Ep.14_Immigration Attorney Ed Beshara Discusses Cost Efficiency of EB-5 Visa

During this episode, Mr. Beshara shares his thoughts on how the EB-5 Visa Program compares to alternative visa programs, from its cost efficiency and overall benefits – to the process of immigrating to the United States. Mr. Beshara also provides his thoughts on past and current EB5 trends, his outlook on the future of EB5, and how he has helped investors choose the right Visa program for them.  Mr. Beshara has been exclusively practicing U.S. Immigration Law and offering immigration guidance and solutions since 1983. Based out of Orlando, Florida, he has represented many clients worldwide regarding their business, and family U.S. Visa goals. He is also a valued member of EB-5 Investors Magazine and was recognized nationally as one of the Best U.S. immigration Lawyers in America.

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On today's episode of investing in the American Dream podcast, we have featured guest immigration attorney Ed Bashara. Interviewed by guest host Peter HelLand. Mr. Bashara has exclusively been practicing US immigration law and offering immigration guidance and solutions since 1983. Based out of Orlando, Florida, he has represented many clients from all over the world in regards to their business and family US visa goals. He is also a valued member of EB five investors magazine, and was recognized nationally as being one of the best US Immigration Lawyers in America. During this episode, Mr. Bashara shares his thoughts on how the EB five visa program compares to alternative visa programs from its cost efficiency and overall benefits to the process of immigrating to the United States. Mr. Bashara also provides his thoughts on past and current EB five trends, his outlook on the future of EB five, and how he has helped many investors choose the right visa program for them. Let's get into it. And I want to thank you so much for joining us today. We're extremely happy to have you with us. Well, it's a pleasure joining you. And I'm sure that we'll have a lively and worthwhile discussion. I agree. So it's no secret that you have represented corporate and individual clients from many different countries worldwide in regards to their business and family US visa goals. However, what today all about EB five and its visa program. I wanted to start off by asking, When did you first get involved with the EB five visa program? Well, you know, it's sometimes I find it hard to believe that I've been an attorney for 45 years, and practicing US immigration for 39. But we definitely started to represent clients in the EB five space back in 1991. In fact, 9192, we had our first EB five investor, it was a direct investor investing. I believe that that time 1 million US dollars into a hotel project, he was able to show that he was going to create 10 full time jobs, which he did. And within the year, he was able to obtain permanent residency, conditional by the way conditional residency. So it was a very good first experience with an EB five investor. And then over the years, we started to see more EB five investors, especially especially since 2007 2008, we started to see more investors come to our firm and be involved in the EB five program, either direct or regional center. That's great. So along with all that history, how is the EB five visa program different from some of these other visa programs that some investors are keen to get into? I think that basically, if someone wanted to be very passive, as a candidate for residency, then the EB five program is a good program for them, of course, they still have to have the minimum investment requirement. But if they said to me, Well, look, we just want to sit back, put our money somewhere, as if they were investing in bonds, or securities, and we want to let the money sit there, and then eventually get the residency cards for themselves, their spouses and children. Well, this is the way to go. It's passive, they can be involved a little bit in management, decisions, policy decisions, but if they trust the project, which is could be a regional center project, they trust the people behind the operations, the entrepreneurs, there's a long history, maybe your success of the business operation in the hotel, for example, it can be passive, and that's how it's gonna be different to other visa programs, but to the benefit of the investor that wants to go that way. Also, more predictable sometimes where you can say, Look, you know, I'm not trying to get a green card through a job offer, then I have to see if there's any US workers that are available for the job, that sometimes it's not predictable. So this is predictable, you know, I'm making an investment. I'm putting the money into a project or the my own project or someone else's project that's managed by other people that experience and so those are the big differences of why an investor would choose EB five. Right. And I know that you just mentioned the minimum investment requirement. What are some of the qualifications that make a potential investor eligible for an EB five visa? Yeah, I think that Basically, if we're looking at what the investor has to commit, as far as their funds to the investment, you've got areas that can be classified as target employment areas, or rural areas. And so there are definitions. Usually the economist will say to the project less analyze with the data that they have available as to whether an area is considered to be a target employment area or area of high unemployment. If it is, well, then the investor can make the minimum investment, which today is 800,000. But if it's not in a rural area, or tight employment area, well, then they have to make the investment of $1,050,000. But it's not much of a difference really, today, it used to be a big difference at one time, though, of course, was the difference between 500,000 and 1 million. At one time in November of 2019, the minimum was 900. But then the maximum non TA and rural, non rural areas 1.8 million. So we're back to a situation that we haven't seen since he first started where the difference between a minimum investment amount and the maximum is only right now. 200,000. Right? So would you say that EB five is the most cost efficient investment employment visa program, if we talking about, you know, there's different ways that people can obtain residency either through a family based, you could be married to a US citizen, your parent, your parents of a US citizens, etc. So with the family based process, of course, it's not expensive, you know, when you're looking at paying for the attorneys fees, and then just paying for the government filing fees. But if you're looking at employment based, if you're going through a process of company saying well, I want to offer you a job, and see if there's any value for us workers, well, then, of course, that's not that expensive if you're extra ordinary, and you are a famous tennis player or soccer player, and you can show the government that you're on the top 1% of your, that's not really expensive. But when we're looking at business related processes, employment based business related processes, even if you're looking at the temporary business place, processes, you're looking at EB five as being the least expensive. And I'll give you one example. There's a process by which foreign nationals executives or managers cannot obtain permanent residency, if they are transferred from their parent company, which could be a holding company in their own country, or another country, and they transferred to a US subsidiary. In those situations to create the US of surgery. A lot of money has to be spent sometimes $2 million, as an example, because the way that you can get approved through a business related and this is employment based intercompany transfer is that a lot of money has to be spent on either a new setup in the US, or buying an existing business or even maintaining an existing business. And the basis for me saying that is that you've got the requirement that if you want to be transferred into the US, as an executive of Manager, which will be the basis for you obtaining residency of the US, you have to show that you are an executive or manager according to the USCIS policies and directives. They want you to be able to say that I'm an executive or CEO as an example of VP. And my interaction is with other higher level managers and executives. So that means that you're looking at payroll alone, for having an organizational hierarchy to support an executive transfer could be, as I said, a million or two or three to either be in that situation to put yourself in that situation or to maintain it. So that is a lot more expensive to do an intercompany transfer and qualify for residency as an executive than to have a set amount with a say 200,000 or 1,000,050. In an EB five regional center project, lot less expensive. Yeah. Yeah, you make a lot of great points there. And now obviously, there's a lot of moving parts of this program, as I'm sure the listeners can predict. So how do you as a lawyer yourself, help potential investors through this process? Our law firm has done both you know, we've created the documentary Asian with the team of professionals to qualify a project either under a direct EB five or a regional center EB five. We've done that for many years. But if an investor approaches us and says, Mr. Bashara, we would like to invest in an EB five project. First of all, we have set of questions for the investor. More likely than not they be become our client through an agreement representation. And we will say less introduce you to Eb five projects that we believe credible, their experience have had a good track record, and that they are complying with the new laws. Right. So if we feel as though that the integrity provisions will be complied with, and we will say to the investor, we're going to provide some due diligence, when we introduce you to the project, we will be able to offer you immigration advice as to whether this project would be able to be approved by USCIS from an immigration standpoint. But we would say to the investor, you have to make your own investment decision or business, we cannot offer you investment advice. So I'm sure there are, you know, investment advisors and broker dealers that can offer that independent advice to the investor if they so wish. So we would might have to ask a number of questions to the investor, which project Do you have they like, you know, they've been introduced? And then at the same time, we're doing that we are asking the investor? How did they get their funds to invest in the project? Because we have to authenticate their funds, and show that they came from lawful sources and legitimate sources, right. So we have to authenticate that. So if they convincing us that, yes, the money is coming from authenticated sources, then we have to ask them to provide the documentation to support that process to support that source. And once we have talked to the investors about authenticating these sorts of funds, about the type of project they want to invest in, how much they want to invest. And again, as I said, usually this is done, you know, as they are our client, then we can spend the time and talking to them, introducing them to the projects, they make a decision, and then we can move forward. But again, I think that the only way that an investor can get really good advice is go to attorneys that have the experience and expertise to be able to advise them correctly. Yeah, absolutely. And I know that you mentioned some projects there. And I just want to real quick mention our brand new callus project that FPP has launched and we're partners with montage and Pendry. And it's a great, great project. It's an$800,000, minimum investment amount of over 40 jobs for investor, a single census tract T, EA and a lot, a lot of great things about it. We actually have a previous podcasts on it, and you can learn more about it there. Well, we've been working with the first public partner since 2007 2008. And we've had many investors that have approached us that we have introduced to first pathway partners. And of course, you know, nine, Bob and Dan, Jessica for many, many years. Yeah, well, a lot of history there. A lot of great, great partnerships. So getting back on track to the EB five visa, are you seeing any trends in the EB five industry? Or are you seeing more or less interest from investors looking to come through to the United States? Under this new law? Yes, I see that, you know, the trend has been, you know, we had close to 100,000, maybe five investors in total, around about 2020. And then now we're seeing the trend. I think that 2019 When the minimums went up, you know, to 800 1900 1001 point 8 million. We saw it a little bit of a drop, then we had COVID There was another drop, and then June of 2021, we saw another drop because the program lapsed. And then now we've seen the resurgence as of March of this year, right because of the new Ria, the reform Integrity Act, which is the new EB five program. So we're seeing a couple of things happen right now. There are many economies in this world, unfortunately, that are collapsing. You know, some in Europe, some in South America, some in Asia, back actually collapsing. We've seen it. So the investors want to leave that their own country and move to another kind Country and the US is one of those countries that, of course, is number one on their list, you know, standard living quality of life, you know, not only for themselves, but especially for their children is here. So the trend that I'm seeing, and we saw this trend back in 2007 2008, when, number one, some of the investors that wanted to go to places like Canada and other countries could not do so they wanted to invest their money and move to a country that would be receptive to their move. And then we saw the fact that the projects themselves at that time in 2008, there was a downturn in the US economy. So the big projects, were looking for other ways of funding their developments, you know, the, especially if they're at the construction stage. So because the EB five money was not that expensive compared to bank funding. And even today, bank funding is hard to get in. It's extensive, EB five, where it's, you know, maybe 1% 2%, three, or 4%, on their rate of return, is a lot less expensive than traditional funding. So the trend that we see now is that the people still want to come to the US. And they have a means by which they can get residency, the projects themselves are trying their best to accommodate the investors. So that's a trend I see. But with the new Ria, and I would like to talk about this a little bit later. But with the new IRA, the trend for what investors can do, in pursuing the EB five, immigration process has changed dramatically. So kind of going off of that. And everything happening in the EB five world with modern events happening as well. As you know, there was a recent big update in the world of EB five, specifically, how investors can now file by five to six e petitions 10 days after the regional center files their i 956. F project applications. How do you think this will affect EB five investors in their respective regional centers? And do you think this update will set a precedent for a future streamlined EB five process? Yeah, look, I think that the EB five regional centers that are very serious about wanting to move forward with their developments. They want to be efficient, they want to be effective. They also want to make sure that USCIS is behind their projects. And that's why the 956 F is filed was very similar to the old exemplar 94 petitions. But the idea is to show the USCIS that the project documentation is in order to show that they're complying with the EB five laws and regulations and policies by saying, here's the EB five supporting documentation to not only show that the project will be approved from an immigration EB five standpoint, but the investors are protected the integrity of the investors is everything. So when the project is filing the 956 F, business plan, economic report securities, offering documents, information on fund management, etc, they're letting immigration know that they're in compliance with the new integrity board. Now, the good news is that once you file that 956 With a supporting documentation, you don't have to wait for an approval, you know, you file it, you show proof of filing. And within 10 days, if you don't get a receipt, notice, then you can show that you did file it, you know through the caching of the check that you sent in, or some other means, right, but the 10 days is the limit. So then the investors can file their five to six petitions with the project. I think the investors feel comfortable. That and regional center has gone to the trouble of filing the project documentation. I think one day when USCIS becomes more efficient, and they approved the 956 F within 10 days, it would be wonderful, because then it gives the investors more of a comfort level that the USCIS has approved the project documentation ahead of time. The other I believe advantage and yet time will tell whether this is going to be the case. And I think in the act, it says that we can do this, where when we file the five to six e petitions, we won't have to file all the project documentation that was submitted with a 956 F. Now that may be allowing us to be a little bit more effective, less time consuming in filing the five to six e petition. But even though it's in the law, we wanted to have feedback from USCIS as to their policy in regard To the filing. Right? Yeah. So we see this as a marvelous way of protecting investors, and giving the investors a comfort level that the regional center projects are in compliance. Right? You are exactly right. And, you know, I kind of signals that the EB five visa program is fully back in business. Oh, it's definitely is, you know, we're seeing many inquiries on a daily basis. And, you know, it's, it's really, you know, not hard to keep up. But it's mainly, we, instead of devoting an hour and a half, sometimes to an initial consultation with the investor, we have to now invoke, you know, probably only provide 30 minutes, and then they sign up with us, and then we move forward. But the other thing that is tremendous, as far as a trend is that there's so many 1000s of investors already in the US, right, and they are in a process where they could be a visitor, it could be a student, they could be the beneficiary of another employment based category. And these processes, the employment based category may take a long time, because the priority dates are not current, let's say for China or for India. And it's gonna take longer for them to get residency, maybe eight years, 10 years, etc. And so instead of waiting to get a green card or permanent residency through a job offer, and those investors are jumping in to the EB five program, and they say, Okay, now with the new law Ria, not only can we now jump to a five to six petition, but at the same time we're filing the five to six petition also apply concurrently with the application for conditional residency, and the Employment Authorization application and the permission to travel. So we don't have to wait for the five to six petition to be approved. As long as it's filed, we can currently file now application for the green card. And those are for not only those individuals that have a long wait in another category, but all those other individuals that are in the US as non immigrants, but they legitimately here with a true intent to be an unknown immigrant students, visitors, people that are here as non immigrants running their own small business. Now they can jump into EB five and concurrently for other applications delivering care. Absolutely, that's great. There's a lot of there's a lot of moving parts of this again, and investors might be concerned with the amount of money that they're spending on investments and fees and all that other stuff. So how well does the EB five visa program protect investors wealth? Well, well, I think that, you know, that by investing in a project, the investors are realizing that they have to invest their funds, whether it's 800,000, or 1,050,000, with a project and their investment has to be at risk 100%. So that's why it's very important for the investors to do due diligence, not only on the immigration compliance, that the project will be involved in, as far as making sure there's immigration compliance, but there's also the investment decision to invest in a project where the players in the project, you know, the entrepreneurs, the people that own the operations, the Will It could be hotels or warehouses etc. What is their background? What is their credibility, what is their success rate. So when the investor is making an investment decision, they want to make sure that when they place their funds, which are at risk, that the funds are going to be maintained, the projects are going to be credible enough, they're going to be financially successful, and that the money is going to be somewhat preserved and use the right way in the project. So more or less if the project is going to be financially viable. Well, then, at the end of their conditional residency, when it comes time to see an exit strategy when the investors could possibly see a return of capital, that the projects are either going to get refinancing of the project or to sell the project and then those funds are going to filter their way back to the investor which they can legally see a return of, of capital, not the original capital, but a return of capital based upon the financial viability of the project. So they can see that their money can be preserved, even though they might not make a lot of money, but it's preserved so that they can get a green card. The other way that they can reserve the capital and a lot of clients say, Look, we want to leave that country, you know, the value of their own currency is being reduced compared to the American US dollar. So So what we may suggest is that they can invest either in their own country or the US into other wealth management and preservation products. They can invest in real estate. In the US, they can invest in real estate, they can spend a million or two on a house, which they can live in, then at the same time, they can go to a mortgage company get borrowed funds on the house that they just pay cash for, and use those borrowed funds towards their EB five investment in the project. So even though the investment in the project is at risk, and not a large red return, by putting their money first into a home as an example, that home is going to increase in value over the next several years. Right, right. Which is great. They could invest in real estate homes or townhomes, where they pay cash, they take the money out, put in Eb five, and yet, there's a management company that will rent out these homes, either short term rental income or long term rental income, and then making money on the assets a purchase as an example in the US. In addition, I can go to a bank, and I can put their money first into securities into bonds, right? And they can say, Okay, we put our money here, there's great rate of return on securities and bonds and money market accounts. And then they go to the bank and say, Look, we want to borrow against the assets that we just purchased, and we make money on and the banks will say, Fine, what cash do you need? Here's a catch. And then the investor will say to the banks, do we need to pay you back? No, the banks don't have to have a payment from the investor back to them for the money they borrowed. Because the banks, what they're going to do is looking at the return the rate of return, and the interest that's been made, and use that interest to pay the banks back on what was borrowed to the investor. So you've got different ways and means by which the investors can preserve their wealth. Right. So they either preserve their wealth by investing in a good solid EB five project, like first pathway and some other EB five regional center projects out there, or, or they invest in wealth management products first, and then take the money out, then to put into the EB five, right, yeah, you made a lot of great points there. And Mr. Bashar, I want to thank you so much for joining us. And before before you leave us, I want to ask you one more final question. What are some recommendations that you have for investors looking to immigrate to the United States? I think the first, the best recommendation is that, first of all, we have to do it. When investors come to us we do what's called a first step analysis. We sit them down in zoom call, they're in the office. And we have to ask, what are their goals? You know, what are their goals for themselves? Do they have children, they have minor children. And we always recommend that they do seek the services of an experienced EB five immigration attorney with the expertise that they always invest in, they're going to do it in an EB five regional center project, again, what we said, make sure that they invest in a credible project that's in compliance with the integrity provisions. And that has the financial capability of protecting the well. But we also recommend that they see other professionals, not just the five attorney, but that, you know, we and we've done this since day one since 1983. Since I've been practicing, we recognize what we're capable of as immigration lawyers. But we also recognize that there are other professionals that have expertise that can help investors, a CPA certified public accountant that specializes in tax planning, international tax planning, the corporate attorney that recognizes that they may want to buy a house or a real estate attorney, or they may want to buy a business besides doing the EB five. So there are other professionals, bank managers, other professionals, lawyers, accountants, that can help the investor when they are planning on making the move. So they could be part of the team of professionals. Right, right. The investors have to realize that they may have been successful in their own country, but now they're moving to a new country, and they need professional team members to be able to advise them correctly credibly, and that they have the expertise and experience to be able to say to the investors, this is the way that you should make the move to the US. You're absolutely right. The investors do need to take advantage of all the resources that are at their disposal, including Austin with you Mr. Bashara, but um, I again, I want to say thank you so much for joining us. I know that we covered a lot of information and a lot, a lot of great information. You know, the EB five program is fully back in business. I know that you're excited, I know that we're excited. And we can't wait to see what the future holds for not only us and you but for our fellow investors as well. Thank you very much for having us. And remember the last word in self help is help get the right people to advise you and the right people that you want to invest with. If you would like to know more about first pathway partners, and how they can help you with a direct EB five investment, or if you're looking for other visa opportunities, such as an E two visa, please contact them directly online at www dot first pathway.com