Kumar from India

Hi, guys. So as Sam just mentioned, I’m originally from India. I came to the U.S. almost 11 years ago, first as a student. And then after graduating with a master’s, I started working in a company here, and I’ve been working ever since. So that’s almost 11 years now.

Great. So as a part of working on … So I forgot to mention, but when you work, you have to apply for a work visa, which is the H-1B lottery, as a lot of you probably know. And as a part of the H-1B lottery, you can apply for permanent residency through the employment-based immigration program. So that’s what’s called the EB-1, EB-2, EB-3 categories where your company applies for Green Card for you. So for me, I think what happened is my EB-2 petition, which is the employment-based second priority category, was approved in around 2018.

But if you’re aware, the immigration system has caps on … There’s a country cap, which means they don’t give more than a certain number of visas per country. So for India, that is very much backlogged. So my priority date was not current, and it would’ve taken a very long time to become current. So that was one of the reasons why I decided to pursue the EB-5 path.

There are some other paths like the EB-2 to EB-1 porting path, but there are some downsides to it. For instance, that itself is a multi-year process, building up all that evidence, and it also ties you down to the same employer because you need your employer to also sponsor that.

Correct. Great point there, because as you said, so the H-1B, every time it gets renewed, there’s a period where it restricts your travel before having that visa stamp. So you have to go to a consulate and get that renewed, and that can take some time, because sometimes a lot of the consulates are out of appointments. So that’s one constraint—it reduces your flexibility.

And the other important point is that if you lose your job on an H-1B, you only have 60 days to figure out another job. And that’s actually quite low, because if you’ve seen some of the tech layoffs that are going on, it doesn’t even matter if you’re necessarily a great performer. But if your company has a bad quarter, a couple of bad quarters, they’re going to just lay off, let’s say, an entire department that they don’t think is profitable or something like that. You can be in a situation where you have a 60-day period where you have to look for a job and the market just isn’t good enough. So this gives you that safety net as well. So that was what I was considering.

Okay. So I end up talking to around five attorneys, and they were already whittled down from a bigger list. So I had searched multiple places online and who are the attorneys that are working and then shortened that list. And then I spoke to each of them individually, trying to understand how many EB-5 clients do they have, do they do per year. So I wanted to get an idea of what kind of volume they process, because the immigration and USCIS, there’s a back-and-forth even between you and the attorney and the attorney and you with USCIS, because occasionally USCIS might send an RFE, which is a request for evidence, and the attorney, an experienced attorney, will be able to deal with it much better. I know that from personal experience. In my job, I work with a very famous immigration attorney, but the downsides of a very big immigration attorney is you don’t get personalized attention.

So those were two of my factors. One is a little bit of personalized attention for my case, someone who cares about the case, and the second is someone who does a good amount of volume so that they can see the issues and be able to answer them quickly.

And finally, so after speaking to the shortlist, I decided to go with Anahita George. It was a great experience working with her. I definitely recommend working with her.

So I think I can probably put it down to two points. One is how streamlined the approach was, where after I contacted her and said, “Hey, let’s get started on this,” just the use of technology and a Dropbox account, upload your documentation with a certain number of years, very quick turnaround time and responsiveness.

Because what I also found, which kind of affected my decision-making while selecting the attorney, was how responsive they are. Sometimes if you send an email to someone, if you hear back within four or five days, that means either they’re caught up with too much or maybe that’s their standard response time. And I was looking for faster response time, because I did want to get this done quickly, because you never know. Again, the reason why I wanted to do it quickly is because priority dates are current today but may not remain so in the future, so time is of the essence.

Now, apart from the streamlining stuff, once I uploaded that, I used to get an acknowledgement back saying, “Hey, received your documents. This is good. This is missing.” And I thought that was great. And any questions that I had and continue to have, I found the response to be very quick and detailed. I just sense great personal care with Anahita.

So that was I think … I can’t put an exact number to it, but it was like two, three weeks. It wasn’t too long after that. We worked really fast on it, yeah.

My response would be “Do your research and hire Anahita anyway.” Just kidding, right? Jokes side, I think you have to think of this is … Because of the process, when you understand the process, you realize it’s a multi-year kind of relationship. So there’s the application. Then after that, there’s a removal of conditions and any RFEs, anything that comes in between. So you have to treat it as that.

So you want to make sure that it’s someone who has seen a lot of cases, has a lot of personal experience with this program, and they can guide you through the documentation, and fast and responsive and their process itself is streamlined.

So I would say that, again, a multi-year relationship. So see if you can work with this person over the long term and then check for the responsiveness, how quickly they’re getting back to you, and just inquire more about what their volume is and how many clients have they served in the past year. Those would be three things to get started on. Sure.

So I think it was … I would say it was a little bit on the higher side compared to the others. But I think with any such cases, my experience has been you get what you pay for. So you don’t want to … If someone’s offering a very low price on it, that means either they don’t have the experience because they’re not aware of what level of work that’ll involve or it might not be a great, quality job that they might do.

I think, because the investment amount is so large—it’s like $800,000; for urban, it’s more than a million—you don’t want to skimp. Because this is a relatively short amount, so I think you should try to get the best level of legal representation you can get with USCIS. Again, this application is reviewed over a period of months, so it can’t have mistakes. It has to be as perfect as you can send it out.

Right. So I had already come up with a list of projects when I was doing my initial research, that I was aware of the hotels, resorts, apartment complexes. So I did send out … Each of these sites have a “Contact Us” kind of form. So I did send them an email saying, “Hey, can you give me some more information about each of these projects?” And almost everyone happily responded, and I was given prospectus documents to review that I kind of went over.

And based on all that—and I can walk you through my decision process. I had a set of criteria that I used to evaluate the projects by. And after I did that, I think I finally decided to select Rocky River. Happy to go through the criteria if you want.

All right. So I think one of the first criteria I was looking at was who is the developer of the project and what is the regional center. Who are the major players of this particular project? What is their track record? That was important to me. Have they successfully executed such projects in the past, or is this one of their first or second projects? So that was the experience or the tenure. That was one factor that was pretty important to me.

And these are not … I mean, there’s no order of ranking here really, but the macros of the project. For example, let’s say in a rural project—which the rural is coming from the census data—so I want to understand how far is it from a major city and who are the target demographic that will come there. Is it vacationers? Is it all the people? Is it children? That kind of stuff. So I was interested in veterans. Who is this project serving? So that was another sub-criteria for the macros.

And then what is the status of the project? Is it something that’s almost complete? Is it something that’s just starting? And I’ll speak more to the state of the project later as well. Then the capital stack of that particular project: How is it funded and financed? How is the construction done for that, and how are the revenues generated? That’s another sub-criteria, which is is it on a rolling basis or is it that the entire construction has to complete before even a single dollar can come in? So there were aspects of that. Was it leased? Is there a government involved here? So there were some factors like that involved.

And the third criteria was … The EB-5 program requires that you create 10 jobs over a period of two years, so I’d suggest that people read up on what are the types of jobs that need to be created. So please do your research there and try to understand the RIMS model and all that’s involved there, especially for the rural stuff. And you’ll see that the job creation is the important part, because you can get a conditional Green Card, but if the job creation isn’t met, you’ll never be able to satisfy the removal of conditions. So that’s a very important part of it. So you want to see if your project will be able to generate those jobs.

Right. I can try to connect what I just said. So Kolter, in my own research, I found that they have a successful record of executing these kind of projects, and they’ve been doing this. So it’s not like a first, second project. They’ve done multiple such projects in the past. One of the most famous ones is the Twin Lakes project.

And this particular project, the Cresswind community project, it was something that is completed in phases. It’s not done as in … The revenues can start coming in after each phase, which means, once you build a few homes, that those homes can be sold and then the revenues essentially are being generated.

Whereas when I looked at some of the other projects, like a hotel or a travel resort or something like that, they needed to be built completely, because it was like a small parcel of land in some tourist destination where they could not open it up in phases, which means the revenue generation only starts after let’s say two or three years when that project really completes.

And again, it’s also subject to other factors, like let’s say tourists suddenly don’t want to go to a particular location for whatever reason. So it is subject to those kind of trends as well.

Right. So I think in terms of demographics, I think a lot of folks are moving towards the Sunbelt, and the Rocky River project is in North Carolina, which is part of the Sunbelt. So I see a lot of people moving there.

And as I said, I also found that the project is close to a major city, not too far out where people cannot, let’s say, choose to go to a city for entertainment or medical services or anything like that.

And the project, if you look at the prospectus document, it’s a kind of self-contained kind of community, with a lot of sporting facilities. You get access to … Your shopping centers are close by. So that was something I was looking for, yeah.

Big difference actually. So what I found was anyone who visits EB5AN or has interacted with your team will be able to instantly tell … The amount of detail-oriented documentation, information on the YouTube channel, on the page, the responsiveness of the emails is really great.

I did not see that kind of response … I mean, they were all responsive. I’m talking about other regional centers. They were all responsive, but I never got that same amount of detail and responsiveness from any of them. In fact, even some of the prospectus documents which were sent seemed to be lacking a few details, and I had to kind of ask again for them. And in some cases, they weren’t even available or. And that’s fine, but I think in some cases they weren’t even able to tell when they’d be able to get them.

So I found that when I reached out … So even within EB5AN, there were a couple of projects I was looking at, and when I asked your team … I work with Jordan and Dairung from your team, so they’re very responsive. Any question that I had, I was able to communicate through multiple channels, like email or WhatsApp, and always get a reply back or always have a clarification answered.

And in some cases, some of the questions that I asked never even got a reply from other regional centers. That was important to me, and I thought that was a big differentiator really.

Very important. And I think anyone looking to invest in this should also keep that as a very important criteria, to make sure that you’re reviewing all the documents possible. If you see anything missing in terms of financial documentation, make sure to ask the regional center.

And as I said, some regional centers didn’t have that documentation on hand, and they weren’t able to provide it. So that was a big differentiator, because EB5AN always got back to me with any of the documentation that I asked.

For people applying with this who don’t have a finance background, it’s important that they go through these documents and try to understand how the money will flow from, let’s say, the structures that are created, the GP/LP structure. So it’s important to understand that.

And you will have questions. If you don’t have a finance background, you will have questions, and you need someone on hand from the regional center who will be able to answer your questions, so questions about that, questions about the capital stack. And yeah, that was a differentiator, because a lot of folks weren’t able to answer it in other regional centers.

So for the rural project, I think the reason why I chose rural over urban was the RIA Act of 2022, which says that rural projects get priority processing. I think it’s important to … They want to encourage investment in rural areas to create jobs, which I thought was great.

And other macros of the project—like how far is it from a major city, who’s the target demographic that’s moving there, is it vacationers, is that older people, is that tourists or children—that was important to me.

The other aspect was how are the revenue generation for the project. Is it on a rolling basis? Is all the investment required upfront to even build the project? So who’s funding a majority of the project? Do they have that thing? How long has it been on the market? Because a lot of the EB-5 projects, they’re probably waiting for a couple of years from some other regional centers, which they did not have the capital to get started on it. How the bridge financing works. So those are the financial aspects of it.

And whether the project you’re selecting is also going to meet the job creation criteria. So these were the factors that were important.

Okay. So the reasoning behind this was that when you’re putting in this investment, after the period of the investment that it’s at risk, you also want to get your money back. The idea is that after a certain amount of period, there has to be some sort of exit event, which means your project is going to have to … If it’s, let’s say, a hotel—after completion, guests are going to start moving in, that’s going to generate revenues, and slowly the investor’s getting paid back. That requires an upfront. You need all the amount to construct the hotel and then do that.

But if you’re developing in phases, you can put some money, and then when that house gets built, in the case of Rocky River, you can fund the returns through sales of those homes. So you are kind of building up revenue after the first set of homes have been created. So even if it’s like a 10-year project, your revenue starts rolling in from the two-year mark and going forward. And you’re seeing that’s not the case with some of the other projects.

Yeah, great, great. You summarized it really well. Yeah, I should have said that.

Yeah. And also just the fact that these homes are being built individually, right? So it’s build one, sell one, build one, sell one. So if things speed up, they build more. If they slow down, they don’t build as many. But it doesn’t endanger the safety of the project overall, which is much harder to manage if it’s a single structure, like a large high-rise hotel or apartment building or resort. So perfect on the—

And just to add there, let’s look at the period, right? Let’s say a two-year period, and let’s say you need all the construction and everything upfront, right? Let’s say you have to buy all the cement, steel, and all that. If you have to do that, you’re taking the risk. If the price for cement or steel is very high, your returns are also negatively affected by the fact that, in that two-year period, you got locked into a higher rate, whereas over a longer period of time, it maybe averages down. So you have that, as you said, diversification, not just of the revenue but also your input costs that go into building that project.

Right. So I’d say find a good regional center, one that can educate you on things that you may not understand about it as you collect more information about the project, because a lot of folks who are on H-1B visas tend to be in the tech sector, where they’re not as familiar with finance and these aspects. So find someone who can help you out with documentation, help you understand these projects, and then start requesting prospectus documents and reviewing them.

And try to understand how the job creation works, what the capital stack is, what are the criteria that are important to you for the project. I think I’ve described a few that are universal that you should probably care about, like the job creation and how the revenues are coming in and all that, but you might have your own criteria. So take into account all that.

And if you have the means, go for it, because I think as I described earlier with the tech sector, you never know. It can be layoffs, or you could be in a period where you don’t get stamping. So it gives you a level of flexibility that you wouldn’t otherwise have.

Yes, I would. So let me first speak about Anahita. I had a great experience working with her. Her process is streamlined. She’s very responsive during the process and even after the process, now that I have questions. I have worked with a lot of attorneys and organizations before, large organizations, small organizations, and I did interview a lot of people. I found her to be really good, and I would recommend her. And I think even if you look her up, she has great reviews, and I can testify to the fact that she was great. So that’s about Anahita.

About EB5AN, as I said, very detail-oriented, lots of information on the YouTube channel, even on specific parts that investors wouldn’t even think that would be a concern. For instance, I think one of the videos that I saw was about the escrow account. As an example, when you’re transferring your funds, you transfer them to an escrow account, and here’s where the detail-oriented stuff comes into play.

If you remember a few years ago with the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, it turned out that a lot of funds went… before the government essentially made the depositors whole, there was that FDIC insurance limit, which if… A lot of investors would’ve lost their money if only the FDIC insurance, like the $250K, was met.

But if you look at EB5AN’s documentation, they’ll specifically say that “hey, this escrow account is ICS compliant,” which means it’s cash sweep. So you know your money is protected, because it’s not just going into one. Even though you deposit in one account, they’re making sure that the escrow partner is using an ICS account. So there’s stuff like that, really detail-oriented.

I worked with Jordan and Dairung. They were both great, and I have ongoing communication with them as my process continues. And yeah, I think speaking of my interaction with Sam has also been great. So that’s why I would recommend EB5AN as well. And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the other regional centers, they were lacking in terms of documentation or the responsiveness wasn’t as great.