$500,000 EB-5 Option Likely to End in Two Weeks

As the online EB-5 world is awash in speculation about the EB-5 Reform Act, the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that time is running out for anyone who is seriously considering EB-5 at the current $500,000 threshold. If you are serious about EB-5, the time to act is NOW, folks.

The proposed Act has been hastily and secretly put together by Republican congressional members who are, quite obviously, acting on behalf of Big EB-5.  President Trump is likely to sign this bill into law in the coming weeks for several reasons:

• his own son-in-law’s Kushner Companies are in deep debt and looking to Chinese EB-5 capital as a low-cost rescue (as evidenced by the current Congressional and SEC inquiries exploring the Kushner Companies’ financial relationship with unlicensed Chinese migration brokers);
• Trump LIKES EB-5  and lots of his big-city developer friends have been playing the “fake TEA” game and driving investor dollars to the richest parts of NYC for years.  The proposed Act extends the Regional Center program to 2023, providing these giant TEA users a reprieve from the frustrating short-term renewal process which stymies Chinese agent “round ups” of investors in bulk.   He'll get Republican bragging rights to a 5 year extension.
• He will have a lot of pressure from those very friends to sign the Act because it insures the continued channeling of EB-5 investor dollars to rich areas by reducing the price difference between TEA and non-TEA projects to a meaningless amount...while concurrently raising fees dramatically for small Regional Centers operating in true TEAS (like us!)  It's BigEB5's Santa wish list come true and dramatic proof of how money can buy government policies.

Once President Trump signs the proposed Act into law, there will be an immediate 4-month freeze on the filing of I-526 petitions!  So not only must an investor invest NOW if he/she wants to enter on the $500,000 price threshold (before the new TEA amount of $925,000), it is CRITICAL to have your Source of Funds analysis and I-526 filed within next two weeks to avoid both the price increase AND the 4 month freeze in processing.

I know a lot of you have been pondering EB-5 for a long time and I am grateful that you continue to consider American Venture Solutions Regional Center as your likely choice.  As we see it, the proposed new law destroys the purpose of EB-5 job creation in truly needy areas.   AVS will, in the future, offer only tailor-made TRUE TEA, Direct, Pooled EB-5 slots with proven advance job creation (via the EB-5 Bridge Financing protocol we originated in 2010) as a viable alternative to the continued scamming of Big EB-5.  AVS is committed to what Congress intended when they created the EB-5 category in the Immigration Act of 1990: creating new jobs through EB-5 foreign direct investment in poor parts of America.

In the meantime, we are scrambling to file what will likely be THE LAST AVS Regional Center EB-5 slots offered in the foreseeable future, given the situation. I am currently in India meeting with AVS’ last-minute investors here and am heading to our Saigon office next week to meet with our Vietnamese prospective investors finalizing their paperwork.  Monica, the AVS Vietnam Team and I all realize that this timeline is NOT reasonable but we are specifically organizing to be able to insure that all AVS investors committed to our last few Lake Point slots are not only SOF-ready, but their I-526s are filed before the new bill becomes law.

While all of our slots are currently spoken for, the two week deadlines means that we will likely have investors drop out given the documentation timeline.  If you are an accredited Vietnamese investor ready to fund and want to enter EB-5 at the current $500,000 threshold, please contact AVS Vietnam’s Hotline at 0938.61.30.62 immediately to secure an appointment with Monica and me personally next week; we have a full schedule but will work the hours necessary to help you and your family make your EB-5 future a reality before it becomes a far less attractive option.

José Latour

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