If It seems we’ve done a good job highlighting the dangers of utilizing all the regular avenues for accessing EB-5 investment information we assure you it is not at all our intention to cast aspersions or to undermine any true, reputable sources of information.  Still, the truth of the matter had to be laid out plainly if we were to provide you with a true guide for navigating the EB5 investor visa program.
Even given our very candid overview of the information resources available to you and other potential EB-5 immigrants, there are excellent, reliable sources of advice and information, and some very important facts that you need to know before you decide who to trust when making this critical decision of choosing an EB5 regional center investment project.  We’ll discuss these points next, and then also expand upon them in the next few weeks as we look at the work and concerns of an impartial third-party advisor.

WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE YOU DECIDE

The reforms that resulted from the 1998 changes to the regional center program and the subsequent challenges did a lot to improve regional center investment, but they cannot take away all the potential pitfalls of RC investment; while the approval process does ensure that your investment will qualify, it cannot control the investment and so cannot determine adequacy of a given regional center investment for you and your goals.

The only way to ensure the fitness of your choice in a center is to do the due diligence and to thoroughly consider the center from all angles.  This means that you need to learn all about the players involved, and measure their experience and abilities—essentially, treat them as you would any employee or applicant for an important position.

This is easy to talk about, but hard to actually do.  Quite frankly, the information that you need in order to really go deep with your research is hard to come by.  It’s extremely hard to go it alone and choose a regional center based on what you are presented with by the centers themselves.  It is much more to your benefit to seek the advice of outside third-parties, the way you would with any major life decision, or with any investment.

Getting the Right Advice

Is this to say that the regional centers are in some way dishonest or untrustworthy?  Not at all. But it is saying that you need to consider the source and their motivation.

To be perfectly blunt, when you approach a regional center, or even when you visit their website or talk with a representative, you will be told what they want you to hear.  You will be painted a very pretty picture of what may turn out to be an excellent investment opportunity and pathway to immigration; or, you may be painted a very pretty picture of what turns out to be a serious mismatch, or a borderline profitable investment.  In either case the regional center will paint you a pretty picture; it’s up to you to find out what they may not be illustrating.

What you always need to remember when working with regional centers and their representatives is that they have one sole purpose—to sell their investment.  They need to sell themselves and do it well in order to attract enough investors and remain in existence.

They need your money to survive!

Again, this doesn’t mean that they are telling you things that are untrue, but more likely that they are telling you part of the story.  What you are told may be true, and may sound very good to you (no doubt it will); but you cannot blindly trust that that is all there is to know.

It is what you are not told that should be your concern.  The downsides to the project, the unrealized performances, the real risks to the project, or how well suited a project may or may not be to your particular, personal goals and interests.  The less “pretty” side of the investment is not what a regional center or representative is going to voluntarily talk about.  For that, you need an impartial advisor.

The only way to objectively compare the pros and cons of different regional centers, and to compare them to your own defined goals and interests, is to work with an impartial third-party advisor—someone who is not paid or employed based on the performance of any one given regional center or project; someone whose livelihood stands apart from individual investment performances; and just as important, someone who specializes in obtaining permanent residence through the EB-5 program.  Such an advisor will know what is needed from the investment, and know what to look for “behind the scenes” of the regional centers that you are considering.  Not only that, but this type of specialist will know where to find the answers to the questions that need asking.

It is important to know, however, that the person you are looking for to fill this advisement role is not an Immigration Attorney.  Certainly Immigration Attorneys do have their critical place in the process of obtaining an EB-5 visa, but it is not in the selection of a regional center.  (Recently a prominent immigration attorney stated in an article:  “[client's] decision to invest in one regional center versus other regional centers should turn largely on purely business considerations that [attorney] will explicitly not advise on”.) The function of an Immigration Attorney is to help you with the legal aspects of immigration—with the laws themselves, as needed and where appropriate.  Their area of specialty and expertise is in the law, not in the business or investment decisions, and not in deciding the fitness of one regional center as it fits with your life and goals.  The role of an Immigration Attorney is to give you legal advice.  You will most definitely want to have the name of an excellent immigration lawyer, but you cannot rely on his or her knowledge of the regional centers in order to make this critical choice.

Our next blog will ask the question: If not an Immigration Attorney, then Who?