Recently, the government of America has made it costlier for immigrants to acquire permanent residence in the country. As per the rules which were published by Homeland Security of the US on Wednesday, immigrants have to shed near about $900,000 to get EB-5 visa. Previously, the cost was just $500,000. After the news, real estate sector warned that it might stop the funding which America is receiving since great recession.
The formulation of EB-5 program was done in 90s, so that it can encourage people to make investment in several distressed areas. Foreigners on the other hand started to avail the facility of the program since 2008, when the capital market of US witnessed turmoil and real estate developers had to search for alternative methods to raise fund. At present, the process generates near about $5 billion at the expense of less than 11,000 green cards every year.
Since several years the program was under the radar of legislators as they think that it might cause fraudulent activities, there were few others who objected on the idea that immigrants could be able to buy citizenship of America. Most of the American visas are based on employer sponsorship or family relationship.
Due to working of EB-5 program state can easily choose projects as well as areas for eligibility. Thus mostly, EB-5 investment is heading towards urban centers of the country. There are few lawmakers of US who are advocating that the program should also cover rural areas.
Back on Tuesday, American Citizenship and Immigration Services stated that boundary manipulation of EB-5 districts has been accomplished after combining several census tracts to link project location in order to qualify unemployment rate. One of the trade associations stated that hiking minimal investment pricing in such a dramatic manner would eventually eliminate EB-5 program altogether.