The United States, as one of the most developed countries in the world, has always been a popular destination for investment immigration. Currently, the EB-5 investment immigration program, which has been implemented since 1991, particularly established a 'Regional Center Investment Program' in 1993, relaxing the requirement in the immigration application conditions from 'must directly create ten jobs' to 'directly or indirectly create ten jobs.' This has made EB-5 a convenient pathway to US immigration with a shorter application approval time and fewer qualification restrictions.
The EB-5 investment immigration program mainly includes two models: the Regional Center investment immigration and the Direct Investment immigration. Domestic investors seem to be more familiar with the former; however, both investment models have their unique characteristics and advantages.
The Regional Center model allows investors to obtain a green card without having to manage the business they invest in; while the Direct Investment immigration model requires the investor to invest in a new commercial entity, which can be a corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship, and the new commercial entity must directly create ten full-time jobs within two years.
The characteristics of the Direct Investment immigration model are as follows: 1. Direct investment projects primarily involve investing in well-known brand franchise businesses in the United States, ensuring the success of the entrepreneur and the security of the investment; 2. Investment and identity achieve 'two goals with one action.' Business operations can continue once successfully immigrated to the United States; 3. Direct investment projects are self-invested and self-managed, providing complete control over the project's financial status, allowing investors absolute initiative and control.
For the Regional Center investment model, selecting high-quality, stable, and secure projects is crucial. Currently, there are 397 registered Regional Centers in the United States. Since US immigration law requires that projects must have a certain level of risk, applicants inevitably worry about the safety of their funds. In this regard, experts at WorldWay believe that selecting safe EB-5 projects involves numerous considerations, such as management structure and team, feasibility studies, input-output analysis, reliability assessments of data, independent third-party evaluations, industry prosperity analysis, US economic trend forecasts, due diligence on projects, and more. However, these considerations often exceed the analytical capabilities of individual investors with a $500,000 investment unit. In fact, aside from these, there is one major consideration — who will manage the funds? For instance, the Las Vegas Third Street project, currently being actively promoted by WorldWay, is managed by CIM Group, a private real estate fund ranked 27th globally, which has $6.4 billion in equity investments and manages $11.6 billion in assets as well as the California Public Employees' Retirement Fund, ranked sixth globally. Entrusting investment funds to CIM Group for management is as secure as handing them over to the Washington State government, making Las Vegas Third Street one of the very few projects in the current EB-5 offerings with extremely high safety.
