What is causing the surge of EB-5 investors from India?

India is one of the largest countries in the world and it would only take an infinitesimal percentage of the total population that had the interest in immigrating to the United States through the EB-5 investor program to cause a surge. The extent to which the market is booming or surging is happening because more and more regional centers are marketing their projects in India; thus, Indian nationals are becoming more familiar with the option of immigrating themselves or on behalf of a family member by utilizing the EB-5 regional center investment program.

The deadline for regional center filings at $500,000 is looming and EB-2, EB-3 and even EB-1 cases for India are taking forever.

The reasons most often cited by clients are based on three fears: (1) the fact that the current program is set to sunset on September 30. (2) The new Congressional bill on EB-5 regulations calls for raising the amount of investment from $500,000 to $800,000 (in a TEA) and from $1 million to $1.2 million (standard minimum). If the bill succeeds even at least in part, the increase may adversely affect Indian investors. (3) The current Indian foreign remittance regulation only permits $250,000 per year and some have wondered if they will be able to remit enough money for the I-526 filings if the investment funds are further increased.

There are many possible reasons. These include huge backlogs in employment based processing for Indian nationals (both in EB-2 and EB-3) and the H-1B visas reaching cap capacity every year in conjunction, thereby limiting Indian nationals as well as other nationals from being able to live/work in the U.S. while they wait for the green card processing through employment, etc. Also, at the moment, EB-5 projects and regional centers are heavily promoting in India.

The main reason is the extremely long waiting lines in other employment sponsored categories such as the EB-2 Master''s degree and EB-3 Bachelor''s, etc. In addition, there have been extensive marketing efforts that have caused a surge of interest.

Most of my clients are H-1B workers with Masters degrees (or higher) who have the approved EB-2 immigrant petitions already in hand. However, due to the tremendously backlogged visa numbers in that category (nearly 10 years of backlog), many are opting for EB-5 to get their green card faster. However, due to the per-country quota in place, we will have to see how the surge may impact India EB-5 numbers in the future, as it has for China. Thus, the sooner workers sign up for the EB-5 program before the numbers get too high, the better.

There are several reasons. Firstly, there is a little more confidence in the program. Earlier, people were scared that it was a scam, as there have been many instances of scams in the past. The Indian market is not as sophisticated as the Chinese market. More importantly, the EB2 and EB3 category has retrogressed 10 years; this, along with a lack of H-1B visas, causes people to panic.

Our belief is that more attention and focus has been paid to India in light of the retrogression issues with China. As greater resources are being allocated to India or other countries, they are showing an uptick in investors.