Want to become a US citizen? Tired of waiting in the tedious visa application process? No problem. For the low low price of half a million dollars (and you can get it back in a couple of years, plus interest), you can become one today!
This is the “Immigrant Investor Visa” called EB5 that grants anyone who would create 10 new jobs in the US, with about $500,000 of investment, permanent residency. According to The Economist and Seattle Business Magazine:
95 would-be immigrants, mostly Chinese, have invested nearly $48 million in a company set up to buy bonds funding the replacement for the aging State Route 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington. If the deal receives final approval, the 95 would be eligible to apply for green cards to live and work in America. The innovative deal is believed to be one of the first times the federal government’s Immigrant Investor Program, also known as EB-5, has been used to fund a public infrastructure project using municipal bonds anywhere in the United States.
I have long lamented the idiocy of US immigration policies. They are based on an ideal of fairness and justice, instead of pragmatic thinking about what’s good for the country. There are over 10 million illegal immigrants in the country, the majority of them are from Mexico and in the low-wage service industry. Yet USCIS refuses to grant even visiting visas to senior executives, engineers, or wealthy tourists.
I once attended a conference in Europe where over half of the attendants were from Silicon Valley. I asked the organizer why she didn’t just hold the conference in San Francisco. The answer was startling: “There is no way to guarantee that critical attendants can get visas into the US.” It turned out that the US requires an in-person interview to obtain a visa and the queue can be several hours long. The official reason for such policy? Part Homeland Security and part concern that they might “jump ship” and stay in the US. Those senior executives, among the elite of their society, just wouldn’t bother. They would take their money where they are welcome, instead of being suspected as a criminal.
Honestly, which country you have visited required you to interview in person to get a visa?
Other countries, most noticeably Canada, take a very simple approach: they welcome those who can make Canada better. Anyone can get a Canadian green card by buying a house that is more than $500,000. Many believe that was a key driver to Vancouver’s and Toronto’s real estate market.
Wall Street Journal estimated that a $500,000 income would put one nearly at the top 1% of the US population. Washington state now has 95 new residents who are at the top of the US income scale. Keep them coming. Each and every one of them will spend money, lots of it, in the state. And we like that. Right?
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