Residency For Sale
12/02/2011
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For the low payment of $500k an alien can get a green card. Or he can obtain the right to live in the United States indefinitely. America hating radical Chuck Schumer and RINO Mike Lee have teamed up and finally introduced legislation to sell America to aliens for a measly price that was previously reported here. Just purchase a residential property and an alien can live here. Supposedly the alien and his family cannot work or received "federal" benefits. But what about "State" benefits? No restriction on that. But many aliens are not supposed to receive federal benefits, but do in ways both legal and illegal. And it won't be long before they start working illegally, or complain that they can't afford to live here in their new home without working or welfare.

 

The Economist December 3, 2011

Give Me Your Gucci-Clad Masses

“GIVE me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” reads Emma Lazarus’s ode to immigration inscribed on a plaque beneath the Statue of Liberty. More than a century later, however, it is the jet-lagged and rich who are receiving the warmest welcome at America’s borders.

Two senators, Charles Schumer, a Democrat, and Mike Lee, a Republican, recently introduced legislation to fast-track visas for foreigners spending $500,000 on residential property. Their Visit USA Act would allow purchasers and their families to live in America for as long as they owned their houses, though not to work there or receive any federal benefits.

But The Economist also points out that the EB-5 program, where immigrants get a green card with the right to work and welfare, has deteriorated to the point that they can purchase $500k in State or local bonds to get legal permanent residence and eventually citizenship.

"Although the act is unlikely to become law anytime soon, would-be immigrants with half a million dollars in hand need not despair: America has a visas-for-cash scheme up and running. The Immigrant Investor Programme, also known as EB-5, was set up in 1990 to lure in foreigners by giving them the right to live and work there permanently if they created jobs.

Initially EB-5 came laden with stringent conditions: immigrants had to invest $1m either in a new enterprise that would create at least ten full-time jobs, or in a failing one to preserve the same number. They were required to manage the business themselves, and even to dedicate some of the jobs to exports. If a company failed in its first two years, investors would lose both their money and their green cards.

With the exception of the two-year rule, these restrictions have now melted away. Investors today can choose to buy into all sorts of packaged projects, created by regional centres that oversee their day-to-day management. Many projects qualify for a minimum investment of only $500,000, designed to push investment to rural regions and areas of high unemployment. Crucially, the required ten jobs no longer need to be in direct employment. This permits investment in limited partnerships whose purpose is to lend money to companies that do employ workers, reducing investors’ risk.

The logical conclusion is that immigrants could qualify for permanent residency simply by buying local government bonds—and that is exactly what did happen in October. A group of 95 investors, mostly Chinese, bought $48m of Washington state bonds to help finance a replacement for the longest floating bridge in the world, near Seattle."

America for sale. And to types like this.

 

 

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