Expected Increase in EB-5 Applications from China

The son of a Communist revolutionary general, Xi Jinping, has been named the General Secretary of the Communist party and therefore will take over as China’s president from March 2013.

According to a recent NBC report, there is a general consensus of disappointment among Chinese citizens about the government changes. Many of the Chinese population had hoped that the recently held congress would signal a renewed period of change and liberalism, and may now resolve to leave China.

When considering the development in the USA’s political situation of late, namely Barack Obama being re-elected as president, alongside the great transition in Chinese leadership, we are to expect that a number of Chinese nationals will be seeking to abandon the economic and domestic model which comes with a further ten years of communist governing.

Owing to this, the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Service) expects a stronger wave of interest among Chinese investors seeking to establish permanent residence in the USA, and the EB-5 program is a direct route to achieving permanent residency and citizenship.

This in turn highlights an area of emerging competition – there already exists a strong trend in Chinese investors immigrating to the US through EB-5, and in fact they are currently the largest group of EB-5 holders, with 77% of petitions filed.

The U.S. immigration and visa allocation system has a limited number of total visas available per program, and per country within each program (known as “per country caps”). Due to the exponential growth of the EB-5 program in China, the USCIS intends to regulate and put a ‘cut-off date’ on Chinese applications in 2013.