs with your green card. 2 years later, your green card is confirmed. If you are happy with your side business, great. If you are not, you can sell it (maybe to a fellow Indian doing the same thing) and recover the investment. Worst case if you sell it at a loss, that was the cost of the green card and the flexibility it gives you should lead to higher TC that compensates for it. So when people theorize about a H1B system that sells to the highest bidder, or that gives priority to higher TC, it seems to need that the EB-5 route already does that and also helps build wealth for everyone #workvisa #h1b
So a total of 12-15 years to get GC. I mean it's a theory. Will take 15 years to play out.
No it’s now 25 years ... wait time more than 15 yrs. because of EB1C
And then COVID hits, the franchise goes under because nobody is going to restaurants any more. Now you have a mortgage on your Fremont home all over again, no business and no green card.
This is not true
You are confusing EB-5 with the E-2 investor program.
:) ya only if it were as simple as you explain OP. Investor visa requires investment AND commitment that you will employ certain number of people.
Correct, you have to hire 10 part time Americans which you would need for your franchise anyways. But if you are not comfortable with that you can also use this real estate investments so that it is more tangible: https://www.fool.com/millionacres/amp/real-estate-investing/articles/what-eb-5-program-and-how-do-real-estate-investors-use-it/
Only about 200 to 300 EB-5 per country since each application uses 3 to 4 visas including dependents
Blind would buy an executed story much faster. Otherwise you will just see many many posts explaining why your theory is crap.
Don’t you have to show the source of money? Have you checked if an equity loan of $1M on a home qualifies as the source of income?
Yes it does. Secured loans with houses qualify
You love green card today. Will you love it same when you have 10M, probably not because you have the entire world and better places than usa to retire or live or even work
USA also has risk of losing it to china in gdp and might not be so attractive after 10 yesrs
Are you new to immigration system? Do you know how many EB-5 visas are given per year vs EB-1, EB-2, EB-3?
10k EB-5 vs 65k H1B. So this works for the top 20% earners in H1B. That works nicely, is not that we can sell 65k 1.5M dollar houses per year.