Entering 2010, healthcare and financial regulatory reform, job creation, and immigration were among the top priority legislative issues before Congress. With the controversial healthcare reform bill finally passed through both houses, and President Obama intent on approving a financial reform in the next two months, lawmakers will doubtless continue turning their attention on the remain pressing issues.Since the EB-5 visa program combines both job creation and immigration measures, the federal initiative, and similar investor visas have received much attention lately from members of Congress.
Currently, the EB-5 visa program offers foreign nationals a quicker route to attaining U.S. residency in exchange for an investment of at least $500,000 in a U.S. business. The idea behind the initiative was that the country could leverage a high demand for immigration into the U.S. to attain capital that could stimulate local economies.
Initially, lawmakers took notice of how the recession and seemed to create an economic climate in which more U.S. companies were open to foreign investment.
While the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that runs the visa program, has always reserved 10,000 visas for EB-5 status immigrants, the number of approved EB-5 visas nearly tripled between fiscal years 2008 and 2009, according to the State Department.
While job creation remains a top domestic issue, more Congress members have thrown their support to measures that look to expand the EB-5 visa program by offering some of the 10,000 available visas to foreign nationals who might create jobs by starting their own companies.
Recent reports have indicated that highly performing start-up companies are responsible for a disproportionally large amount of job creation.
Taking this trend into account, Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado penned a proposal in the House of Representatives that extended eligibility for an investor visa to foreign entrepreneurs whose business plan attracts either $250,000 from a U.S.-based venture capital company or $100,000 from another investor, according to the American Visa Bureau.
Since then, Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana introduced similar legislation in the Senate, dubbed the Startup Visa Act of 2010.
As many lawmakers, economists and immigration attorneys continue to laud the job creation potential of such legislation, it seems that an EB-6 status immigration category could soon appear. Meanwhile EB-5 regional centers across the country continue to benefit from investments from immigrants looking for a way into the U.S.
