chefdennis
Veteran Expediter
American businessmen are out of cash and the government is doing its part to tax them out of business...so lets welcome the NEW investor class....those that BUY their greencard form the gov..invest here, make a profit then funnel it back home...then when they have used it up, they dump the business and the so called assets and go back home, having soakked the giv and the people. The Savy Businessman:
U.S. attracts rich foreign investors by expediting green cards
by Tom Breckenridge and Robert L. Smith/Plain Dealer Reporters
Saturday August 15, 2009, 2:52 PM
U.S. attracts rich foreign investors by expediting green cards - cleveland.com
C
U.S. attracts rich foreign investors by expediting green cards
by Tom Breckenridge and Robert L. Smith/Plain Dealer Reporters
Saturday August 15, 2009, 2:52 PM
U.S. attracts rich foreign investors by expediting green cards - cleveland.com
C
ommunity leaders hungry for capital are discovering a little-known pipeline -- wealthy foreign investors who yearn to come to America.
Groups in Summit County and Wooster are the first in Ohio to take advantage of a federal program that allows wealthy foreigners to receive an expedited immigrant visa, or green card, in exchange for investing $500,000 or more in job-creating ventures.
Recently, both Summit County and Wooster established regional immigrant-investment centers, which allow them to seek out job-creating immigrants.
Overseas dollars hard at work here
The EB-5 program
Completed projects
• Build Comcast Corp.'s new headquarters in downtown Philadelphia.
• Expand two Vermont ski resorts into year-round resorts.
• Convert Seattle warehouses into downtown housing.
• Expand dairy farms in South Dakota.
• Plant new vineyards and fruit farms in California.
• Build ethanol plants in Kansas.
Pending projects
Akron hopes to land investors for the $900 million Goodyear headquarters project.
Wooster hopes to attract investors to a research park linked to Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.
Pennsylvania is recruiting Chinese investors to help finance the expansion of the Philadelphia convention center.
The so-called investor green card program has drawn more than $1 billion in foreign money to the United States in the past three years. The newcomers helped to build ski condos in Vermont, expand movie studios in Los Angeles and renovate shipyards in Philadelphia.
Akron and Summit County officials hope to lure money to the proposed redevelopment at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in east Akron.
Business groups in Wooster hope to draw foreign investment to a research park and to projects not yet imagined. They gained approval for a regional investment center covering 16 counties in Northeast Ohio.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said he's studying the program. And local businessman Eddy Zai has applied for an investment center that could target areas in Cuyahoga County, though he's not ready to talk about the effort.
The investor green card program, overseen by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is set to expire Sept. 30. Advocates believe that Congress will vote to extend the program or make it permanent.
"Big, civic projects are struggling to raise capital, so this is another potential source," said Ray Leach, who heads the regional nonprofit JumpStart Inc., which supports startup companies.
"We're going from having none [of the investment centers] to having three or more," said Leach, who is on the Wooster regional center's board. "Better late than never."
The special visa, know as the EB-5, can shave years off an immigrant's wait for permanent residency, which leads to U.S. citizenship. The federal government makes 10,000 EB-5 visas available yearly.
Foreign nationals gain a conditional green card by investing at least $1 million in projects that create at least 10 jobs. The required investment drops to $500,000 in economically distressed areas. With proof that the investment was sustained for two years and that new jobs resulted, the immigrant visa becomes permanent.
By creating a government-approved regional center, a community can use the program to assemble foreign investors for major projects, both public and private.
The prize for those investors, a fast green card, is a tantalizing lure.
"It gives a wealthy immigrant options that other immigrants don't have," said local immigration lawyer David Leopold. "It's like those MasterCard commercials. What's it worth? To some people, it's priceless."
The chance to live and work in America's Midwest appealed to Britain's Mike Patel, who gained a conditional green card by investing $1 million in the hospitality industry in small-town Ohio and New York.
Patel, a native of England, estimates he created more than 100 jobs in recent years, often by reviving or building hotels in cities like Conneaut, Ohio; Erie, Pa.; and Dunkirk, N.Y.
His business, based in Erie, started with a tourist trek though western New York and eastern Ohio in the 1990s.
"I saw the opportunity. These towns needed fresher hotels," he said. "And that's what we built."
Patel applied for the investor green card through Cleveland-based Margaret Wong & Associates and said he hopes to become a U.S. citizen.
Of the 10,000 visas available, 3,000 are set aside for those who invest through regional centers, which direct foreign investment to specific sites.
The investor green card program is vastly underused. In 2008, the federal government issued only 526 of the cards.
The number has jumped to 912 so far this year. The number of regional centers is rising, too, to 63 in more than 20 states. That's up from 23 centers just a year ago.
Still, the lack of marketing and the program's impermanent status -- Congress has voted several times to keep it going -- have stymied awareness, said Robert Kruszka, who directs the program for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
He and other advocates fully expect Congress to renew the program before Sept. 30. This time, they hope it's for good.
"It can help a community anywhere," Kruszka said. "It can help a state."
Some believe the underused program reflects a larger ambivalence toward immigrants, especially in states like Ohio and places like Greater Cleveland.
"I don't think our state government, our local government, has really paid much attention to what immigrants can bring to a community," Leopold said. "It's an amazing opportunity."
Akron officials learned of the program last year. They turned to developer Stuart Lichter, a leading figure in a proposed $900 million redevelopment in east Akron that is anchored by a new headquarters for Goodyear.
Lichter knew of the regional centers. He had worked with CMB Export LLC, a regional center in California that invested in McLellan Business Park. Lichter's company is helping redevelop the one-time Air Force base.
CMB has drawn $12 million in foreign investment so far to McClellan, leveraging larger packages of public-private funding, company officials said. A CMB affiliate wants to launch the Summit County regional center, with the support of local officials.
"With capital markets tight, this is an opportunity to tap another source," said Robert Bowman, Akron's deputy mayor of economic development. "We have a number of projects, as do others, that are just sitting there because developers can't get the financing."
Setting up the regional center is the easy part, said Patrick Hogan, president of CMB Export, based in Moline, Ill.
"People think you just set it up and people flock in," Hogan said. "That's not the case. It's a tremendous amount of hard work."
Typically, CMB markets its projects with potential investors from India, China, South Korea and elsewhere. They invest in a limited partnership that floats a bridge loan to the project, Hogan said.
Both CMB and the federal immigration agency dig into the investor's background and source of money, to ensure legitimacy.
CMB makes its money by receiving a cut of the interest charged on the bridge loan. It also charges the foreign investors a syndication fee of $30,000, on top of the $500,000 they put up, Hogan said.
Wooster business leaders gained federal approval of their regional center several days before CMB and Summit County in June. But their strategy is less well formed.
Wooster Growth Corp. and Wayne [County] Growth Partnership learned of the immigrant-investor program last year and have put up $100,000 to establish the Northeast Ohio Regional Center, said Wooster lawyer Margo Broehl.
The regional center's investment scope covers 16 counties. A priority project is the proposed BioHio research park, focused on commercializing cutting-edge research at Ohio State University's agricultural research and development center in Wooster.
Wooster officials are looking to hire an executive director. One strategy could be to assemble a list of projects and then to work with the Ohio Department of Development's overseas offices to market the investment projects, Broehl said.
Cleveland's Mayor Jackson said he learned of the 17-year-old program only recently and thinks it's a "great idea."
"I believe in the concept," Jackson said. "Let's figure out a way that's best for Cleveland."
