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Banking & Budgeting Citizenship For Sale?
Career & Work by Daniel Gross, Yahoo! Finance Share 6174 retweet 217 Email Print
Monday, October 25, 2010 RATES
College & Education See today's average rates across the country.
Every day investors around the world choose to put their hard-earned cash into the U.S.
Family & Home Billions of dollars flow in the form of foreign direct investment, as when a group of Mortgage Home Equity Savings Auto Credit Cards
Brazilians bought Burger King, and foreigners purchase hundreds of billions of U.S. Loan Type Today Last Week
Insurance stocks and bonds, as measured by the Treasury's TIC data.
30 Year Fixed 4.55% 4.38%
Loans But a small number of investors show up on these shores drawn by something more
valuable than financial returns: the prospect of U.S. citizenship. 15 Year Fixed 3.95% 3.79%
Real Estate
1 Year ARM 3.08% 3.11%
Retirement You can't simply purchase an Related Video
American passport (at least not 30 Year Fixed Jumbo 5.26% 5.16%
Taxes legally). But since 1990, 5/1 ARM 3.42% 3.32%
foreigners with as little as
TOOLS $500,000 in cash have been able 3/1 ARM 3.27% 3.26%
Calculators to invest their way to a quick Source: Bankrate
green card, putting them on the
Experts path to citizenship. Quick, View rates in your area
Glossary somebody call Lou Dobbs!
Rates Yes, the U.S. government lets Sponsored by:
people with cash to jump the line Quicken Loans - 30Yr Fixed $200K loan $985/mo.
How-to Guides for a green card through the EB-5
program.
ALSO ON Y! FINANCE Starting in 1990, 10,000 visas MOST POPULARARTICLES
Mutual Funds have been set aside each year for
the EB-category. The program China move on inflation pushes futures lower
Bonds Aaron Task and Daniel Gross discuss the visa Reuters - Fri, Nov 19 - 8:23am ET
was designed to encourage
Currency foreign investors to create jobs by program on Tech Ticker.
starting a new business or Left Behind by LeBron
Business Videos BusinessWeek - Fri, Nov 19 - 8:08am ET
preserve jobs by investing in money-losing businesses. If they agree to invest $1 million,
Stock Research foreigners can get a visa, apply for green cards, and become conditional permanent Another Pipeline Setback for Pfizer
residents. Zacks - Fri, Nov 19 - 8:05am ET
ALSO ON Y! HOTJOBS After two years, provided they've made good on their promise to invest, created 10 jobs 2011 Ford F-150 EcoBoost Tows Maximum Load at
Search Jobs (family members don't count), and the business is still an ongoing concern, they can
apply to have those conditions removed. And after five years with a green card, holders High Speeds Around NASCAR Racetrack
Post Resume PR Newswire - Fri, Nov 19 - 8:00am ET
can apply for citizenship.
Career Advice
Of the 10,000 visas in the program, 3,000 are set aside for "targeted employment areas" - View more popular articles
Salary Calculator - rural areas, or places with an unemployment rate that's 150 percent or more of the
national average. For these visas, the threshold is lowered to $500,000.
Another 3,000 visas are set aside for investments in "regional centers" -- areas or
industries designated by states. (A full list of regional centers can be seen here.)
Some organizations, professional service firms, and companies promote the program as
a whole, or market investment in particular projects as appropriate for EB5 aspirants,
such as a ski resort in Vermont. Other entrepreneurs having a tough time raising cash
are now seeking to use the program to tap into new sources of financing. The Wall Street
Journal reported last week that developer Bruce Ratner is seeking to use the program to
help raise funds in China for his massive, controversial Atlantic Yards development in
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Now, many may view the prospect of giving favorable immigration treatment to investors
as problematic. The phrase "bring us your moneyed investors yearning to breathe free"
doesn't have the same poetic heft as the inscription about the tired, poor, huddled
masses etched on the Statue of Liberty. From its inception, the price of citizenship has
traditionally been a willingness to leave behind the old world and work hard -- not write a
check to support the construction of a bunch of ski-in, ski-out condos.
But I happen to think this is a very good thing. If it were fully utilized, the EB5 program
would bring at least $7 billion annually and create or preserve 100,000 jobs per year. It's
not much in the grand scheme of things -- there are currently about 130 million
Americans with payroll jobs. But given the trauma inflicted upon American workers in the
past three years, every little bit helps. And this is something the U.S. should be doing
more of.
One cure for the vast overhang of excess housing would be to offer expedited citizenship
to people willing to purchase vacant homes in places in like Las Vegas or Detroit.
In fact, it's surprising that more people don't take the U.S. up on its offer. Consider the
changing shape of the world's economic geography: We've got American companies with
lots of cash that are reluctant to invest at home because they see better prospects
abroad. Thanks to that same dynamic, millionaires are being minted by the millions in
China, India, and Brazil, and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, the EB5 program has never come close to maxing out. According to U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, in 2009, just 1,028 people applied for EB5 status
and 966 were approved, up from 776 applications and 485 approvals in fiscal 2007.
Applications and approvals rose sharply in fiscal 2010, to 1,727 and 1,271, respectively.
I'm guessing the lackluster numbers can be chalked up to a failure of marketing rather
than the limited attraction of the underlying product, or of its expense. In fact, the
investment-related green card should probably be priced higher. Here's a thought
experiment: Ask how much you'd have to be paid to give up American citizenship for you
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