Buying a US Green Card is More Popular than Ever

In a study conducted by Bloomberg and released this week, the number of foreign investors and entrepreneurs approved for the EB-5 visa more than doubled in 2012.

The EB-5 visa grants a non-US national the opportunity to become a US citizen through an investment of at least $500,000 into a US enterprise, which will employ a minimum of ten people within the first two years.

EB-5 visa applications have soared in the past decade, with data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) showing that approved applications sky rocketed from 69 in 2002, to 3,677 in 2012. Not only have EB-5 visas grown in popularity, but the total figures for immigrant visas have risen by 24 percent in the same period, from 389,000 to 482,000.

Edward Alden, a senior member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a specialist in visa and immigration policy noted that ‘if you look at investment in the US economy over the past decade, it has been fairly weak. Anything you can do to strengthen investment, even at the margins, is valuable.”

The EB-5 program certainly does this, having generated more than $6.8 billion in investment in US investment and creating around 50,000 jobs for US locals since the program began in 1990.

In line with renewals and ‘comprehensive’ reform for US immigration policies in lieu of President Barack Obama’s re-election, the white house has proposed that EB-5 investor opportunities be extended and grown as an integral part of this.