November 27, the 7th Sina China Education Ceremony was grandly held at the Renaissance Beijing Capital Hotel. Elites from the global education industry gathered to focus on "China's Education at Your Fingertips" and released the first comprehensive and systematic education APP evaluation report in China. At the ceremony, Worldway Immigration Group was named by Sina.com as the "2014 Most Comprehensive Immigration Agency." The following is the transcript of the interview with Sun Gelin, General Manager of Worldway Group's Beijing office:
Host: Hello, Sina netizens. You are watching the Sina 2014 Annual Education Ceremony interview series. I am your host, Dandan. Today, we have invited Sun Gelin, General Manager of Worldway Group's Beijing office, to our studio. Hello, Ms. Sun!
Sun Gelin: Hello!
Host: Before we begin the interview, we would like to congratulate Worldway Group on winning the Sina 2014 Annual Most Comprehensive Immigration Agency award. I would like to ask Ms. Sun, the current immigration industry is highly competitive. Established immigration agencies are developing, but many new ones are also being founded. In this market environment, how does Worldway establish its brand? Could you introduce your advantages and service philosophy?
Sun Gelin: For the past 20 years, Worldway has always adhered to a business philosophy of integrity first and service-oriented, catering to our vast number of clients. Over these years, we have received numerous honors in this regard. We also operate on the principle of being responsible to our clients by selecting the highest quality projects for their reference. For instance, regarding the currently popular European immigration, Worldway has always been committed to maintaining good relationships with the respective governments. We cooperate with the most famous lawyers and the largest developers in those countries. Furthermore, in recent years, we have established customer service centers in these European countries that offer immigration, especially in Portugal, where we opened a branch office with 400 square meters of office space. Everything we do is to better serve our clients, ensuring they can enjoy our high-quality services both domestically and abroad.
In addition, we provide our best resources to our clients. For example, for the currently popular U.S. projects, Worldway has a dedicated project team, mostly with backgrounds in finance. We have senior project analysts who review hundreds of cases every year. Through these projects, we carefully select what we consider to be the highest quality projects to recommend to our investors. Of course, investment itself is a risky endeavor; it is impossible to achieve zero risk. We can only do our best to minimize this risk. Especially with the Pennsylvania Highway project, which we are currently promoting in the U.S., it is arguably the only truly 100% government project in history. In fact, we had to compete with many others to secure this project. The project developers and the U.S. government chose Worldway because they believe it is a very capable agency. They also trust that we are acting from the perspective of being responsible to investors to provide them with the best service.
Host: Could you provide our netizens with a forecast for the 2015 immigration market and immigration policies?
Sun Gelin: Where everyone is moving to, I think, is not just about where you want to go in your heart. The most important thing is to see which countries accept immigrants and where we can go. Currently, which regions have better immigration policy trends? They can be divided into three major areas. First is the more traditional North American region, which includes the two mainstream countries, the United States and Canada. As everyone knows, Canada's policies in recent years have not been particularly favorable, especially since the investment immigration program was abruptly terminated at the beginning of this year, leaving the policy in a closed state. In fact, for those considering factors like children's education in North America, the only country left to choose is the United States. Regarding the U.S., on August 23, 2014, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a visa bulletin warning. Since then, many experts have predicted and suggested various policies to support immigration and expand the number of visas. However, based on the current feedback from the U.S., this visa backlog issue may be faced by everyone in the first half of next year; this is also feedback from U.S. industry experts and lawyers. Therefore, we suggest that this policy will prompt investors who were not in a hurry to process this matter to act quickly. Once this backlog appears, the speed may not be as fast as before. You might have thought your child was still young and could wait two years, but now you worry that if you don't process it at this age, you will miss the opportunity, and when you actually need this status for school in the future, it will be too late. So, in 2015, especially in the first half of the year, starting from now, the volume of U.S. immigration applications will definitely increase significantly, leading to a state of congestion. But in a word, it is better to process it now than later, and it is better to do it early than late. Because according to the data fed back by the U.S. immigration authorities over the past two or three months, it is basically increasing by an average of 1,000 families per month. Therefore, the U.S. will definitely be a hot choice from this year to next year.
In addition, there are the European projects that have become popular in recent years. Now, more and more European countries are opening up their immigration policies. The goal is to stimulate economic development in the wake of the financial crisis. We all know that Europe is not a traditional immigration continent; its immigration policies have not been open for hundreds of years, so this might be the only opportunity for several generations. This is indeed the case. Because Europe is not like North America or Australia, which are vast and sparsely populated and need people to move there. Europe actually has a relatively high population density and limited resources, and there is also some small pride from some old imperialist countries. But this time, they have truly lowered their posture to open these policies, such as the currently mainstream Portugal, Spain, Cyprus, and Greece. This policy seems to have no change in price. Because I think there is not much room for increase, as the high population density and economic recovery determine that this policy will not be implemented for a long time before it closes. However, the actual threshold is still rising. This is mainly reflected in the fact that the houses we bought for the same amount of money in the past must have been much more cost-effective than those bought for the same amount of money now.
There is also, for example, Cyprus. In the policy of the past two years, you could get a green card by buying a house for 300,000 Euros. The latest policy introduced this year allows you to get an EU passport directly for 3 million Euros. Because Cyprus belongs to an EU country, once you have an EU passport, you can live, work, and reside in these countries at will, and children can study there. This solves the problem for some investors who want their children to study and live in traditional non-immigration countries like the UK or Switzerland. Because some time ago, the UK raised the requirement from 1 million pounds to 2 million pounds, and what you get is not even a green card; it's not even a green card. To get a green card, you might need to meet conditions such as continuous residence for several years. So, after this passport project came out, it can solve everyone's problems. But for a country as large as Cyprus, how this project can be launched, how long it will be launched, and how many investors it can absorb before it closes is something we should pay close attention to. Because I understand that the EU is not very happy about the introduction of this policy. So, I think this is truly an opportunity for several generations. If you have ideas in this regard or have such thoughts but are not very clear about the situation, you should seize the time to understand and see if you can seize this opportunity.
Besides North America and Europe, there are also some investors who choose to live in a place with a good environment in Asia. Our current environment, air, and other aspects, including education, have a certain relationship, so we hope to have a relatively good natural environment and also hope to have a relatively good Chinese-English bilingual education environment. For Asia, the most reasonable policy currently for our mainland Chinese residents is probably Hong Kong. Hong Kong has such an investment immigration policy where you can obtain Hong Kong resident status by investing 10 million Hong Kong dollars. However, Hong Kong's policy has a meeting for the Chief Executive every January, and this immigration policy may be studied at this meeting. From the investment immigration policy opened by Hong Kong in October 2003 until now, this policy has been implemented for 11 years. So many investors will expect whether someone will propose this Hong Kong immigration policy in the policy address at the meeting in January 2015, because it might be cancelled due to personnel saturation or the current situation in the industry. There are also some financial institutions that expect, for example, a price increase, where the current 10 million might become 20 million. Because the previous policy before 2010 was an investment of 6.5 million Hong Kong dollars, and this investment could not only be in financial products but also in real estate. Then, after the price increase in 2010, it became 10 million Hong Kong dollars, and 10 million Hong Kong dollars to buy financial products. In fact, in the past, besides investing 10 million, one also needed to buy or rent a house. In fact, the magnitude of its price increase is not the 3.5 million difference that appears on the surface; there will also be many additional costs. So this time, everyone might think it will become 20 million, although some people say 15 million, it is hard to say, it is expected that there will be a change. For example, according to the current situation, many investors talk to us, for example, if there is no change, it would be unreasonable. So, combining these points, if any investors are paying attention, they should pay attention to these directions.
Host: Thank you very much for your analysis and for the advice for many clients who want to immigrate. It will be 2015 soon. In the new year, with a new beginning, does Worldway Group have any new development plans?
Sun Gelin: In the new year, we will first continue to position ourselves from the perspective of service, continuing to work hard and improve. We now have branch offices or customer service centers in the countries where we operate. We are committed to taking our service for old clients to a higher level. In addition, in choosing new project directions, we also try our best to select the best of the best. For example, our current overseas branch offices all hire local employees, not local ethnic Chinese, but native-born people, such as our Portugal branch and other branches. Why do we hire such employees? It is to allow our services to be localized and better help our investors manage their lives in all aspects after immigration. In addition, our domestic branch offices also have customer service departments, and we will also pay closer attention to ensuring that the domestic customer service department and the overseas customer service department can better cooperate to help more clients with good service. I think the philosophy of service first is a key focus area that we will continue to develop in 2015.
Host: Clients will be able to enjoy better and higher-quality services. Thank you very much, Ms. Sun, for coming to our studio. We also congratulate Worldway Group on winning the 2014 Annual Most Comprehensive Immigration Agency award. Thank you all for your attention and support for Sina Education.
