Trump's Gold Card Complicates EB-5 Renewal As Advocates Preach Coexistence

The EB-5 visa program remained largely untouched in the first year of President Donald Trump's second term, even as he launched a mass deportation campaign and tightened immigration policy.

But the program — a favorite of the real estate industry because it allows foreigners to invest in low-interest loans to U.S. developments in exchange for eventual permanent residency — is perpetually mired in bureaucratic delays and scheduled to sunset next year.

It was also targeted by the White House as it launched a new plan to attract wealthy immigrants, known as the Trump “gold card.” But EB-5 has been close to ending before, only to be revived. And it's still popular, with thousands of applicants trying to access the program last year.

Amid intensifying anti-immigration rhetoric and policies from the White House, the cottage industry facilitating EB-5 investments and developers who tap it for funding hope it can evade the executioner yet again.

“The challenge that EB-5 has had over and over again is that people lose sight of the benefits that it brings,” said Jill Jones, an EB-5 expert and the head of specialty administration at JTC Group. “What we're trying to do right now is change the narrative and get people to talk about the ripple effect of these projects.”

The EB-5 investor program provides permanent residency status in exchange for an investment of at least $800K into a job-creating U.S. business endeavor, including property development.

Firms that track EB-5 don't break out types of investments, but developers like Related Cos. and Silverstein Properties have used EB-5 funds over the years on major projects.

More than 140,700 permanent visas have been issued through the program since 2000, and investors have contributed just under $60B since its inception in 1990, according to Invest In The USA, a trade group that lobbies for users of the EB-5 program.  

More than 5,000 investors filed EB-5-related applications in the nine months that ended in June, and the federal government approved just under 3,000 applications, according to IIUSA. 

It can take months or even years for the federal government to process EB-5 applications and for the investor to receive permanent residency status. More than three-quarters of applications filed in the past three years are still waiting for a reply because of slow processing times and administrative hurdles, according to IIUSA.

The White House says a Trump gold card can be secured in weeks, although it’s unclear if any of those visas have been issued since the application website launched in December. The Commerce Department, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.  

The differences in scope and timing make the two programs more complementary than competitive, said Edgardo Defortuna, CEO of Fortune International Group, a Miami-based luxury condo developer that uses EB-5 to finance development.

“There is a different type of income level for people using EB-5 versus someone that can write a check for a million dollars,” Defortuna said. “I think both products can coexist in a very unique way.”

The Trump gold card was announced in February as a replacement for the EB-5 program, but there was no mention of it at the December press conference during which the White House launched a website to start accepting gold card applications.

The gold card offers a wealthy individual from outside the United States the option to buy permanent residency status for $1M plus a $15K processing fee and background check. 

Industry groups supporting EB-5 mobilized after the Oval Office gold card announcement in February when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it would replace the EB-5 program, which he described as “full of nonsense, make-believe and fraud.”

Supporters successfully deflected the incoming blow by descending on Washington, D.C., with a pitch for the two programs to run in parallel, Jones said.  

“Given enough time for people to really analyze both programs, they will find they really are synergistic,” she said. “We don't have a situation where one would overtake the other.”

USCIS said in September it had exhausted the 10,000 visas authorized annually by the program. Spouses and children of EB-5 applicants pull from the same visa pool as other EB-5 investors, a nuance of the system that its supporters say holds back the total investment it attracts. 

“When you think about the jobs it's creating and the money it's bringing into these underserved areas, it could be doing exponentially more,” Jones said. 

The program has attracted at least $1B each year for more than a decade except for in 2021 and 2022, when authorization of key components of the program temporarily lapsed and investors pulled back. Now, a new reauthorization deadline looms. 

Regional centers — companies certified by the federal government to administer EB-5 funds — will lose legal approval in 2027 without a renewal from Congress. 

Another pause in operations would likely stop the EB-5 investment flow again, as more than 96% of EB-5 applicants use one of 580 regional centers to ensure their investments qualify. 

The regional center framework was introduced as a pilot program in 1991 and has always needed congressional reauthorization. Over the past three decades, several sunset and expiration dates have come and gone. 

“The gold card conversation has clouded the narrative,” said Marlon Hill, a partner at Weiss Serota Helfman Cole + Bierman, who focuses on international business. “There needs to be clarity on the legislative policy side sooner rather than later if, in fact, the goal is to help the economy and to raise more money.”

A series of short-term extensions starting in 2015 kept the program running until 2021, when it lapsed and USCIS stopped processing most applications. A sweeping bill called the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act passed in March 2022 and reauthorized the program through September 2027.

Industry lobbyists are having productive conversations with lawmakers and their staff, and Jones said she is confident the program will ultimately be reauthorized. 

Beyond the existential crisis, the EB-5 program has for decades grappled with administrative hurdles and country-specific caps that mean some investors are able to secure visas in a matter of months while others wait years. Chinese nationals who made their EB-5 investments in 2014 have only recently begun receiving permanent visas because of a backlog in qualified applicants.

Commercial real estate developers use the program as both a marketing tool and a way to fill out the capital stack. Defortuna's company first leveraged it to finance a development in 2022, driven in part by client requests from wealthy Latin Americans looking for investment opportunities outside of their home countries.  

Roughly a quarter of the buyers at the Nexo Residences, a 254-unit condo tower positioned for short-term rentals in North Miami Beach, also made a parallel investment in the project’s construction to qualify for an EB-5 visa, Defortuna said.

Cash used to buy a condo can’t be used to secure a visa, but Defortuna said there was enough interest from buyers to make an additional investment into the project that Fortune partnered with a regional center to facilitate the application process. 

“When we started traveling to Latin America, they were all asking about the best way to get permanent resident status in the U.S. and for help connecting to a lawyer that could help them,” Defortuna said. “We saw that this is definitely a need for our customer.”

Fortune is now leveraging EB-5 capital for its planned 77-story Ora by Casa Tua short-term rental condo tower in Miami’s financial district. Each development can only support a finite number of EB-5 applications because of requirements around the number of jobs it creates, and, with limited availability, there’s more demand than supply, Defortuna said. 

But questions loom about the future of both programs. The White House is dodging Congress for the gold card by tapping into existing visa programs. The strategy lets the administration quickly push the program forward, but it also leaves the gold card vulnerable to political whims. 

The EB-5 application may be cumbersome and time-consuming, but investors can count on their application eventually being processed, at least for now. 

“It comes back to the investors wanting certainty,” Jones said. “If we think about the gold card and how it came to be, it was by executive action. It could be taken away by executive action.”