Published on 03/06/2015
Chris: So you said the EB-5 has been around since the 1990's, what's the future of the program?
Vaughan: Good question, and with congress we'll never know. I can say that this program is one that generally congressmen have at least one EB-5 project in their district. So generally speaking they are very supportive. But even today it's called the Regional Center Pilot Program because when they originally began the Regional Center program they called it a pilot program, and they have been renewing it every 3 years. So we really don't know that it's going to be here. If I was in China or another country and I thought that this program interested me, I probably wouldn't wait and theres several reasons. One, we just don't know whats going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen with the foreign government, what the foreign government may restrict as far as currency exchange. The other thing we don't know is congress. There are bills that are already written. One of the criticisms of EB-5 is that the $500k investment amount began many years ago and now with inflation that number is quite higher. When people ask me what's going to happen next year with EB-5 or the year after that, I tell them I think it's going to be there. I don’t see it as something congress would not keep in our immigration program because it's been so good for our economy. I would say we can reasonably expect sometime in the future for them to raise the investment amount, that i think will happen. If we tied $500k to inflation today I believe the figures that ive read are somewhere between $875k and $900k for the same benefit. So the same benefit would occur to the investor and the immigrant family, but they would be almost doubling their investment. So the future of EB-5, I think it's going to be there. I'm very much committed to the program, I think congress is committed to the program. What I do see is the investment amount is probably going to change in the future.
