Buying your way in

From the NYT:

Want a Green Card? Invest in Real Estate

Like many of her fellow classmates at New York University, Yanchu Zhao has a busy schedule. A college junior, she has a double major in economics and journalism, and juggles classes, an internship and life with roommates in a rental near Herald Square.

But unlike many of her fellow classmates, Ms. Zhao came to the United States on a student visa. “A lot of students talked about how hard it was to get a job in New York and in the United States,” she said. “My parents heard that if I can get a green card, it would be easier for me to succeed.”

So two years ago, Ms. Zhao’s parents invested $500,000 in a hotel project on Bryant Park, knowing that their investment could be parlayed into green cards for the family. Three months ago, their paperwork came through and the Zhaos became permanent residents of the United States.

While Ms. Zhao’s father has remained in Beijing, her mother joined her in the United States and is now renting a studio on Roosevelt Island and studying English. Investing in real estate projects in exchange for legal immigration status has become big business in New York City. Through a federal visa program known as EB-5, foreigners, more than 80 percent of them from China, are investing billions of dollars in hotels, condominiums, office towers and public/private works in the hope it will result in green cards. Twelve-hundred foreigners have poured $600 million into projects at Hudson Yards; 1,154 have invested $577 million in Pacific Park Brooklyn, the development formerly known as Atlantic Yards; and 500 have put $250 million into the Four Seasons hotel and condominium in the financial district. The list of projects involving EB-5 investments also includes the International Gem Tower on West 47th Street and the New York Wheel on Staten Island.

Under the federal program, a foreigner who invests $500,000 — and in some instances, $1 million — in a project that will create at least 10 jobs can apply for a green card. It generally takes from 22 to 26 months to obtain legal residency through the program, as opposed to several years for other visa programs.

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26 Responses to Buying your way in

  1. nwnj says:

    Between these buy-ins and the anchor babies they’re turning out the new Chinese bourgeois are having their way with the place. If we’re going to wh0re out citizenship we might as well extract a meaningful amount, 500k is a pittance these days.

  2. anon (the good one) says:

    most people, including the wh0res, that came thru were Ellis island were penniless. those illegals paid no fees

    nwnj says:
    May 16, 2015 at 8:17 am

    500k is a pittance these days.

  3. nwnj says:

    Actually twitiot you had to prove self sufficiency before they would let you off the boat, but if I recall you aren’t one for facts anyway.

    And I don’t think that the investor green card is a bad policy, 500k is just too low of a number.

  4. NJCoast says:

    Last April 2014 I was working at the Count Basie Theatre when Norman came in looking frailer than the last twenty years I have known him. He handed me the usual BB King pins, necklaces and picks that he gave out as souvenirs. He was Riley’s boyhood friend and “manager”. He would be gone the next month. BB was quite frail himself, staying in a wheelchair until moments before he shuffled to his chair onstage. We were downstairs cleaning up when I saw from the set list list what the next song was, I told everybody to stop what they were doing and come up with me to to stage left. I told them this was the last time they would hear this live as BB and Lucille wailed the thrill is gone. The end of an era RIP Riley.

  5. LoveNJ says:

    Here is the thing, they came in boats, we did not want them to stay because they did not have skills nor spoke English. They studied in US and got Ph.D/MS/BS, we did not want them, because they were taking US jobs. OK, they came with money and paid US taxes (green card holders included), paid their kids for US private school cost, we now think 500k is pittance.

    On the other end, another group walked over the boarder, we gave them in-state tuition and healthcare, because they would eventually vote and cut grass for us.

    Shall we ask a cool million at the boarder (air, land and sea) and when at it, kick in a complimentary bus ticket to anywhere continental US?

  6. njescapee says:

    NJ Coast, thanks for sharing.

  7. D-FENS says:

    As long as people come here for individual rights and economic opportunity, welcome.

  8. Marilyn says:

    Update, Im stuck in NJ. Both parents on both sides literally flipped out when we told them we want to move and put house on market. Well got to wait parents are old, one is 90 and the other 84. Just a few more years. Thanks for all the advise!! Stuck in NJ and retired!!

  9. Comrade Nom Deplume, the loan snark says:

    I know, my team sucks, but this was too funny not to share. Luge in particular will like the photo.

    http://newjersey.news12.com/news/westfield-police-looking-for-james-flynn-missing-man-with-dementia-1.10357199?=988768

  10. Ben says:

    most people, including the wh0res, that came thru were Ellis island were penniless. those illegals paid no fees

    they also weren’t the beneficiaries of mercantilism and currency manipulation that have taken American jobs and outsourced them to slave wage paying factories

  11. Mike says:

    A BLACK PERSON TELLING IT LIKE SHE THINKS THE PROBLEM REALLY IS.

    https://www.facebook.com/blaine.cooper23/videos/810221895740651/

  12. Anon E. Moose says:

    Just noticed that Obama is scheduled to be in Camden tomorrow. Send in his O-ness! That’ll fix the place up, better than a bike path.

  13. Ragnian channeling Logan's Run Carousel for Margaret says:

    Marge, baby!!

    Sounds means and I don’t know you personally. But by your post you have won the prize identifying you as the typical “Locust Boomer”.

    You got the best of government subsidies growing up allowing you to get the best education for your buck, got a country not in the best of shape, but not bad vis a vis the rest of the world, and promptly proceeded to sell it out and gut it.

    Best yet, like all the Locust Boomer, you got a “hate” problem and “I don’t want to pay taxes problem”. I got a tip for you, why don’t you take your overdrafted in aged 80+ parents and cancel their Medicare and you can pay from your Asset Management Account the whole cost of taking care of them. I sure don’t want to pay for Locust Baby Boomer geezer 80+ parents, when there are so many struggling kids out there.

    Like they said, out with the old, in with the new. The country needs a rebirth, a rebirth that allows it to get rid of the diseased selfish waste of life known as Baby Boomers that have done incredible damaged to the country.

    Margaret, your attitudes and selfish arrogant way are the problem. No kids, but you take great care of those ugly post menopausal lap dogs or the 55 cats you got. You probably cry yourself to sleep when you see a story about someone abusing an ANIMAL like dog. But shed not a tear when you see a HUMAN kid hungry or struggling.

    Margaret, the Carousel machine coming to get the jerks like you sounds like a tree branch shredder powered by a diesel V-12. When you die in your miserable lonely state, in some back wood area, realize you are the waste, you were the problem, and the wolrd would have been a better place 10 x over if you were not born.

  14. Juice Box says:

    WOW

    Hacker ‘made plane climb’ after taking control through in-flight entertainment system
    FBI affidavit says hacker removed from United Airlines flight last month managed to change flight direction from his seat

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11611058/Cybersecurity-researcher-made-plane-climb-after-hacking-in-flight-entertainment-system.html

  15. grim says:

    Call BS on that

  16. NJT says:

    Getting paid (rent):

    Wife was talking to another Landlord in town yesterday at our daughters softball game. Supposedly if you have a tenant that can’t pay/doesn’t have the money direct them to the Salvation Army or a Methodist church and they will give them the money IF you give the tenant an eviction notice. I’ve never heard of this before. Anyone here have experience with this?

    I’ve only evicted (actually never had to but did start the process several times) because of things/behaviors unrelated to rent. I do however have a tenant that may have a financial issue (medical bill) soon.

  17. chicagofinance says:

    Prodigal Hizzoner returns
    The Putz is back in the house! Our wandering mayor has wandered back to Gotham to store up on invectives for others and accolades for himself before his next trip to the boonies.
    If you have a life, you probably missed his latest barnstorming tour that started in the hinterlands of Washington, DC, where he visited fellow Democrats to demand more money for urban workers’ paradises.
    It’s a tough sell he made impossible by denouncing Republicans who control Congress and the purse strings. To the barricades!
    Then he was off to the People’s Republic of Berkeley, where he spied a “hunger” for political revolution. His nostalgia for the commie way of life in Cuba and Nicaragua surely struck a chord with the Left Coast lefties.
    That’s why you can’t blame Putzie for jetting around the nation — on New Yorkers’ dime, of course. The people out there love him — love him! — while the benighted folk in the five boroughs don’t appreciate our Great Helmsman.
    Our parochial little souls are consumed with fears of random gunshots and careening taxis and mad bicyclists. We obsess about fixing schools, cleaning the streets and getting at least half a buck of services for every buck that City Hall spends.
    What fools we are! We are missing out on the grand war of our time — the war to . . . what is it again? Oh, right, make war on inequality.
    If only we could see what he sees, we’d be cheering him on as he slays the unfair burdens of work, responsibility and liberty.
    Let somebody else pay — that’s the Progressive Way!

  18. leftwing says:

    He knows he is one and done here after the police fiasco. Angling for a mid level appointment in a Hillary administration.

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  20. njescapee says:

    Glad we left NJ area when we did. What a Sh1thole!

  21. Comrade Nom Deplume, the loan snark says:

    I wonder if Chuck Schumer has been at any of the ribbon-cutting ceremonies for buildings financed with expat money coming into the US from China via the EB-5 program.

    If its outbound, he says you are “despicable.” But if its inbound, he’s all smiles.

    I wonder if the irony is lost on him?

  22. Hughesrep says:

    22

    I doubt any more so than Peter King. Baa.

  23. Comrade Nom Deplume, the loan snark says:

    [23] Hughes

    It’s always been a bipartisan issue but Schumer was the one who wanted to double the exit tax until someone pointed out some inconvenient truths.

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